Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI
      Moz Local

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. On-Page Optimization
    4. Do Blog Tags affect SEO at all anymore?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Do Blog Tags affect SEO at all anymore?

    On-Page Optimization
    6
    13
    8385
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • davidkaralisjr
      davidkaralisjr last edited by

      We're trying to standardize the use of tags on our site amongst writers/editors, and I'm trying to come up a list of tags they can choose from to tag posts with - and telling them to use no more than 10 (absolute maximum) per post. We are also in the process of migrating to a new CMS, and have 8 defined categories that will all have their own landing page within our "News" section.

      TLDR:

      Do blog tags have any impact on SEO anymore? Are they solely meant to help users find articles related on popular topics, or does creating a tag for a popular topic help to improve organic visibility?

      Full Question:

      With the tag standardization, I want to make sure we're creating the most useful and effective tags; and the UX/SEO sides of my brain are conflicted. To my understanding, creating a tag about a high volume topic in an industry helps establish the website's relevance to Google/other search engines about that topic and improves overall relevance; but the tag feed page (ex: http://freshome.com/tag/home-protection/) isn't really meant for organic search visibility. So my other question is, is it worth it to noindex the tag pages in the robots.txt? Will that affect any benefit to increased relevance for Google (if there is any)?

      I'm interested to hear others' thoughts and suggestions.

      Thanks in advance!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • davidkaralisjr
        davidkaralisjr @davebuts last edited by

        I think our news section is beginning to fall into the "is this too big to not run the risk of duplicate content with tags" category - so that makes sense to me. And that's great you saw the organic search traffic increase; my guess it that it lessens any "dilution" of targeting from having too many similar pages.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • davidkaralisjr
          davidkaralisjr @netzkern_AG last edited by

          I tend to use the subcategories/categories for the standalone "hub" pages on a topic, rather than the tag pages. And I agree that it's important to not have too many uses/not enough uses of a tag, which is really where the need for standardization comes into play.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • davidkaralisjr
            davidkaralisjr @DmitriiK last edited by

            I agree, I think it needs to be a nice blend of UX/SEO in the tagging (like most things) - use the insights from search to inform what users are interested in, but also frame them to make for the best UX.

            Also, I tend to agree with you on the 10 being too many - but the nature of a lot of our articles leads to the need for multiple tags (state, city, etc.) since we publish a lot on laws/policies/regulations that happen in an area, and it also relates to other tags we use across the board. It's all a balance 🙂

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • davidkaralisjr
              davidkaralisjr @JamesNorquay last edited by

              Thanks for that visual! It breaks it down the differences pretty nicely.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • DmitriiK
                DmitriiK @davebuts last edited by

                Crawl resources could be managed through priority use in sitemaps.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • davebuts
                  davebuts last edited by

                  Hi Netzkern,

                  It actually sounds like you agree with me! 🙂

                  The way you are talking about 'tags' is how most people tend to use categories and sub-categories. I agree that categories and sub-categories are fine (if they have sufficient content, like you said).

                  Generally, with 'tags', you don't need to be overly strategic with how you use them - they are usually only there for users to find more closely related content on your site (more specific than what the categories or sub-categories offer).

                  My general advice is to "noindex" tags and never use them to try and grow your organic traffic.

                  Cheers,

                  David

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • DmitriiK
                    DmitriiK @DmitriiK last edited by

                    After reading all the comments below, it somewhat all goes back to what I was trying to say - tags can help with SEO, but typically don't. Keeping them SEO unfriendly whatsoever might be not the best idea. Noindexing them might help with crawling resources and duplicate content, but not always.

                    davidkaralisjr 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • netzkern_AG
                      netzkern_AG Subscriber last edited by

                      I'd have to disagree with David, strongly so.

                      But then it is probably a matter of what "tag page" means for you and what you do with your tag pages!

                      Is a tag just something you slap on articles and stuff to simply have all a page that merely displays them all? Well yeah, then I'd tend towards noindex. I'd also wonder how many people really use a tagging like that - and have a use for it.

                      Personally I favour the other approach where tag pages are made into a page that can stand alone, for example giving a general overview over a topic and then listing the tagged articles for more specialised content. (Yes, you need a certain minimum of articles for tags to be useful at all ... and too many of one tag is probably also a warning sign of over-specialisation.) Of course this is not possible with every website and organisation. I have found, though, that such "hub pages" work exceptionally well for more generic than long term searches.

