Should I prevent Google from indexing blog tag and category pages?

[PaulRogers]

I am working on a website that has a regularly updated Wordpress blog and am unsure whether or not the category and tag pages should be indexable.

The blog posts are often outranked by the tag and category pages and they are ultimately leaving me with a duplicate content issue. With this in mind, I assumed that the best thing to do would be to remove the tag and category pages from the index, but after speaking to someone else about the issue, I am no longer sure. I have tried researching online, but there isn't anything that provided any further information.

Please can anyone with any experience of dealing with issues like this or with any knowledge of the topic help me to resolve this annoying issue.

Any input will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Paul

[EGOL]

Find out how much traffic you would be walking away from if you block them from the index.   My category pages bring in huge traffic - more than most websites receive.  I sure would not block them.  Also those pages attract a lot of links, likes, etc.  If I block them from the SERPs those benefits would be gone.

My advice is to understand the website better..  Then make a decision based upon data.

[PaulRogers]

Thanks!! Good answer! I'm going to leave the pages as they are.

Thanks

Paul

[PillarMarketing]

I used my robots.txt file to block my tag pages and they were removed from googles index as they should have been however I didn't notice a ranking boost. I curious what others have to say on this topic too.

[Nick_Ker]

If most of your posts have the same tags and categories, your tag and category archives will look a lot each other and look like your main page which could lead to duplicate content issues.  Many people choose either tags or categories to be indexed and the other blocked. If you can make your tag or category archive pages excerpt only, they will be good for navigation and not be as likely to look like duplicates.  Like EGOL said, category pages can be a pretty big draw - especially when they are full of excerpts that are keyword-rich.

[PaulRogers]

I have decided to add content to the tag and category pages to make them more valuable and reduce the risk of duplicate content issues. The pages also only feature short snippets from the posts so hopefully this shouldn't be too much of a problem with the addition of fresh content.

Thanks

Paul

[PillarMarketing]

Of course if you used the link juice you save by not indexing the tag pages  towards your articles this "could" bring in just as much traffic or more than you lost by blocking those pages. I guess that is my question... does blocking out certain pages on your site put your sites link juice towards other pages?