How to Remove Archive Pages in WordPress (4 Easy Methods)

Archive pages, such as category or tag archives, are common features on WordPress websites. They help organize and group your posts, making it easier for visitors to find and browse through content.

However, not all websites benefit from these pages. Sometimes, they can clutter your site, create duplicate content, or lead users to outdated posts that you may not want to highlight. With over 16 years of experience helping WordPress beginners navigate these challenges, we’ve seen how this can affect a site’s SEO and overall user experience.

Removing archive pages might be a good option if you’re looking to simplify your site and improve navigation. By doing so, you can keep your website clean and user-friendly without sacrificing performance or SEO.

In this article, we’ll guide you through four easy methods for removing archive pages in WordPress.

What You Should Know About Removing Archive Pages

Have you ever noticed pages on your WordPress website listing older blog posts by month, category, or tag? These are called archive pages.

Archive pages automatically group your WordPress posts, which can be helpful for navigation.

However, there may be cases where you may need to remove archive pages.

For example, maybe these pages are creating duplicate content issues. Archives often display excerpts of content already available on individual WordPress posts, which search engines can flag as duplicate content.

Each type of archive page also uses a different URL that may display similar content based on a specific filter. This can unintentionally create multiple URLs whose content overlaps.

Or, maybe you have a category that isn’t used much or no longer makes sense. Deleting the category archive page can clean up your website.

Before actually removing these pages, though, there are some things you must know. Some users may use these pages to discover and bookmark old blog posts they are interested in. If you delete them, these users might have trouble finding those posts again.

From an SEO (search engine optimization) standpoint, deleting archive pages improperly can create broken links. This can frustrate visitors who land on these broken pages and hurt your website’s ranking in search results.

While WordPress doesn’t allow you to delete archive pages directly, there are workarounds you can do to manage them.

In this step-by-step guide, we will help you remove archive pages without harming your WordPress SEO. You can use these quick links to skip to your preferred method:

Let’s dive in and explore these methods to expand your site’s functionality.

Method 1: Noindex Archive Pages With AIOSEO (Recommended)

The first method is what we and many SEO experts recommend the most. Instead of removing the archive pages completely, it’s better to noindex them from search engines. This way, users can still find these pages on your website, but search engines won’t consider them.

John Mueller from Google was actually asked about this topic in a Q & A session one time. Here’s what he had to say:

You can remove the content of old things if you want to, [or] you can move them to an archive section. You can make those old pages noindex so that people can still go there when they’re visiting your website.

John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google

The easiest way to noindex archive pages is using a WordPress plugin like All in One SEO (AIOSEO). This method doesn’t require any code, making it beginner-friendly.

Plus, you get tons of other SEO features like an on-page content optimizer, an SEO audit checklist, schema markup support, and more.

First, you need to install the AIOSEO plugin. You can use the premium or free version, as both include the features needed to noindex archive pages.

For more information, you can check out our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin and how to set up AIOSEO correctly.

Option 1: Noindex Multiple Archive Pages

For this option, you can go to All in One SEO » Search Appearance. Then, navigate to the ‘Taxonomies’ tab.

In the ‘Categories’ section, go ahead and click ‘No’ in the ‘Show in Search Results’ setting.

You will then see this notification: “Your Categories will be noindexed and excluded from the sitemap so that search engines ignore them. You can still control how their page title looks like below.”

If you switch to the ‘Advanced’ tab, you will see that the default settings have been disabled.

The ‘No Index’ checkbox should have also been ticked in the ‘Robots Meta’ Settings.

You can then scroll down to noindex your archive tag pages and other custom taxonomies you have.

Once done, just click ‘Save Changes’ at the top left corner.

To noindex date and author archive pages, you’ll need to switch to the ‘Archives’ tab.

You will see options to noindex the author and date pages.

Like before, simply click ‘No’ in the ‘Show Search Results’ setting and repeat the same step for the date archives page below.

With that done, go ahead and hit the ‘Save Changes’ button at the top.

Option 2: Noindex Specific Archive Pages (Taxonomies Only)

This option is for noindexing only specific archive pages. For example, maybe you have only one outdated category page that you would like search engines to not include on results pages, but you want the rest of your category pages to still be indexed.

What you need to do is open the category, tag, or custom taxonomy page on the front end of your website. Then, you’ll click ‘Edit Category’ on the top admin bar, like in the screenshot below.

This will open the category or tag editor. Here, just scroll down to the ‘AIOSEO Settings’ section and switch to the ‘Advanced’ tab.

In ‘Robots Settings,’ you’ll need to disable the ‘Use Default Settings’ option and tick the ‘No Index’ box.

After that, just click ‘Update.’

Unfortunately, AIOSEO doesn’t have a feature to noindex specific, non-taxonomy archive pages yet. Thankfully, there’s still an easy way to do that using the method below.

Method 2: Noindex Archive Pages With Code (For Specific Non-Taxonomy Pages)

If you want to noindex non-taxonomy archive pages, you will need to add a custom code snippet to your website, specifically your WordPress theme’s functions.php file.

