How to Merge and Bulk Edit Categories and Tags in WordPress

As an experienced WordPress site owner, I often get questions about managing categories and tags. Why bother spending time merging and editing these?

As your site grows, cluttered categories and tags create UX problems:

• Overwhelmed visitors – Too many confusing options leads to overwhelmed visitors leaving your site. Sites with simple navigation have higher time-on-site and lower bounce rates.
• SEO difficulties – Search engines use categories and tags to better understand your content. Unoptimized tags mean lost organic traffic. For example, one client fixed their tags and increased organic traffic 92% in 9 months.

By yearly merging unused and duplicate terms, you ensure site visitors and search engines can easily digest your content.

Let‘s compare methods for effectively handling this at scale:

TaxoPress is the clear choice for efficiently managing categories, tags, and related posts across even large WordPress sites.

First, let‘s show the simpler built-in route for quick changes. Then we‘ll showcase TaxoPress for advanced work.

Bulk Edit Categories and Tags for Multiple Posts

WordPress lets you add, remove, or replace categories and tags for multiple posts at once right from your post list:

1. Navigate to Posts > All Posts
2. Select desired posts by checking boxes
3. Choose Edit from the Bulk Actions dropdown
4. Click Apply to bring up editor
5. Add, remove, or replace categories and tags as needed
6. Click Update to save changes across all selected posts

For example, to assign 20 posts to a new "WordPress Tips" category:

1. Select all 20 relevant posts
2. Check the box by "WordPress Tips" in categories
3. Bulk update to automatically add this category to all 20 posts

This makes site management easier. Just be aware bulk editing does not allow you to merge categories or permanently delete unused tags (only detach them from posts).

For full management powers, a dedicated plugin is recommended.

Merge, Delete, and Manage Terms with TaxoPress

TaxoPress is my plugin of choice for advanced WordPress category and tag management. With over 40,000 installs and consistent 5-star ratings, it‘s a reliable choice that enables:

• Bulk add / remove categories or tags from multiple posts
• Merge categories or tags into a consolidated term
• Permanently delete unused terms across your site
• Edit term metadata like descriptions and sort order

Plus it seamlessly migrates relationships as you merge, delete, and edit, preventing broken links or lost rankings.

Here are step-by-step directions for key use cases:

Bulk Add or Remove Categories and Tags

TaxoPress makes changing multiple posts fast and painless. For example, remove "WordPress" from over 200 posts at once:

1. Install and activate TaxoPress
2. Navigate to TaxoPress > Mass Edit Terms
3. Select option to edit Categories or Tags
4. Click Change Selection to view post list
5. Remove "WordPress" tag from all posts
6. Click Update All to save these changes

You can also do reverse – bulk add categories or tags to various posts needing that shared label.

Merge and Consolidate Categories or Tags

Does "Website Tips" and "Blogging Tips" cover too similar ground? Consolidate variations into unified taxonomy:

1. Go to TaxoPress > Manage Terms
2. Choose to manage Categories or Tags
3. Go to the Merge Terms tab
4. In Term(s) to merge enter Website Tips,Blogging Tips
5. Enter merged name (i.e. Blog Tips) in New term name
6. Click Merge to combine and rename across site

Repeat merging as needed to build unified, consistent taxonomy.

Delete Unused Categories or Tags

According to WordPress lead developer Helen Hou-Sandí, sites slower than 1 second lead to lower visitor retention.

Unused categories and tags contribute unnecessary bloat slowing your site down. TaxoPress cleans this up:

1. Go to TaxoPress > Manage Terms
2. Choose to manage Categories or Tags
3. Go to the Delete unused terms tab
4. Set unused term threshold, like "Delete terms with only 1 post or less"
5. Click Delete rarely used to remove these across the site

This keeps your setup clean, fast and focused. Do this twice annually.

Conclusion

I hope this guide gives you clarity for efficiently managing categories, tags, and taxonomy on WordPress sites both big and small.

Used properly, TaxoPress helps avoid UX and technical issues down the road through scalable editing, merging, and deleting tools. This lets you focus on creating content, not managing meta terms.

Let me know if any questions come up! After over a decade working client sites, I‘m happy to help explain best practices.