Tags in wordpress -Important?
-
Hello,
I use the Wordpress plataform in my blog. What I want to ask is, how important is the tag field in the posts area.
Since I have the title tag and meta description how important is that field?
Its really a question that was in my mind since I start doing SEO
Tks in advance guys
-
Well tks for the aswers guys.
I reach to the conclusion that those tags are not a huge important factor for SEO. I will remove them since I have no porpuses for them in my website
Tks for the help guys
-
I've been curious about this question myself and your post prompted me to do a little research. I'm not sure I've reached a ironclad conclusion yet but here's a little of what I found. First there are mixed opinions about the value. A SEO for WordPress presentation @ San Francisco in 2011 by Sujan Patel indicated that using tags weren't worth the potential broken link and duplicate content hassles (see slide 15 of his PPT).
In another opinion I came across, "attaching tags to each content asset, article or post does very little for the SEO (search engine optimization) of any singular article on a B2B blog or website. Used properly, however, content tagging makes your blog or website much better.
The author goes on to say "the SEO value of tags (as well as categories) is not in the association of keywords with a particular article or content asset (as many believe), but instead in the aggregated content that appears on the tag/category page that most CMS platforms generate automatically."
A third article flatly stated "Tags add specificity to your blog posts that help both search engines and visitors find relevant information on your webpage." My takeaway is tags are good for the user if used relevantly and not gratuitously (e.g. keyword stuffing). That seems to mesh with Google's mantra about writing for the user.
-
Hey Pedro,
This really depends on what you want to do with your site, and how you want to deliver the content to your readers.
The tags are generally used to help people find articles that interest them (by searching or clicking the tags, etc.) so they are an important usability feature for a lot of blogs. But they can create a bit of duplicate content if they are allowed to run rampant.
Because you can place tags with more/less specificity, you can give a much better description to each post. So if your site is about "SEO" you may have a post that goes into the "beginning SEO" category. But the post is about title tags. So you would give that post the tags of "title tags, meta tags, on-page seo" etc. depending on how your site is organized.
So you see how they allow you to place just a bit more info so you can tell your visitors what the post is all about.
The reason you hear about them so much in the SEO arena is due to their ability to grossly inflate the number of your pages on your site with content that is duplicated elsewhere.
If you have that same post and tagged the way I described, you now have the same/very similar content on the archive pages for each of the tags you assigned to it. This is usually handled by either blocking the search engines from indexing those pages, or creating canonical pages appropriately.
There's a really good plugin to make this a non-issue by Joost de Valk, but before you download and start setting it up, you might want to also read his WP SEO article.
The Article:
http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/
The Plugin:
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can I use £ character in title tag?
Hi - Can you use something like "save £££s" in the title tag. Have looked but can't see an answer. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | StevieD0 -
Use of trademarks in tags and text
Does Google spider read registered trademarks (the 'R' or 'TM') or do these marks impede anything if they are featured in meta tags or text?
On-Page Optimization | | KnutDSvendsen0 -
Should we add our company's name in page title tag or not?
We have been adding our company (Townscript) name in all the page titles. For example, in an event page of Lucknow Conclave: www.townscript.com/lucknowconclave the page title is Lucknow Conclave | Alexis Society | Townscript I read somewhere that it's not necessary to put your company's name in the title tag. Is it right? Please help!
On-Page Optimization | | sanchitmalik0 -
Help: my WordPress Blog generates too many onpage links and duplicate content
I have a WordPress Blog since November last year (so I'm pretty new to WordPress) and the effects on ranking for some keywords are really good. So I thought tag clouds are good. Crawl Diagnostics tell me now that I have too many onpage links for example my author page breaks the record: 256
On-Page Optimization | | inlinear
http://inlinear.com/blog/author/inlinear/ I think thats because there are links for each word in the tag cloud generated ... On this page (and many other pages) WordPress displays (teasers) the beginning of each post (read more ...) producing duplicate content and even new canonical tags.... The page titles are also too long because I installed "All in One SEO Pack" and now this plugin and wordpress itself mixes titles together ... But what can I do to avoid all this. Is there a PlugIn that can help... I think millions of blogs will have the same problems... I my blog yet has very few content. Thanks for your answers :))0 -
How to add canonical tag
Hi, I read through many of the forum questions dealing with the overly dynamic URLS and I think I understand. Please let me know if I know what I am talking about: If SEO moz is saying I have 20 pages (mostly search and home/index pages) with overly dynamic urls, I would go to the that particular page and add the following code between the head tag: This code would cause Google to go to this page instead of the following duplicate index pages: 1. http://www.about-sports-collectibles.com/index.php?pcsid=0a83aa7119cf3d80a1d018634ec4ec94&p 2. http://www.about-sports-collectibles.com/index.php?pcsid=18b220fc62628b013a51c6f26209df50&p There are a total of about 8 of these index pages. The problem is that I can't figure out where I would access each of these duplicate pages to add the canonical tag. There is only one home page with coding. As far as the search pages are concerned, I would not want Google to follow those pages would I? If that is the case, what would be the best code to add between the tags? For instance here are a couple of the overly-dynamic URL pages for the search pages: 1. http://www.about-sports-collectibles.com/index.php?p=catalog&mode=search&search_in=all&search_str= 2. http://www.about-sports-collectibles.com/index.php?pcsid=50354d5791e627dc2be6c86528154a5e&p=catalog&mode=search I hope I am not overwhelming anyone with my questions. I really am trying to get a handle on how Ll this stuff works. Thanks so much the help. Don
On-Page Optimization | | ge01734001 -
Keywords vs Tags In Wordpress
Whats the difference between Keywords vs Tags In Wordpress? Also sine meta keywords don't matter in a website do they matter on a blog?
On-Page Optimization | | splashmedia0 -
Canonical tag help
Hi, We have a product which is marketed by affiliates . Affiliates send referrals to our sale page by adding their affiliate IDs to our product page like http://www.mysite.com/products.php?ref= 12345. We want to avoid the content duplication impression to Google by using canonical tags but we are not clear about its use. Should we use it on http://www.mysite.com/products.php ( actual page) or we should create temporary pages for each referral id i.e http://www.mysite.com/products.php?ref= 12345 and then add canonical tags to all those pages linking to proper page i.e http://www.mysite.com/products.php ? Thanks, shaz
On-Page Optimization | | shaz_lhr0 -
Confused about meta tags.
(Ok, this might be a stupid question.) I am a little confused about the best practice for the Meta Tag. I know they don't have a real effect on ranking. But I am getting "mixed signals" as to their general use. I've pasted the 2 examples of below that are confusing me. From my Campaign's Crawl Diagnostics: (I have missing Meta Tags) "Meta description tags, while not important to search engine rankings, are extremely important in gaining user click-through from search engine result pages (SERPs). These short paragraphs are the webmaster's opportunity to advertise content to searchers and let them know exactly what the given page has with regard to what they're looking for" From The Keyword Optimization Tool: (Avoid Using Meta Keyword Tool) "Search engines have, for years, ignored the meta keywords tag as a ranking signal. Although it technically does not harm rankings, it can be used by competitors as a method to extract your targeted terms and thus, we recommend against its use. " I would love to hear opinions on this topic. I am trying to decide wether or not to use unique meta tags on every blog post.
On-Page Optimization | | NerdsOnCall0