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.
If I change Tags and Categories in Wordpress blog post, will it negatively affect SEO and cause 404s?
-
Hi,
I have belatedly come to the conclusion that I have been using tags and categories when blogging in wordpress incorrectly. The result is that Google seems to prefer to show my archives and tags in search results rather than the post itself. Not good UX.
As the site is only a few months old, am I best to learn my lesson and tag and categorize correctly moving forward
or
Should I go back in to these posts and clean them up & categorize and tag correctly. If I do this, will it cause 404s and hurt my SEO?
Thanks!
-
Thanks Tymen, Anthony - that helps a lot. It is indeed - domain.com/post-title (no category in url) so I am safe to clean up the site without repercussions. Better to learn this lesson now than down the line. Cheers!
-
Came to say just this. Great answer, Anthony.
-
The answer to this question will depend a bit on how you have your current blog post URL slug set up. If you are using domain.com/category/post-title-here and then change your categories, this will cause 404s (which you can fix by redirecting).
If you are using a domain.com/post-title-here or other option, you will be just fine to clean up, edit and alter your category and tags. I would suggest NoIndexing your tags. The decision of NoIndexing categories will depend on how you plan on using them.
If the site is only a few months old, I strongly suggest fixing this now and setting yourself up for better long term success.
-
Hi John,
You could clean them up and 301 redirect the old/wrong tags/ categories to the correct new page/post. This way the visitors will not notice anything and you let Google know where you want people to go to.
I would also take a look at: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/no-indexing-wordpress-taxonomies-do-or-dont/49508/
In this article it is explained how to "noindex" Tags and Categories in WP. This way you will avoid a lot of duplicate content.
Good luck!
Regard, Tymen
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
-
Our clients Magento 2 site has lots of obsolete categories. Advice on SEO best practice for setting server level redirects so I can delete them?
Our client's Magento website has been running for at least a decade, so has a lot of old legacy categories for Brands they no longer carry. We're looking to trim down the amount of unnecessary URL Redirects in Magento, so my question is: Is there a way that is SEO efficient to setup permanent redirects at a server level (nginx) that Google will crawl to allow us at some point to delete the categories and Magento URL Redirects? If this is a good practice can you at some point then delete the server redirects as google has marked them as permanent?
Technical SEO | Sep 23, 2023, 10:06 PM | Breemcc0 -
Should I use a canonical URL for images uploaded to a blog post in Wordpress?
Hi, I have a wordpress website that has articles/news posts witch contain imagery. I've noticed that in the Media Library, when you upload an image to a blog post it generates a new permalink ...article-name/article-image-01.jpg I have Yoast SEO plugin and have the option to set a canonical URL for this image. Should I point it back to the actual article? Thanks for any helpers with this.
Technical SEO | Apr 11, 2018, 8:56 AM | Easigrass0 -
Does using a reverse proxy to make a subdomain appear as a subdirectory affect SEO?
Using a reverse proxy only makes it appear that a subdomain is really a subfolder. However, links in the end remain the same. Does this have any negative (or positive) impact on SEO? Does it make it difficult from the blog's (subdomain's) sitemap or robots.txt file to be properly read by search engines?
Technical SEO | Mar 19, 2020, 2:14 AM | rodelmo41 -
Do Letters With Accents Affect SEO?
Hi Guys, My company has a franchise of a foreign company that uses an accent/foreign letter in its brand name. We have to refer to this franchise with this symbol on our website to meet their standards. I've done some research on this but its not conclusive, so i was wondering whether anyone here can confirm this for me; Will using the letter with this symbol impair our rankings for this franchise name? Obviously as a UK business people search for this franchise with a regular letter and not the accented one. I would have thought that Google is clever enough to recognise the meaning of the accented letter by now and therefore it wouldn't affect rankings (much). Furthermore, do you think that it would make any difference to use the HTML element to represent the accent rather than copy and pasting the symbol onto our website? I would've thought this would help Google pick it up, but it might not make a difference anyway! Any help is appreciated. Thanks Sam
Technical SEO | May 8, 2015, 10:52 AM | Sandicliffe1 -
<sub>& <sup>tags, any SEO issues?</sup></sub>
Hi - the content on our corporate website is pretty technical, and we include chemical element codes in the text that users would search on (like S02, C02, etc.) A lot of times our engineers request that we list the codes correctly, with a <sub>on the last number. Question - does adding this code into the keyword affect SEO? The code would look like SO<sub>2</sub>.</sub> Thanks.
Technical SEO | Mar 21, 2014, 3:02 PM | Jenny10 -
Does the rel="bookmark" tag have any SEO impication?
I'm assuming the rel="bookmark" tag doesn't have any SEO implications but I just wanted to make sure it wasn't viewed like a nofollow by search engines.
Technical SEO | Jul 6, 2012, 11:13 PM | eli.boda0 -
Should WordPress themes be hard coded for better SEO?
In the interests of making my site faster I have recently come across the suggestion of removing unwanted PHP from my WooThemes WordPress theme. The suggestion is to hard code the choices I have made in the WordPress template to reduce on database calls. Has anyone actually done this to their WordPress theme before and seen any measurable results?
Technical SEO | Apr 25, 2012, 11:04 AM | Wallander1 -
Do Domain Extensions such as .com or .net affect SEO value?
In the beginning of SEO days, it was going around that .com is the best for SEO and that .net is not as good. Is there any truth to this, and what about .org or .edu? I always hear that .edu sites have high PR. Is there any rhyme or reason to this, or all they all equal? Thank you, Afshin Christian-Way.com
Technical SEO | Jan 7, 2017, 7:11 PM | applesofgold0