                      TL;DR: The importance and treatment of tags and tag pages largely depends on how you define their role.

                      Nico

                      davidkaralisjr 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Andy.Drinkwater
                        Andy.Drinkwater last edited by

                        Another vote for noindexing tags.

                        They serve very little (no real) benefit for SEO and cause more headaches than anything else. I never really want to see tags indexing and competing with primary internal pages that actually carry the information I want people to find.

                        Use them, but just don't index them.

                        -Andy

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • JamesNorquay
                          JamesNorquay last edited by

                          I would No Index TAG pages on your blog/website. The SEO benefit from these tags is limited the userbility benefit is evident.

                          Using tag pages is still not a bad idea as they can help with fine tuning your category level targeting.

                          Also the attached image is a great example to compare the two from this post - https://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success

                          categories-vs-tags(1).png

                          davidkaralisjr 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • davebuts
                            davebuts last edited by

                            Hi David,

                            I have to disagree with Dmitrii a bit here.

                            I would say the answer to your question depends on the size of your site and how many articles and tags you are talking about - on bigger sites with more tags, they can become quite an issue.

                            On a big-ish news site that I own and run (14,000+ articles), I added "noindex" to all tag pages (2,000+) and then blocked them in robots.txt a few months later (once Google had crawled and removed them all from index).

                            The reason for removing and blocking them for search engines is that tag pages generally don't offer anything unique or of substantial value when compared to other pages on your site site, and they can also use up a lot of your "crawl budget".

                            For the site mentioned, I saw around a 30% organic traffic increase after implementing these changes.

                            The tags are still there for users, but they are not visible to search engines and means that search engines are now only crawling pages that we want indexed and ranking, instead of wasting their time crawling thousands of links to thousands of tag pages.

                            Basically, don't think of tags as a way to "help your SEO" because they probably won't and they have the potential to do the opposite.

                            If you think creating a particular tag will help you get long-tail traffic, write an article about that topic instead! I guarantee you it will perform a lot better than a tag page.

                            Cheers,

                            David

                            DmitriiK davidkaralisjr 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 2
                            • DmitriiK
                              DmitriiK last edited by

                              Hi there.

                              Well, one thing is for sure - do not block tags in robots.txt. That won't help anyhow for sure.

                              As for organic rankings - at the last company I worked for, I've seen some instances when tag page was ranking for a longer tail keyphrase. So, I would keep tags somewhat SEO friendly. But, as you said, main reason for tags nowadays is UX. Therefore I approach it this way - UX/navigational help first, but, if possible, also make tag SEO friendly. Also 10 tags is too many to my opinion. I believe that recommendations are 2-3 tags, maybe 4, but over that is a murder.

                              Hope this helps 🙂

                              DmitriiK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                              • 1 / 1
                              • First post
                                Last post

                              Got a burning SEO question?

                              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                              Start my free trial


                              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.

                              • See all categories

                              Related Questions

                              • Vspeed

                                Anchor Tag around a Div

                                Just Curious if this is an SEO No-No! I have set up the box to do some cool SEO transitions but am curious if I am loosing on a signifigant amount of internal linking considering anchor text or if Google recognizes the h2 as anchor text. Thanks. [ Article Title Article Synopsis Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.](internal-page.html)

                                On-Page Optimization | | Vspeed
                                0
                              • Shalin.TJ

                                Tags vs. Categories? What should I use?

                                I'm starting with a blog (self-hosted wordpress) and I'm thinking of the following content structure so that the readers are easily able to locate relevant content: Background: It's a blog which gives people relevant info about government jobs. To start with we will just be publishing information about these jobs but over a period of time also intend to post content that helps readers prepare for these jobs. In other words, right now it's just about detailed job notifications but in the coming months, we shall also post about preparation-related information. Typically, each of the job notifications can be bifurcated like: Jobs basis industry Banking Railways Clinical, etc. Jobs basis company ABC co. DEF co. XYZ co. etc. Jobs basis State / City City 1 City 2, etc. Jobs basis educational qualification Graduation Post-Graduation, etc. Now, I'm seriously confused how should I structure this data from the perspective of Categories & Tags such that it's reader as well as SEO-friendly. Do note that each of the government jobs post ideally falls in a couple of above mentioned categories. Thanks..

                                On-Page Optimization | | Shalin.TJ
                                0
                              • GRIP-SEO

                                How will it effect SEO to have multiple h1 tags on a page?

