I have a WordPress site with 30 + categories and about 2k tags. I'd like to bring that number down for each taxonomy. What is the proper practice to do that?

[digisavvy]

I want to bring my categories down to about 8 or so and the tags... They're just a mess and I'd really like to bring that figure down significantly and setup a standard for usage.

My thought was to remove the un-needed tags and categories and setup 301 redirects for the ones that I'm removing.

Is that even necessary?

Are there tools that can assist with this?

What are the "gotchas" I should be aware of?

Thanks!

[Carson-Ward]

Hi Alex,

If you're still looking to remove tags or categories from a blog, there is no need to redirect the old tags and categories unless there are external links pointing to these tag/category pages. In the event that you have external links, make sure to 301 them. Most blog CMSs will take care of the internal links on the navigation/menus, but make sure to change any internal links to these pages that you added manually.

You could see an impact on your rankings in the unlikely even that you are receiving visits from keyword-targeted tags or categories. You should probably check and see how often these pages function as organic landing pages in your analytics software. Most blogs see almost no traffic or links to these pages.

Let me know if you have any questions.

-Carson