Should I disable the indexing of tags in Wordpress?

[JCN-SBWD]

Hi,

I have a client that is publishing 7 or 8 news articles and posts each month. I am optimising selected posts and I have found that they have been adding a lot of tags (almost like using hashtags) .

There are currently 29 posts but already 55 tags, each of which has its own archive page, and all of which are added to the site map to be indexed (https://sykeshome.europe.sykes.com/sitemap_index.xml).

I came across an article (https://crunchify.com/better-dont-use-wordpress-tags/) that suggested that tags add no value to SEO ranking, and as a consequence Wordpress tags should not be indexed or included in the sitemap.

I haven't been able to find much more reliable information on this topic, so my question is - should I get rid of the tags from this website and make the focus pages, posts and categories (redirecting existing tag pages back to the site home page)?

It is a relatively new websites and I am conscious of the fact that category and tag archive pages already substantially outnumber actual content pages (posts and news) - I guess this isn't optimal.

I'd appreciate any advice.

Thanks

wMfojBf

[seolocal958]

Yes it would be best if you were the tags option off, It excellent performance working for example Shillong Teer Club chart

[paulscreationids]

Disabling the indexing of tags in WordPress can be beneficial for SEO purposes, as it prevents search engines from indexing individual tag pages, which may otherwise lead to duplicate content issues. However, whether to disable tag indexing depends on your specific website goals and content structure. If you use tags sparingly and they add value to your site's organization, leaving them indexed may be beneficial. Evaluate your SEO strategy and content structure to determine the best approach for your WordPress site.

[galactycg1]

I'm having the same problem right now, my site is fairly new but it was already receiving some organic traffic then, all of a sudden traffic sank like a brick and i can't find the answer why.

Only thing that changed was adding tags to blog posts which i think might be creating duplicate content so I'm proceeding to disable those, will leave categories alive for the moment because they were bringing traffic but if nothing changes after it will deindex them as well, site in question is sluthpass hope i can recover traffic after disabling those annoying tags.

[OceanXD]

Hello experts, I have disabled the tags but it is still showing in Google. What should I do now? Here you can check redeemcodecenter.com, Thanks in Advance.

[rightangledev]

If you have a large number of tags that don't add clear value to your site's content, disabling tag indexing in WordPress can be beneficial for search engine optimization. However, if your tags are well-curated and provide meaningful navigation for your users, enabling indexing can improve discoverability and site organization. Evaluate the relevance and usefulness of your tags, considering both SEO considerations and user experience before making a decision.

[malasngoding]

I experienced the same problem. I once read an article that Google prefers websites that have a neat structure. and in my opinion, it is difficult to make tags more structured on my website. my site is malasngoding.com . what do you think?

[akunspa.mpinterestethwan2]

Even i was also looking the answer for same for my website https://abcya.in/ i think tags should not be indexed.

[lsdmts]

I don't think it's a good idea. I'm testing tons of articles with and without tags for my website, Dizzibooster. It seems that adding tags will provide an edge for indexing purposes. However, you can test these things yourself."

[Sandymozzer]

I am facing the same issue on my website AmazingFactsHindi. As per our expert discussion and after reading this forum, I decided to de-index all the Tags and Category pages that are creating duplicate issues on our website.

[TheCodeBuzz]

We had similar questions on SEO. We experimented with disabling tags for the last 4 weeks. The only impact so far, I was able to find is that the [thecodebuzz(https://www.thecodebuzz.com/) website did not get hits for a few impressions which were based on tags keys. We are still evaluating the impact.

[OceanXD]

Heyo,
If your tags and categories are providing value to your users or helping with your site's SEO, you might not want to remove them from search engine indexes. I disabled it on my site OceanXD, And it was a good decision for me.

[technicaldigital]

I have a same question but I have found blocking category and tag is good for SEO.
I have blogsite Tech News Blog I have crated around 400 tag but I have seen this was crating duplicate issue.

My personal opinion tag and category de index will be better for SEO.

[Tiamiy]

@JCN-SBWD You can index your tags in as much as it doesn't affect the indexing of your posts. Tags do get traffic as well. The only reason why I stopped indexing my tags is because it affects the indexing of my post. Tags got indexed in a matter of minutes while it takes hours, sometimes days before my posts get indexed.

[Seotools096]

I would recommend to disable tags indexing as there are cases where you are multiple tags for same topic. You can index categories as mentioned above that they are more structure and define your website in some way. If you write custom excerpt for each post, it helps categories to have unique content  for each post except.

[bankiu]

It’s a good idea to block tags, since they are duplicate content and may dilute the performance of your real pages. But if you find certain tag or author pages bring valid traffic, you can make an exception for them. It's up to you

[David1122]

Can you please explain what exactly you do.

[rasaho]

NO, I am still getting some traffic from tags. So why did you want to ruin that

[JCN-SBWD]

Many thanks for the prompt response and also for confirming my suspicions, it is much appreciated.

The robots suggestion is handy too.

[effectdigital]

Personally I usually do this as well as robots.txt blocking them to save on crawl allowance, but you should no-index first as if Google is blocked from crawling (robots.txt) then how will they find the no-index tags? So it needs to be staggered

I find that the tag URLs result in quite messy SERPs so I prefer to de-index those and then really focus on adding value to 'actual' category URLs. Because categories have a defined structure they're better for SEO (IMO)

Categories are usually good for SEO if you tune and tweak them up (and if their architecture is linear) but tags are very messy