                                I have a client who recieved this advice from his marketing consultant: "If there are multiple h1 tags on a page, this can confuse Google and it may have a negative impact on the keyword rankings. If you could ask your web developer to go in and remove the h1 tags on the header images that would be helpful. This way it will be easier for Google to index your site and will help your keyword rankings." How will it effect SEO to have multiple h1 tags on a page?

                                On-Page Optimization | | GRIP-SEO
                                0
                              • JohnHuynh

                                Does the link title attribute benefit seo?

                                Hello, Anyone could tell me the benefit SEO of link title attribute. Is **Link Title **ranking factor? Thanks

                                On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh
                                0
                              • CKerr

                                Trying to SEO a site that used Header Tags for Design

                                I am trying to SEO a website that was built years ago and uses Header tags for design.  The site must have 25 and tags used for design purpose. Is there any way to work around this problem?  Perhaps a code that tells Google to ignore these as Headers?  The web designers say that they are looking to fix the problem sometime this summer but you never know if that means it a month away or years away.  I really want to help this website but I believe that the Header tags are one of the reasons that his site does not show in the top 100  rankings for any keywords.  Any help would be great. www.wallybuysell.com Chris.K

                                On-Page Optimization | | CKerr
                                0
                              • Amosnet

                                Do images on a CDN affect my Google Ranking?

                                I have recently switched my images to a CDN (MaxCDN) and all of the images within my post are now get loaded directly from the CDN. Will this affect my Google ranking? Do Google care if the image is hosted physicaly on the domain?

                                On-Page Optimization | | Amosnet
                                0
                              • PHDAustralia68

                                Missing meta descriptions on indexed pages, portfolio, tags, author and archive pages. I am using SEO all in one, any advice?

                                I am having a few problems that I can't seem to work out.....I am fairly new to this and can't seem to work out the following: Any help would be greatly appreciated 🙂 1. I am missing alot of meta description tags. I have installed "All in One SEO" but there seems to be no options to add meta descriptions in portfolio posts. I have also written meta descriptions for 'tags' and whilst I can see them in WP they don't seem to be activated. 2. The blog has pages indexed by WP- called Part 2 (/page/2), Part 3 (/page/3) etc. How do I solve this issue of meta descriptions and indexed pages? 3. There is also a page for myself, the author, that has multiple indexes for all the blog posts I have written, and I can't edit these archives to add meta descriptions. This also applies to the month archives for the blog. 4. Also, SEOmoz tells me that I have too many links on my blog page (also indexed) and their consequent tags. This also applies to the author pages (myself ). How do I fix this? Thanks for your help 🙂 Regards Nadia

                                On-Page Optimization | | PHDAustralia68
                                0
                              • travelclickseo

                                H1 tag in the footer?

                                Quick question: I have been scouring SEOMoz.org along with webmaster forums looking for an answer, but we have a person who insists that the H1 tag be located in the Footer. I feel that is is fundamentally wrong because it is not the intent of the H1 tag, and I do not believe it is a best practice. That being said would we see what little value the H1 tag has disappear if we put it in the footer, would we be penalized, or am I being too vanilla by wanting to keep it in the Title position?

                                On-Page Optimization | | travelclickseo
                                0

                              Get started with Moz Pro!

                              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                              Start my free trial
                              Products
                              • Moz Pro
                              • Moz Local
                              • Moz API
                              • Moz Data
                              • STAT
                              • Product Updates
                              Moz Solutions
                              • SMB Solutions
                              • Agency Solutions
                              • Enterprise Solutions
                              • Digital Marketers
                              Free SEO Tools
                              • Domain Authority Checker
                              • Link Explorer
                              • Keyword Explorer
                              • Competitive Research
                              • Brand Authority Checker
                              • Local Citation Checker
                              • MozBar Extension
                              • MozCast
                              Resources
                              • Blog
                              • SEO Learning Center
                              • Help Hub
                              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                              • How-to Guides
                              • Moz Academy
                              • API Docs
                              About Moz
                              • About
                              • Team
                              • Careers
                              • Contact
                              Why Moz
                              • Case Studies
                              • Testimonials
                              Get Involved
                              • Become an Affiliate
                              • MozCon
                              • Webinars
                              • Practical Marketer Series
                              • MozPod
                              Connect with us

                              Contact the Help team

                              Join our newsletter
                              Moz logo
                              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                              • Accessibility
                              • Terms of Use
                              • Privacy

                              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.