Less Tags better for SEO?

[TheWebMastercom]

I am currently reviewing my strategy when it comes to categories and tags on my site.  Having been no-indexed for some time, and having many tags with just one entry I am thinking that this is not optimal for SEO purposes.

This is what I am planning:

• Categories - Change these to Index, but only after adding a hundred words or so by way of introduction (see this example - https://www.besthostnews.com/news/hosting/a-small-orange-news/).  With the categories I am thinking of highlighting key articles as well to improve link juice distribution to older articles that are important.
• Tags - About half my tags have only 1 entry, with a few more just having 2 entries.  I am thinking of deleting all tags with just one entry, and trying to merge those with just two or 3 entries where it makes sense to do so.  I will keep these as no-index, but I think this will mean more optimal distribution of link juice within the site.

I would appreciate your thoughts \ suggestions on the best practices here.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Have both the categories as tags been indexed by Google? Usually you leave one of them out of the indexes of Google to make sure you don't get in trouble with creating a lot of duplicate content and not unique pages.

[TheWebMastercom]

Neither have been indexed due to that very reason... duplicate content, poor quality \ thin content.

[EGOL]

I am currently reviewing my strategy when it comes to categories and tags on my site.

Everyone should do this.  I do it once every year or so.

Having been no-indexed for some time, and having many tags with just one entry I am thinking that this is not optimal for SEO purposes.

I agree.  I don't use tag pages.

Categories - Change these to Index, but only after adding a hundred words or so by way of introduction (see this example).

Where I have used categories, I wait until I have a substantive amount of material to appear on the category page.  I visited your sample page and can't tell if the hundred words or so at the top is yada yada yada content or real beef.  If it is real beef then go with it.  If it is yada yada yada then wait until you have a large enough number of posts that your page is of substantive length.

Also, I run periodic traffic assessments on my category pages.  If some of them are not bringing in the traffic or at least showing traffic growth then I delete them (301 redirect to the blog homepage).  My philosophy is that a compact site competes better for difficult, high-traffic terms if it does not have a lot of useless pages.

I am thinking of deleting all tags with just one entry,

Yes, these never should have been created.

and trying to merge those with just two or 3 entries where it makes sense

If this is going to create pages that compete with category pages then just delete them.

I will keep these as no-index, but I think this will mean more optimal distribution of link juice within the site.

In my opinion, tag pages are dangerous if they have snippets of the same content that appears on category pages and on the main blog page and its paginations.  Also, tag pages that are same topic as category pages are a bad idea in my opinion.

If you are not indexing pages they will pull zero traffic from search.  If you have links to them then you linkjuice is being scattered into potentially low-value pages.  I am all about internal linking but keep my philosophy that compact sites compete more strongly for the difficult queries where the big traffic is earned.

[TheWebMastercom]

Thank you.  The example page i linked  is actually a resource that helps with conversions. .  The content at the top will highlight the better posts rather than some of the fluff posts that I rel canonical  or no-index (i.e. old offers etc). The problem is that if I do more than 100 words, it would end up fluff.  I think it adds value by linking to some external resources and key posts, so I will work towards building that up over time.

But thank you for your indepth reply.  You are saying alot of what I was thinking, but not convinced enough to make the drastic changes I probably need to do.

I am tempted to remove tags.  I don't think anyone ever visits them.

Update:  I have now removed the tags.  I can always create one or two new categories if I need to in the future, but for now I think I have made the best decision for my site.  160 pages that were never visited and diluted link juice have just been deleted.

[TheWebMastercom]

I have added an update here: http://moz.com/community/q/reviewing-category-tag-policy-update