How to properly delete categories and tags

[Tehuti]

I'm a bit confused.

I want to delete a few categories and tags, and rename a couple of categories.

For the categories and tags that I delete, do I have to perform some kind of redirect to prevent getting a page-not-found error?

For the categories that I rename, do I have to perform some kind of redirect to prevent getting a page-not-found error?

What is the proper SEO-friendly way of deleting/renaming categories and tags?

Forgive my ignorance!

[Tehuti]

Anyone know how to delete/rename WordPress categories and tags in an SEO-friendly way? Do I not have to do a redirect?

[not2easy]

Because Categories and Tags are usually "duplicate content" (since they are only another way to see pages or posts, same as Archives) - the best practice AFAIK has been to have those Categories and Tags no-indexed so it would mean nothing to delete or rename them. If you have used them in a different way I would suggest that you redirect them wherever the new content will be. How are you managing your meta tags for pages and posts? What sitemaps do you submit? Those can tell you what steps to take in making changes.

[Tehuti]

Sorry for the late reply, not2easy!

I haven't used the categories and tags in different ways, so I presumed that it's safe to delete them, and I did.

Sorry, I don't know what you mean by managing meta tags. :-/

I haven't submitted any sitemaps. I have to look into this stuff!

Thank you very much for opening my eyes to this stuff!

[not2easy]

It might be helpful for you to learn more about the how and why of metatags that can make a difference in how your content is found by people. If it is left up to search engines to sort out which version is the "preferred" version it might not be the same as you prefer. I suggest this article by Yoast: [yoast.com...] as he offers a free plugin that is widely used and respected and it explains all about canonical value and how you can optimize your WordPress metatags and why it's a good idea. The free plugin can also help you to submit sitemaps.

[dougwilson]

Say you had categories big and huge and wanted to merge them, or just get rid of big: In settings > writing > set default category to huge. Go to categories and scroll down till you can confirm default category "huge". Delete big. All /big/posts/ will be /huge/posts/ and a redirect will be handled by WP

Don't know about tags as I don't use them.

If you want to redirect with apache you can add - RedirectMatch 301 ^/cat1/(.*)$ [wwwdotsitedotcom...] - to .htaccess