Comments on: Blog post tags vs keywords and tools to help

By: John Harding

John Harding — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 16:33:11 +0000

I use tags combined with the plugin ‘wordpress related posts’ which basically adds a list of tags to the bottom of each post which users can click to find related subjects.Handy to keep people on your blog, but also as i use keywords as tags this ensures my keyword is placed at the bottom of each post. As i understand it you need your keyword at the top of your post pref in a h1 tag, sprinkled through post and then again at bottom of post. (I don’t stuff my post with tags though, generally 1 to 3 tags per post)

By: Scott

Scott — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 18:06:57 +0000

Very true. Tags are for organizing and searching really.

By: ruth@search optimization resource

ruth@search optimization resource — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 06:29:38 +0000

Matt Cutts don’t admire tags – “Google and other engines know what your post is all about you dont have to add tons of tags to tell us what is your post about”. But still there are many bloggers abuse tags, thinking that tags replace their favorite keyword stuffing but there your hear it. From the fruitful mouth of Matt Cutts “Don’t waste so much of your time on tags”

By: scottwyden

scottwyden — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 01:27:37 +0000

Thanks for your input and your method of using post tags and keywords. For me I don't like to use the category in the URL because of two reasons. I don't like how it looks and more of my visitors come from Google than any other search engine.

I appreciate your comment!

By: scottwyden

scottwyden — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 22:24:57 +0000

Making adjustments to improve the site for readers is what is is all about so I totally understand.

By: D. Travis North

D. Travis North — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 22:22:26 +0000

I'll admit, I only did SEO for Google early on. And while Google still carries a bulk of my search-engine traffice, I still get a good 10-20% of my search engine traffic through Bing and Yahoo. That doesn't seem like a lot…but for me, that's as much as 1400 hits per week. So now I'm a believer.

By: D. Travis North

D. Travis North — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 19:53:46 +0000

If you do nothing to WordPress…just using a vanilla install…then you're right – tags (and even categories) do nothing. Categories help to some degree if the category slug is in your URL (slugs are important in that case)…but it's fair to say that in general, it doesn't help. Now…if you're using vanilla wordpress out of the box, then you aren't really getting the full benefit. I use an All In One SEO plugin that converts my tags and categories into meta tags. But even so, you should limit it to no more than 10 tags AND categories – the bots tend to ignore the rest and start to degrade your score.How do I use things? I generally organize my site with categories (think of them as departments). Then I will additionally add tags to cross-link between categories. For example, an article I did under the category "Learning", but it also tags like "black & white", "technique" and so on. Similarly, an article under the category "Inspiration" might also have "black & white" as a tag. That way…if the person wants to see more articles about black & white, they can simply click the tag.My internal tracking shows me that more people navigate internally through tags than through any other means. So it's worth considering. Side note, concerning SEO, you should consider adding category slugs directly into your URL. For google, it doesn't pick up too much SEO (assuming the category slug is also a meta tag). But for engines like Yahoo and Bing, it makes a difference. Dates in the URL are bad. But slugs are.