Adding Tags in the blog is good or bad?
-
Hi Friends,
In my blog I used to write unique content in between 300 to 450 words and add the related tags up to 15.
When I research about adding tags in the blog I come across this video from “Matt Cutts” says
Is it worth spending time on creating tags and categories?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A96yDPqa2rs
Key Points from Matt Cutts Video are given below:
- No Need Tags - In general, Google figure out what your post is about, so don't worry too much about it.
So my question is do I need to remove all tags from my blog or can I reduce the tag count to 5 alone?
Currently I am using 15 tags to each post, is there any dis-advantage by adding tags like this?
Let me know your suggestions?
Thanks
-
That's why tagging came into vogue but too often, it's overdone.
-
Many of my tags rank higher than my actual articles for particular keywords ... some even rank #1. Not sure what to do about that ...
-
As Chris and Houses have said, the focus should really be on what works for the readers of your blog.
In my experience, tags don't tend to work very well for people .As long as you've got good navigation, some well thought out categories and site search then this is enough.
The problems for search engines is that these tag pages can create lots of duplicate content if not implemented properly (just like categories). They'll also increase the number of links on a page.
If you want to surface related content, then in-line links to older content in proper context is better, and/or some related content listed at the bottom of the article can work.
It does depend on the goals for your blog pages through. Links to related content can decrease the number of comments that get left.
The question you need to ask is whether people using your tags? What does your analytics tell you? How many people are viewing tag pages and what are they doing next. How many people leave your site from a tag page, or a page following a tag page? Is this higher than normal?
If you're going to tag articles, don't just tag them because the article mentions you keyword. Try to think along the lines of "if I click on this tag, and look at this article, am I going to find what I expect". Try to think about topics of interest rather than keywords.
Fewer is better than lots. The more options you give people the more friction that causes - too many and people will just ignore it.
-
I would say tags are useful to readers to help them find more of your content on the same topic.
Unlike Chris, I have clicked on them but people use the web and websites in different ways.
If it's useful to readers then do it.
-
Tags should be used as a way to help your readers find your content more easily. You likely don't need to give your readers 15 ways to zero in on the content they might be interested in--5 is probably more than enough. Personally, I'm not sure I've ever clicked on any tags on a website's blog.
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
-
Are there detrimental effects of having multiple robot tags
Hi All, I came across some pages on our site that have multiple robot tags, but they have the same directives. Two are identical while one is for Google only. I know there aren't any real benefits from having it set up this way, but are there any detrimental effects such as slowing down the bots crawling these pages? name="googlebot" content="index, follow, noodp"/> Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | STP_SEO0 -
Duplicate content with tagging and categories
Hello, Moz is showing that a site has duplicate content - which appears to be because of tags and categories. It is a relatively new site, with only a few blog publications so far. This means that the same articles are displayed under a number of different tags and categories... Is this something I should worry about, or just wait until I have more content? The 'tag' and 'category' pages are not really pages I would expect or aim for anyone to find in google results anyway. Would be glad to here any advice / opinions on this Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | wearehappymedia1 -
Blog on server or embedded? Duplicate content?
Wondering what would be best in terms of SEO. Should I install some blog software actually on the website or can I just embed say a blogger.com blog? if I did that would they consider it duplicate content?
On-Page Optimization | | Superflys0 -
Wordpress blog duplicate issue
So after looking at the set up of the blog ive found this. http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/ http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/category/news/ http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/category/general/ http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/category/snow/ Content shown on http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/ can also be found on the other 3 urls. The permalink structure is set up as /%category%/%postname%/ which I want to change to just %postname% Obviously i want to make things as seo friendly as possible so any suggestions to do this right without losing any indexed pages etc. I have limited access to make changes to plugins etc aswell as these need to be done through the development company who manage our site. Cheers Robert
On-Page Optimization | | Trespass0 -
Blog Question
Hello! I try to add as much fresh content to my site weekly, I do also have a blog that I update 3 times per week. Will google crawl frequently if I am updating info on my wordpress hosted blog when my blog name is www.blog.mywebsite.com? and the sites name is www.mywebsite.com? Will they treat them as separate domains? Thank you!!
On-Page Optimization | | TP_Marketing0 -
How to ALT tag correctly many similar images?
scenario: I have a product page with some text about the product and 12-15 different images af the product: details, colours, different views... how should I name an alt tag them correctly, been them actually really similar? Is it keyword stuffing to use the same name containing a relevant keywords?
On-Page Optimization | | DavideM0 -
Canonical URL Tag
Hi, I have two pages that are identical on my site: http://www.absolutepower.nl/creatine-monohydraat and http://www.absolutepower.nl/CREATINE/creatine-monohydraat Should I use the canonical URL tag in this case? Thanks, Jasper
On-Page Optimization | | Japking0 -
Title tag questions
General title tag questions how important is it not to change your title tag, I own a prom dress site and I'm always changing them between prom and homecoming' Is it bad to have title tags that are only different by one word across thousands of pages on your site. I have thousands of dresses so each title tag only varies by the style # I have always had title tags that are for example black prom dresses, well i recently discovered that just black dresses is googled 10 times the amount so im debating changing them to black dresses so that the word dresses is closer to the front of the title tag, am I over reacting or is that a good idea or would it be bad to put black dresses, black prom dresses, black homecoming dresses I also put the year in almost every title tag 2012, is that bad, I ranked great for 2012 stuff but could it hurt my homepage domain rankings on major broader keywords
On-Page Optimization | | Dirty0