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
-
Google search returns blog homepage, but not article
When I do a google search for a specific article on our blog the search results only return the blog homepage with the article title shown in the meta description, but never the actual article page. I've tried to refine my search by using site: and quotation marks around the article title (e.g site:www.example.com "article title") but still only get the homepage. Our blog is showing up so I assume it's not an indexing issue, but not sure how to get the article pages to show on serps. Any ideas? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | STP_SEO0 -
Titling and H1 Tag Question
What to do if you have hundreds of thousands of a particular product. Comic Books for example. Is it ok to have the words Comic Book in the title and H1 tag as long as it is qualified? For example, if I have the following as both the Title tag and the H1 tag. Comic Book - Spider Man Versus Wolverine Comic Book - Silver Surfer Goes Home to Visit Mom. Comic Book - Superman Gets a New Kitten Comic Book - Wonder Woman is More Wonderful Than You Know As of now, I have been doing it this way, but only in the title tag. However, Google has been using my H1 tag as my title, so in the search results, I am only getting: "Superman Gets a New Kitten" And I am afraid that that is leaving out important info for searchers, especially qualifying that the product is a Comic Book and if someone is searching for a Comic Book, I need that to return. But I don't want any 'more' trouble from the Panda. Again, this will be hundreds of thousands of products. Thanks for your help! Craig
On-Page Optimization | | TheCraig0 -
Rel canonical tag on a single page site?
I have a wordpress theme site which essentially is all in 1 page. Do I need to use rel-canonical tag? It would just loop?
On-Page Optimization | | graftene0 -
How to handle long dynamic meta tags?
Hi All, I have a site that has upwards of 40 000 pages and I'm redeveloping it so really want to get some SEO elements spot on for the new development. Hoe do I go about handling the following: The user creates a title for their advert which I use as the meta title. The problem is titles are quite often longer that the accepted lengths. How should I handle this? String manipulation down to the desired size, leave it as is or is there another solution? The meta descriptionn is pulled from a summary they created as part of their profile. Is this the right way to do it? Any advice would be appreciated. Ross
On-Page Optimization | | Mulith0 -
Changing Link Title Tags & Backlinks
On 4/19/12 I began changing the link title tags in an effort to further optimize my website. I thought they were excessively long and it would be beneficial to make them more concise. On 4/26/12 my website traffic began to fall drastically and I'm not sure if it is from google's penguin update or from changing the link title tags. I started looking into the sudden drop of traffic and realized that when I run the site explorer tool on all of the pages I changed, the URL is redirecting. It appears that the backlinks are not passing through to the new URL. Before I Changed the Link Title Tag: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm **After I Changed the Link Title Tag: ** http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm So my questions are: The above example shows that the old title tag (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 43 backlinks and the new one (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professiona-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 0. Will the links eventually be attributed to the new URL. I understand that the user will still be directed to my website they click the any of the backlinks, but will the link juice pointing the old URL pass through the new one? Would it be better, in the long run, to continue optimizing the link title tags.
On-Page Optimization | | BeautyStop0 -
Title Tag length and UTF-8
Hello seomozers! Today I've come to one interesting question about Title Tag lenght in UTF-8 coded content. It's relevant to description tag lenght too. So, as we all know SEO best practices recommend that my Title tag should be under 70 (or 75) characters. Now, we have a website which is UTF-8 coded. That means that our special characters (some lithuanian letters) at the end gains +4 or +5 characters in length. So Google Webmaster Tools in our case report that some Title Tags are longer than they should be (exceeded by those +4 or +5), but in SERPs we see clear and not trunctated Title Tags (which means that our title tags are displayed correctly in UTF-8). The question is - should I believe in SERPs and don't take any action or maybe should I notice Google Webmaster Tools recommendations and shorten those tags ? Well, I do believe that at the end it's not so important, but I'd like to hear some more opinions on this simple situation.
On-Page Optimization | | jkundrotas0 -
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