How to remove "tag" from a URL?

Good morning everyone

So, that's been quite some time that I'm facing this issue, and I've searched a lot without any real result. And the problem is that Google displays some of my websites' articles with one of their relevant keywords on the title instead of the real title, and because of this, the URL changes from "mywebsite.com/article" to "RelevantKeywordInUglyFormat.com/tag/article". Can you please tell me how I can prevent this from happening? In some forums, they suggested using this code "<meta name="robots" content="noodp,noydir" />"; however, this latter didn't prevent Google from messing with my lovely pages.

I'm searching for this because Ahrefs site audit detects them as pages with low word count, and therefore, Google will not rank them. That's mean instead of ranking one page with plenty of relevant keywords, google try to rank some keyword separately.

Didou said:

And the problem is that Google displays some of my websites' articles with one of their relevant keywords on the title instead of the real title, and because of this, the URL changes from "mywebsite.com/article" to "RelevantKeywordInUglyFormat.com/tag/article".

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Not sure if I get you correctly. What does the URL have to do with the title? It's quite common for Google to change your title to whatever the bot seems fit. But, how does that change your URL?

I don't understand either. Do you mean your site is for example. greatcars.com and you have article greatcars.com/top-10-supercars

And in google it shows as: top10supercars.com/toplists/top-10-supercars ?

paraztos said:

I don't understand either. Do you mean your site is for example. greatcars.com and you have article greatcars.com/top-10-supercars

And in google it shows as: top10supercars.com/toplists/top-10-supercars ?

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If that's the case, then there's surely an issue with the permalinks. They atleast need to be redirected to the preferred URLs.

Gogol said:

Not sure if I get you correctly. What does the URL have to do with the title? It's quite common for Google to change your title to whatever the bot seems fit. But, how does that change your URL?

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paraztos said:

I don't understand either. Do you mean your site is for example. greatcars.com and you have article greatcars.com/top-10-supercars

And in google it shows as: top10supercars.com/toplists/top-10-supercars ?

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Let's take @paraztos URL as an example.

So, what google does to the URL is that it changes it from "greatcars.com/top-10-supercars" to "greatcars.com/tag/top-10-supercars, and therefore, when someone will click on this URL, he will also have to click on the article since it will not send him directly to the targetted article. Also, when this happens, google also change the title from the "Original one" to "one of the relevant keyword for that post" but the problem is that it displays it in an ugly format, and therefore, there is a huge chance that it will decrease the CTR.

Gogol said:

If that's the case, then there's surely an issue with the permalinks. They atleast need to be redirected to the preferred URLs.

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How I can fix this, please?

Do u use wordpress? In YOAST Seo you can set your tag and category pages to noindex. Also check out if your permalink is set up for posts: domain.com/article

The permalink is on "Mywebsite.com/sample-post/

Didou said:

How I can fix this, please?

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You could do this

paraztos said:

Do u use wordpress? In YOAST Seo you can set your tag and category pages to noindex. Also check out if your permalink is set up for posts: domain.com/article

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Or, you could redirect those pages to your article page using htaccess or nginx config, depending on the server you have.

IMO (I am not an SEO expert though), the tag pages are totally worthless. Atleast noindex them.

Didou said:

The permalink is on "Mywebsite.com/sample-post/

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Then the bot is picking up the wrong URL. You are trying to rank for the article page, but the bot is picking up the tag page.

Gogol said:

You could do this


Or, you could redirect those pages to your article page using htaccess or nginx config, depending on the server you have.

IMO (I am not an SEO expert though), the tag pages are totally worthless. Atleast noindex them.


Then the bot is picking up the wrong URL. You are trying to rank for the article page, but the bot is picking up the tag page.

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Which solution do you recommend the most for this problem, please?

Didou said:

Which solution do you recommend the most for this problem, please?

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The one @paraztos mentioned is the easiest, and requires no programming skills. htaccess/nginx config redirects can be hard to get right.

I personally noindex all TAG and Category pages. If they are already in google index, then It might take a while to disappear from the search

My first site had a similar issue, google was always finding my tags and not my articles

If you're using Rankmath then you can prevent tag (& category) pages from indexing.
You'll find the settings in the 'Misc Pages' option.

Ok i found the option on the Yoast SEO plugin, i will disable both Categories and Tags

Thank you very much, guys, for your help. I really appreciate it

paraztos said:

I personally noindex all TAG and Category pages. If they are already in google index, then It might take a while to disappear from the search

My first site had a similar issue, google was always finding my tags and not my articles

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How long do you think it's going to take before Google changes all the "tags" to the original "title", please?

I have seen all replies if this thread and after checking all expert's things I want to say that yes Google re-writes Title as per user query so you have to write a unique Title to each page so that Google doesn't re-write Titles and pick your written Title.

JinxerCraft said:

If you're using Rankmath then you can prevent tag (& category) pages from indexing.
You'll find the settings in the 'Misc Pages' option.

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Just thought I would add something to this. As for noindexing the category page:
The category page can have custom excerpt (for each category that is) if you are using WP (as far as I can remember. Even if not, there has to be a plugin that does it). So, it doesn't necessarily have to be thin/duplicate content, and thus be noindexed.

p.s. Not sure if that's called excerpt, or category description. Haven't touched wp for a long time lol.

Didou said:

How long do you think it's going to take before Google changes all the "tags" to the original "title", please?

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Honestly no idea. On my site I did this about a month ago.

Still if I do site:mysite.com my tags pages show up. Not sure if it's google cache or whatever, but in SERP results in GSC, I now get no results for TAGs.

Also: I got a lot off coverage errors before, as I've tried to fix it several ways, after around 2 weeks of setting it up in YOAST, coverage errors went away.

I see. Thank you very much for your help.