Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can I safely delete unused tags??
-
Can I safely delete unused tags, ones with 0 posts connected to them?
Thanks,
- Mike
-
Hi Mike,
I wouldnt worry too much about this.
Having old pages or removed pages returning 404s is completely fine by Google. Eventually, they will drop those pages from the index.
If you are worried about those pages and/or they are being shown in SERPs and want to remove those urls faster you can use the URL removal tool from Search Console. Sadly, you have to manually submit each url and you cannot do it in bulk.Hope ir help,
Best luck.
Gaston -
Thanks for the reply! But now it seems that pages for those tags still exist, just with no content in them.
Update: Now the empty page is simply showing as a 404 "Uh-Oh...Page not found!"
Hrmm. Where do I go from here? Create 410's? I didn't know any more steps needed to be taken when deleting tag pages with 0 content connected to those tags.
- Mike
-
Hi Mike,
As long as you are referring to Wordpress, yes it's safe to remove tags that have no content nor are being used.
Best of luck.
Gaston
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Adding Schema and No index tags via GTM
If we were to deploy schema and noindex tags to our website via Google tag manager, would these tags be viewed and respected by other search engines?
Technical SEO | | GregLB0 -
Do Canonical Tags Pass Link Juice?
I have an ecommerce website where some pages link to a product page with a different URL. EXAMPLE: 1: /category/product1.html (not indexed by Google) with canonical pointing to product1.html Other page link to the product like below. 2: product1.html (indexed by Google) Now the question is, does 1: pass any link juice to product1.html or not? Is it worth to change everything and link only to one URL? My site is running on Magento!
Technical SEO | | bill3690 -
Removing a canonical tag from Pagination pages
Hello, Currently on our site we have the rel=prev/next markup for pagination along with a self pointing canonical via the Yoast Plugin. However, on page 2 of our paginated series, (there's only 2 pages currently), the canonical points to page one, rather than page 2. My understanding is that if you use a canonical on paginated pages it should point to a viewall page as opposed to page one. I also believe that you don't need to use both a canonical and the rel=prev/next markup, one or the other will do. As we use the markup I wanted to get rid of the canonical, would this be correct? For those who use the Yoast Plugin have you managed to get that to work? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | jessicarcf0 -
Title Tag vs. H1 / H2
OK, Title tag, no problem, it's the SEO juice, appears on SERP, etc. Got it. But I'm reading up on H1 and getting conflicting bits of information ... Only use H1 once? H1 is crucial for SERP Use H1s for subheads Google almost never looks past H2 for relevance So say I've got a blog post with three sections ... do I use H1 three times (or does Google think you're playing them ...) Or do I create a "big" H1 subhead and then use H2s? Or just use all H2s because H1s are scary? 🙂 I frequently use subheads, it would seem weird to me to have one a font size bigger than another, but of course I can adjust that in settings ... Thoughts? Lisa
Technical SEO | | ChristianRubio0 -
Why is Google replacing our title tags with URLs in SERP?
Hey guys, We've noticed that Google is replacing a lot of our title tags with URLs in SERP. As far as we know, this has been happening for the last month or so and we can't seem to figure out why. I've attached a screenshot for your reference. What we know: depending on the search query, the title tag may or may not be replaced. this doesn't seem to have any connection to the relevance of the title tag vs the url. results are persistent on desktop and mobile. the length of the title tag doesn't seem to correlate with the replacement. the replacement is happening at mass, to dozens of pages. Any ideas as to why this may be happening? Thanks in advance,
Technical SEO | | Mobify
Peter mobify-site-www.mobify.com---Google-Search.png0 -
Can I have an H1 tag below an H2?
Quick question for you all - Is there an issue with me having an H1 tag physically below an H2 tag on a web page??
Technical SEO | | Pete40 -
For an image which is in the CSS and not the HTML, can you add an alt tag?
I would like to improve SEO on a page with three big images, which are currently hosted in the CSS. The sample I am working with is at http://xquisitevents.com/about-us/ and I put my cursor over the big picture of the wedding dress with bouquet, I inspected the element and saw this code in a div tag: #upperleft { background-image:url(images/AboutTopLeft.jpg); Can I add an alt tag to the CSS somehow, or can I have it added to the HTML? What is the best way to handle this, to include keywords like exquisite weddings and special event designs?
Technical SEO | | BridgetGibbons0 -
Google Off/On Tags
I came across this article about telling google not to crawl a portion of a webpage, but I never hear anyone in the SEO community talk about them. http://perishablepress.com/press/2009/08/23/tell-google-to-not-index-certain-parts-of-your-page/ Does anyone use these and find them to be effective? If not, how do you suggest noindexing/canonicalizing a portion of a page to avoid duplicate content that shows up on multiple pages?
Technical SEO | | Hakkasan1