Should I delete all tags and just use my categories to organize content?

[John8899]

My website NorthernCaliforniaHikingTrails.com/blog has 400 or so tags, and it also has an extensive set of categories.

I'm thinking about deleting all the tags, but keeping the categories and consolidating them a bit.

Is there a significant SEO advantage to having tags in my case? I've seen a few very high-ranking websites actually rank for a tag, but I doubt my site will reach that level.

Any help appreciated!

[evolvingSEO]

Hello!

Generally, the only value tags hold would be to provide and extra detailed internal navigation on the site. Categories are for the broad topics, and if you wanted, you can also tag posts with more detailed topics or with some other categorization convention (ie: you could classify trail types - "fun", "challenging", "scenic" etc). And then provide a way to navigate to them by linking them in a sidebar, etc

Other than internal navigation though, tags really hold no value - so you can totally just delete them and rely on categories.

[John8899]

Thank you, Dan. Your answer is very helpful!