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
-
Should internal links in my table of contents be tagged as nofollow?
Hi All, I have the LuckyWP Table of Contents plugin installed. I recently noticed that you can tag your internal links with and nofollow. I understand that it's always a good idea to link internally and to pass link juice to my own content. But with detailed posts that have over 20 headings, I'm thinking that internal linking for headings may actually hurt me because it takes my links well above 100. Any ideas what the best practises are in this scenario? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | nomad_blogger0 -
Can a H1 Tag Have Multiple Spans Within It?
H1 tags on my client's website follow the template [Service] + [Location]. These two have their own span, meaning there are two spans in an H1 tag. class="what">Truck Repair near class="where">California, CA How do crawl bots see this? Is that okay for SEO?
Technical SEO | | kevinpark1910 -
Does Google read dynamic canonical tags?
Does Google recognize rel=canonical tag if loaded dynamically via javascript? Here's what we're using to load: <script> //Inject canonical link into page head if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname1") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/kapiolani", ""); } if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname2") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/straub", ""); } if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname3") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/pali-momi", ""); } if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname4") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/wilcox", ""); } if (canonicalLink != window.location.href) { var link = document.createElement('link'); link.rel = 'canonical'; link.href = canonicalLink; document.head.appendChild(link); } script>
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
How do you delete an admin user in wordpress that wont delete
I hired an indian company to do some work on three sites that I own. I used a freelancing platform and they have been banned and now when i check in my wordpress sites, the admin user will not delete. Everytime i try and delete them it comes back. I change the password and the email address, but when i check a couple of hours later it comes back again, giving them full control over my sites which they are playing around with. any help would be great. I have tried going into the cpanel but it still will not delete. my hosting company has tried to delete them but it is not working
Technical SEO | | in2townpublicrelations0 -
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 -
Title tag not showing on google? Please Help!
I've read the FAQs and searched the help center. My URL is: http://www.webygeeks.comI have updated title tags of my client's website 10-15 days ago, still the title on google is coming as the company name 😞 Why so??Description is correct but title is incorrect, can you please recommend me something guys?Also, i am wondering why the google cache is showing date of september 5 and we have changed the titles around 10 - 15 days before that http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:P45GOiHRaIUJ:www.webygeeks.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk Really appreciate your suggestion.
Technical SEO | | lvp11380 -
What can I do if my reconsideration request is rejected?
Last week I received an unnatural link warning from Google. Sad times. I followed the guidelines and reviewed all my inbound links for the last 3 months. All 5000 of them! Along with several genuine ones from trusted sites like BBC, Guardian and Telegraph there was a load of spam. About 2800 of them were junk. As we don't employ any SEO agency and don't buy links (we don't even buy adwords!) I know that all of this spam is generated by spam bots and site scrapers copying our content. As the bad links have not been created by us and there are 2800 of them I cannot hope to get them removed. There are no 'contact us' pages on these Russian spam directories and Indian scraper sites. And as for the 'adult book marking website' who have linked to us over 1000 times, well I couldn't even contact that site in company time if I wanted to! As a result i did my manual review all day, made a list of 2800 bad links and disavowed them. I followed this up with a reconsideration request to tell Google what I'd done but a week later this has been rejected "We've reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality guidelines." As these links are beyond my control and I've tried to disavow them is there anything more to be done? Cheers Steve
Technical SEO | | SteveBrumpton0 -
• symbol in title tag
We have a few title tags with a circular dot symbol, which is created by the code "•" Humans see a dot, but googlebot sees • Does this negatively impact our SEO, or is googlebot aware that **• == *** to human eyes
Technical SEO | | lighttable0