Clean up WordPress tag pages eating your index

Clean up WordPress tag pages eating your index
Client had 600 tag archives, most with one post, all indexed and thin. The cleanup:
— Pull the tag list, count posts per tag — anything under 5 posts is dead weight
— Delete one-off tags entirely (merge the post into a real tag or category)
— Noindex the remaining thin tag archives, keep the 5-10 strong ones indexable
— For strong tags, add a sentence of intro copy so they're not pure lists
— Remove dead tag URLs from the sitemap, 301 deleted ones to the parent category
— Watch coverage drop the thin tags over a few weeks
Six hundred thin pages down to twelve real topic hubs. Crawl budget went to actual content.
Don't noindex category pages by reflex — those usually earn; it's the auto-generated tags that are junk.