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
-
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 | | Easigrass0 -
CSS user select and any potential affect on SEO
Hi everyone and thank you in advance for your helpful comments. We have a client who is concerned about copying of content from their site because it has happened a few times in the last few years. We have explained that the content is essentially publicly available and that using the CSS selector user-select to prevent selection of text will really only prevent the technically limited users from working out how to get the text. He is happy that it will at least stop some people. So the question is would there be any way that this would have an affect on SEO? We would make an assumption that it doesnt but putting it out there for some feedback. Cheers Eddie
Technical SEO | | vital_hike0 -
We switched the domain from www.blog.domain.com to domain.com/blog.
We switched the domain from www.blog.domain.com to domain.com/blog. This was done with the purpose of gaining backlinks to our main website as well along with to our blog. This set us very low in organic traffic and not to mention, lost the backlinks. For anything, they are being redirected to 301 code. Kindly suggest changes to bring back all the traffic.
Technical SEO | | arun.negi0 -
Will a CSS Overflow Scroll for content affect SEO rankings?
If I use a CSS overflow scroll for copy, will my SEO rankings be affected? Will Google still be able to index my copy accurately and will keywords used in the copy that are covered by the scroll be recognized by Google?
Technical SEO | | moliver10220 -
Two META Robots tags on a page - which will win?
Hi, Does anybody know which meta-robots tag will "win" if there is more than one on a page? The situation:
Technical SEO | | jmueller
our CMS is not very flexible and so we have segments of META-Tags on the page that originate from templates.
Now any author can add any meta-tag from within his article-editor.
The logic delivering the pages does not care if there might be more than one meta-robots tag present (one from template, one from within the article). Now we could end up with something like this: Which one will be regarded by google & co?
First?
Last?
None? Thanks a lot,
Jan0 -
How much will changing IP addresses impact SEO?
So my company is upgrading its Internet bandwidth. However, apparently the vendor has said that part of the upgrade will involve changing our IP address. I've found two links that indicate some care needs to be taken to make sure our SEO isn't harmed: http://followmattcutts.com/2011/07/21/protect-your-seo-when-changing-ip-address-and-server/ http://www.v7n.com/forums/google-forum/275513-changing-ip-affect-seo.html Assuming we don't use an IP address that has been blacklisted by Google for spamming or other black hat tactics, how problematic is it? (Note: The site hasn't really been aggressively optimized yet - I started with the company less than two weeks ago, and just barely got FTP and CMS access yesterday - so honestly I'm not too worried about really messing up the site's optimization, since there isn't a lot to really break.)
Technical SEO | | ufmedia0 -
Do I need to add canonical link tags to pages that I promote & track w/ UTM tags?
New to SEOmoz, loving it so far. I promote content on my site a lot and am diligent about using UTM tags to track conversions & attribute data properly. I was reading earlier about the use of link rel=canonical in the case of duplicate page content and can't find a conclusive answer whether or not I need to add the canonical tag to these pages. Do I need the canonical tag in this case? If so, can the canonical tag live in the HEAD section of the original / base page itself as well as any other URLs that call that content (that have UTM tags, etc)? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | askotzko1 -
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 | | applesofgold0