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Brian
As far as which to remove, that's just up to him to decide. Unless I saw how the site was put together with plug-ins etc he should be able to determine which one is best to use. Its whichever is easier for him really. From an SEO standpoint you just need to choose one, it doesn't matter which.
Hope that clarifies!
-Dan
Greg
I agree with you in 95% of cases, and talked about that in my WordPress Moizinar (slides 13-15). Also see screenshot of what I like for URL structure on your basic WordPress setup (that is a site with a blog in it - typical company/agency site for example).
The only case where I like putting the blog posts right at the root level are if the site is literally only a blog, with like an about page as the only "page" and that's it. In that case I think this works fine.
-Dan
It is true they will not "penalize" for tags or archives directly, but you can make your site much better by doing many of the things Mike recommends above.
I wrote a post talking through how to assess your tags, and deciding which ones to delete and/or noindex: here.
Here's the elephant in the room too, you may rank for those tags, but do they bring traffic? What is the on-site metrics for your tag traffic? Bounce rate? Time on page?
It is true you may rank for some tags, but in general they never provide traffic, or the right traffic, compared to the content its self.
-Dan
Hi!
Thanks, I'm viewing the source code now and it appears correct.
I would definitely update Yoast. Its great now, but the old version was known to break certain things.
Then let us know if you're all set.
Thanks!
Hi There
To noindex pages there are a few methods;
use a meta noindex without robots.txt - I think that is why some may not be removed. The robots.txt block crawling so they can not see the noindex.
use a 301 redirect - this will eventually kill off the old pages, but it can definitely take a while.
canonical it to another page. and as Chris says, don't block the page or add extra directives. If you canonical the page (correctly), I find it usually drops out of the index fairly quickly after being crawled.
use the URL removal tool in webmaster tools + robots.txt or 404. So if you 404 a page or block it with robots.txt you can then go into webmaster tools and do a URL removal. This is NOT recommended though in most normal cases, as Google prefers this be for "emergencies".
The only method that removes pages within a day or two guaranteed is the URL removal tool.
I would also examine your site since it is new, for something that is causing additional pages to be generated and indexed. I see this a lot with ecommerce sites where they have lots of pagination, facets, sorting, etc and those can generate lots of other pages which get indexed.
Again, as Chris says, you want to be careful to not mix signals. Hope this all helps!
-Dan
First - I would noindex them with a robots meta noindex - and not use the robots.txt disallow. The whole point is to not have them in the index. The robots.txt will prevent crawling but not remove from the index. So noindex the archives and remove the robots.txt disallow.
Then - just wait. WMT data can take months to catch up. I would not worry about the data in WMT so much though if you know you've got the right settings.
-Dan
Hi Paolo
I think your best bet is to name the image file as accurately as you can, without intentionally trying to keyword stuff it. Name it something useful as if a person should get an idea of what the image is just by reading the name. And don't make it too long.
I'm not a complete image SEO expert - but here's some resources you should check out first;
Renaming every photo is not over-optimization if it makes it easier for the user. Like I said, just don't keyword stuff the name 
Hope this helps!
-Dan
Hi Shaun
Dan here, one of the Moz Associates - we're very sorry for the delay!
I've attached a screenshot of my own personal company site which uses the Yoast Plugin - just want to verify the code as seen here is what I would consider "correct" and best practice for WordPress pagination.
That code has not require any custom coding or anything. So either we need to get the Yoast settings correct, or something else may be interfering with Yoast.
Please first try going to: Yoast SEO->Titles/Meta and select "Noindex subpages of archives". This to my knowledge is the only setting that needs to be made to handle pagination correctly.
Let us know if that works - and again, apologies for the delay. Sometimes we have quite a backlog and don't pick up right away if the community has not appropriately answered a question.
Thanks!
-Dan
Hi Christopher
I think you all have this sorted out, but it's a common question (and I agree that WP is a little lacking here) - so I addressed it in my Mozinar a few months ago (pages 60-66 of the downlaodable slide deck).
But to sum up that section - your image linked options are;
I would also recommend using "noindex" for media in Yoast SEO.
-Dan
I would honestly write your titles mainly for humans. Personally I feel;
Post Name - Site Name
to be the best format.
-Dan
Hi There
This can be common with new sites. Google will test out it's rankings in the beginning to see how users respond etc - and then it may "settle" to a more normal ranking.
These small adjustments to on-page things like H1s (which is not a strong signal) etc are probably going to make very small differences. I would recommend looking at other factors such as back links, domain authority, local citations etc.
