When (my) keywords like "tag" are in the top ten?

[dougwilson]

cleaning up keywords in google index... when keywords like tag are in the top ten

The index in question concerns a static site I made for someone. Static, in that it doesn't change much, no blog, nothing new in content... What it does have is a photo gallery... and because of the urls in that gallery the keyword Tag is, I think, third on the list...

url looks roughly like: site/directory/tag/image

Obviously this is not wanted, so...

I know how to get rid of them using robots.txt... I could also change the word tag to something but I really don't want to do that... I thought I'd ask people who've more experience and see if I could learn some alternatives... I can't think of any

[aakk9999]

cleaning up keywords in google index... when keywords like tag are in the top ten

I am not entirely clear what you mean by this. Are you referring to Google Webmaster Tools section that lists the most common keywords on your site or to something else?

[not2easy]

Looks like a WordPress question because if not prevented, those /tag/ URLs are added to your sitemaps. The /tag/ taxonomy is used to help posts and pages be more easily found using the WP Search function, but I have seen many sites use Tags for keyword stuffing abuses.

Personally I use the Yoast SEO tool to build my sitemaps because it allows me to no-index those URLs and not list them in my sitemap. They exist, but as they are noindexed I don't care if they get crawled. The pages and posts with /tag/ URLs have a canonical link to the preferred URL. Blocking them in robots.txt and listing them in your sitemaps is not the preferred fix.

[dougwilson]

Yes - Google WMT

No wp... Gallery3 (photo gallery)

Is this "...no-index those URLs" done in <a rel="noindex, or the like?

[not2easy]

No index is a metatag, but it can be sent via header where that makes more sense. The meta tag (goes in the header) is:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

[phranque]

i assume you are referring to the Content Keywords page in GWT.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35255 [support.google.com]:

The Content Keywords page lists the most significant keywords and their variants Google found when crawling your site.
...

The significance of each keyword reflects how often it's found on your site's pages. Click each keyword to see a sampling of pages on which it appears. Both keywords and their variants are listed in order of frequency of appearance.

in other words, it might not just be your "tag" pages that cause these keywords to show up in this list.

[aakk9999]

To be honest, if the "tag" appears in the keywords list on the Content Keywords page of GWT just because your page has "Tag:" (or similar) wording then I would not worry about this. Keywords list is very crude and the Content Keywords page of GWT has been known to be buggy.

For example, last year we had the report of "sorry" and "imagery" being the most common keywords on a site that extensively used Google Maps.

Strange WMT Content Keyword
May 19, 2013
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4575433.htm [webmasterworld.com]

What you should do is check that the URLs with /tag/ are not indexed. This on the other hand may cause problems.

[Robert Charlton]

I'd worry more about using a lot of tags. A common myth is that tag pages are user-friendly... but they're not friendly if there are a lot of empty tags. Empty tags cause users to waste time navigating to them and finding no useful content.

If I used tags, I'd limit their quantity and add descriptive text at the top. I think you're much better off, though, with well thought out category pages.

[dougwilson]

Okay, that's a lot of good input and thanks for all of it...

I think if I want them gone I'll have to manually go in and yank them out... didn't want to because I figure google will go on a two year 404 fiesta...

They got there by adding a caption, description, to photo... I didn't realize they were tags, which I avoid... So thanks, I may just leave it the way it is... I doubt it would change traffic click through

If I find anything worth posting for other people using the Gallery3 I'll do that

Thanks again

[Robert Charlton]

I didn't realize they were tags, which I avoid

Maybe they aren't. I just made that assumption.

But there are systems that include images in tag pages, which is perhaps one of the worst of all kinds of tag pages I can imagine.

[dougwilson]

"...systems that include images in tag pages"

I think this is probable... and it's this type of automatic stuff that makes me hesitant to go in to the program for the fix...

[Robert Charlton]

Don't worry about the 404s for pages you remove. Try to use 410s instead of 404s if you can.

If you can't disable these, I'd consider dumping the program. At the least, you should use meta robots noindex to keep these largely empty tag pages out of the serps. You'll still have the problem of frustrated users often navigating to nowhere, though.