If this process sounds intimidating, don’t worry. The safest way you can add code to WordPress is by using WPCode, the best code snippet plugin on the market.

This plugin makes it easy to insert custom code without directly dealing with your theme files, so you’re less likely to break your website. Plus, your custom code won’t get overwritten when you update your theme, so your noindex code will stay in place.

First, let’s install and activate WPCode. Both the free version and the premium version will work fine for this tutorial, though the premium version comes with a special mode to safely test your code before it goes live.

For more information, you can check out our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Next, you’ll want to go to Code Snippets » + Add Snippet. Then, you can select ‘Add Your Custom Code (New Snippet)’ and click ‘Use snippet.’

Now, go ahead and give your new snippet a name. It can be something as simple as ‘Noindex Archive Pages.’

Then, you’ll want to make sure the Code Type is ‘HTML Snippet.’

In the ‘Code Preview’ box, copy and paste the following code:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

This code is a robots meta tag specifically designed to instruct search engines not to index a particular web page.

Once done, you can scroll down to the ‘Insertion’ section.

From here, you’ll want to make sure the ‘Insert Method’ is ‘Auto Insert’ and the ‘Location’ is ‘Site Wide Header.’

Let’s move down the page again to the ‘Smart Conditional Logic’ section.

What you want to do is activate the ‘Enable Logic’ setting.

As for the ‘Conditions,’ you’ll need to select ‘Show’ and choose ‘Page URL’ and ‘Is.’ You can then insert the URL of the specific archive page that you want to noindex in the last field.

Feel free to click ‘AND’ to add more pages to noindex.

Once done, it’s time to make the code ‘Active’ and click ‘Save Snippet.’

That’s it. To see if your page was successfully noindexed, you can open the archive page and view its page source.

If you use Chrome, then you will need to right-click anywhere on the page and click ‘View Page Source.’

Now, you can press ‘Control/Command + F’ on your keyboard to bring up a search bar and type in ‘noindex.’ It should highlight the noindex tag you added earlier.

If it exists between the <head> and </head> tags, then you have added the code properly.

Method 3: Redirect Archive Pages to Avoid Broken Links

Let’s say you’ve decided that removing certain archive pages from your WordPress blog is the best course of action. But you’re worried about broken links or frustrated visitors who might still try to access them. This can happen if someone has bookmarked an older archive page on your website.

What you can do is redirect the archive pages using a redirect plugin instead. This way, visitors who land on those old links won’t see an error message.

First, install and activate AIOSEO on WordPress. You can read our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin for more instructions.

Then, go to All in One SEO » Redirects.

In the ‘Redirects’ tab, you’ll need to insert the ‘Source URL’ (your archive page) and ‘Target URL’ (the page you want to redirect users to).

We recommend picking a page that aligns with what visitors might be looking for when they land on the old archive page.

For instance, say you have a software review website and want to redirect a category archive for a discontinued platform. A good target URL could be a recent post you wrote explaining why the software is no longer available.

This way, visitors get helpful information even though the original archive page is gone.

Alternatively, you can redirect the user to the homepage.

Below, you’ll then need to choose a ‘Redirect Type.’ You can use ‘301 Moved Permanently’ if you want the target page to be the new permanent home for visitors who used to access the archive page.

Once done, just click ‘Add Redirect.’

Now, go ahead and open your old archive page. If you land on the target page URL, the redirection is successful.

For more information, you can check out our beginner’s guide to creating 301 redirects in WordPress.

Method 4: Remove Archive Pages With a Plugin (For Non-Blog Sites)

Perhaps your WordPress website doesn’t have a blog, and archive pages don’t add value to your site. If that’s the case, then this method is for you.

You will need to install the Smart Archive Page Remove plugin, which will make it easy to remove the archive pages from your WordPress site.

First, install and activate the WordPress plugin in your admin area. If you need help, then you can see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you can go to Settings » Archive Pages.

Next, you’ll need to select which archive pages you’d like to delete and click on the toggle buttons. Once done, just click ‘Save Changes.’

When you go to your archive page, you should see a 404 error that says the page is not found.

Alternative: Create Custom Archive Pages

Instead of removing archive pages entirely, consider creating custom archive pages. This gives you more control over how the pages look and function, offering a better user experience for visitors.

If your archive page is easy to navigate, users will find it useful and stay on your website longer. In turn, you can increase your pageviews and reduce your bounce rate, and search engines will see this as a sign that users are liking your website.

The easiest way to create a custom archives page is with SeedProd. This drag-and-drop page builder has tons of templates and building blocks to design a user-friendly archives page that people find helpful.

Here are some tips to improve your archive pages:

• Include a custom search form to help users filter through the content list.
• Showcase your most popular content from the archive to keep visitors engaged.
• If you have specific custom post types (like recipes), try creating and organizing archive pages for these posts for easier navigation.
• Display your archive pages in the sidebar or navigation menu so that users can easily access them when needed.

We hope this article helped you learn how to remove archive pages in WordPress. You may also want to check out our article on how to add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress and our expert proven tips to increase your blog traffic.

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