Post tagging is essential part of every blog. Tags allow bloggers to structure the content by categories, point to readers what this post is about and significantly facilitate site search. But in the era of well-built and attractively designed sites post tags looked like a rudiment of the blogging epoch: some webmasters use them as a rule of habit, other simply ignore WordPress tags, and only few use all benefits of post tagging. Posts differ from Pages in WordPress not only by categorization and publication date, they still have tags that help search engines to “label” your content correctly. Tags do work and can be a reason of a great traffic to your website. Real world case and few tips on how to use tags correctly are below.
Improve Traffic to Your Website with Post Tagging
From the first glance it may seem fantastic, but tags can get even more traffic that the respective page they are tagged with. A single tag, even used once for labeling only one post, can rank better than the post. Why? The reason is in short and keyword rich slug: when posts usually have long URLs copied by the titles, tag is a keyword-label that does not contain the fluffy part. Tags aggregate the value of posts they label, productng additional fictional long pages on your site. For instance, you’ve tagged 3 posts with a tag “beautiful design”, tag post in this case will be triple longer than each of your post and have a tiny slug /tag/beautiful-design/. WordPress themes even use the feature of tags to structure content and organize its display: in a popular 2014 WordPress theme slider is composed based on the featured posts you tag with the keyword of your choice.
How to Use Tags Correctly
To get more value from your tagged blog posts (keep it mind: it’s a feature of posts, not pages) follow these simple rules:
- keep the tags short. Don’t overuse the tags making the whole title of your post as a tag - use keywords instead. Short tags improve user’s experience and usually have more demand than long-tail rarely used keywords.
- repeat the tags. Don’t make every post labeled with unique tags, reinforce their value creating several posts that use the same tag.
- showcase your tags. If there is still a place for a tag cloud on your website - make sure it’s displayed. In such a way you will create additional internal links to the tags. Some webmasters also set tag display off which is a negative seo practice.
- link to your tags. As every page and posts on your site, tags should be also linked to from other internal pages and posts.
Tagging your blog posts and writing SEO blog posts are easy things when you have keyword research completed. Usually keywords can be effectively used in form of tags, unless you use long tail suggestions in every post.
Need help with content planning and tagging? Ask our experts to help you out - we provide custom keyword research for free!