You can use the Moz Keyword Difficulty tool to gather lots of metrics around why certain sites rank where they do, and where you stand compared to those that are ranking.
Take a look though these link building strategies as well as GetListed for some help on the links and citations.
Hope that helps!
-Dan
I agree John this is the most user friendly way to do the redirects. The only thing I would add is - shut OFF the features which automatically adds redirects when you change URLs. It sounds like a nice feature, but it can get confusing because I found it to do them automatically a little too aggressively. Best to use the plugin but keep it on manual.
Anthony
There's a few ways to do this, and it does depend a little on the specifics of how the site is set up but the best (and easiest) may be to use the URL parameter settings in Webmaster Tools.
You're going to log into webmaster tools, go to configuration->URL Parameters - set it to NOT index things beyond the ? (this may be numbers 2 and beyond or it may be everything)
How is this set up though? Does the calendar "start" and "end" somewhere or is it going off infinitely in either direction?
The robots.txt file won't keep the page out of the index.
If you can let us know some more specifics that would be great!
-Dan
Hi Shaun
Yes in terms of keeping strictly to Google's guidelines, I agree that Yoast should in theory use either prev/next or canonical on subpages, but not both.
I am honestly not certain the settings it could be otherwise, as "subpages of archives" is the only one I know of that handles pagination.
Could there be another plugin or your theme (or custom coding in header.php) causing a conflict? One thing you can do is shut off other plugins one by one to diagnose. You can switch themes or switch to the default header.php file included with WordPress, but I (for obvious reasons) do NOT recommend doing that on a live website. I'm not sure if you have a testing environment.
Are you using a framework like Thesis or Genesis? Sometimes those can cause unexpected things to happen as well.
-Dan
Thanks for that! Just want to add for Courtney - if she uses Yoast SEO plugin, you can also edit .htaccess right in wordpress without having to FTP.
Hi Shulman
Definitely get familiar with the WordPress SEO guide I put together for Moz. It will cover all the basics including good settings for a starting point on any WordPress blogs.
To answer your question specifically;
First make sure you're using Yoast SEO
Then, it sounds like you need to "noindex subpages" - these are pages where the URL is /page/2/ /page/3/ etc. You make this setting in Yoast.
Secondly, set up title and description templates, also in Yoast. This is why some descriptions are empty. If you set up a template it will fill them automatically.
Hope this helps!
-Dan
Hi There
For all these cases above, this may be a situation where you've BOTH blocked these in robots.txt and added noindex tags. You can not block the directories in robots.txt and get them deindexed, because Google can not then crawl the URLs to see the noindex tag.
If this is the case, I would remove any disallows to /tag/ etc in robots.txt, allow Google to crawl the URLs to see the nodinex tags - wait a few weeks and see what happens.
As far as the URL removal not working, make sure you have the correct subdomain registered - www or non-www etc for the URLs you want removed.
If neither one of those is the issue, please write back so I can try to help you more with that. Google should noindex the pages in a week or two under normal situations. The other thing is, check the cache date of the pages. If the cache dates are prior to the date you added the noindex, Google might not have seen the noindex directives yet.
-Dan
Hey There
The post suggests keeping specific tags that are receiving traffic indexed. You can do this on a tag by tag basis with Yoast. The post also does not recommend deleting tags, just noindexing them.
I would suggest keeping tags that are bringing the most traffic indexed, while just noindexing the rest. Do not delete them. Out of your 1,000+ tags - how many are responsible for the 700+ visits?
There's also the option to 301 redirect tags to the most relevant post or category. But again, I would only do this with tags that aren't bringing substantial traffic.
-Dan
You likely have two because of the theme you're using. Noindex both tag sections.
Hi There
Should have explained better
if you type cache: in front of any web URL for example cache:apple.com you get;
And see the "cache" date? This is not the same as the crawl date, but it can give you a rough indication of how often Google might be looking at your pages.
So try that on some of your tag archives and if the cache date is say 4+ weeks ago maybe Google isn't looking at the site very often.
But it's odd they haven't been removed yet, especially with the URL removal tool - that tool usually only takes a day. Noindex tags usually only take a week or two.
Have you examined the source code to make sure it does in fact say "noindex" by the robots tag - or that there is not a conflicting duplicate robots noindex tag? Sometimes wordpress themes and plugins both try adding SEO tags and you can end up with duplicates.
-Dan