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In late 2019, I started systematically tagging posts on my niche sites.
Over the years, I’d add the odd tag here and there but it was so random and inconsistent that I might as well not have.
I’m not sure why I never bothered.
At a minimum, a well-tagged site, especially one with a decent amount of content, helps visitors navigate a site.
Tag clicks result in more page views. More page views equal more ad revenue (generally). You’d think an ad guy like me would jump all over tagging.
I’ve used categories, but never tags.
Yeah, go ahead and say it. I know you are thinking about it.
How could you not tag properly? What is this amateur hour?
I agree. Mea culpa. Another big miss on my part.
It’s all good though.
I don’t mind having not tagged all these years because I’m enjoying doing it now. It’s a new pet project that I’m excited about.
Besides, as usual, I am able to crank out a blog post for ya as a result. Win/win.
Benefits of tagging
1. User experience (aka more page views which is more money… in theory): UX is a euphemism for more money.
Which reminds me, I finally have a tagline for my site.
How’d I gone from Tags to tagline? Back to Tags and tagging.
Tags offer more navigation options for visitors to learn more or find more of what they want. You enjoy more page views.
Your visitor has a better chance of finding more of what they want It’s a win/win.
That one reason alone is worth tagging.
But wait, there’s more!!!
Below are 2 unforeseen benefits of tagging that I’m getting a lot out of.
2. Get more article ideas (fill in the gaps):
When you have well-planned taxonomies (categories and especially tags), you can quickly see areas (topics) that need more articles. For example, if one tag has only 3 articles, there could be opportunities there. This is helpful when a site grows into hundreds or thousands of articles.
3. Interlinking opportunities:
Once you assign most or all post tags, it becomes really easy to interlink your site thoroughly. You can interlink via categories and tags.
What’s even better is once you have well-organized taxonomies at this stage, you can easily train a VA to go in and interlink all posts with the same tag.
Go to the “Tags” dashboard and in the right column is a list of numbers. Those numbers indicate how many posts have that tag. Click the number and you’ll see all the posts with that tag.
Your VA simply goes into each article and interlinks it all together.
Note, if you have 60 articles with the same tag, I probably wouldn’t interlink all 60. I’d restrict interlinking to groups that are tightly connected.
Let’s back up in case you’re new to this blogging gig
SEO, RPM, CTR, SERPs, IM, EPMV – sometimes I assume people know all this stuff, but I should know better. Once upon a time, I didn’t know what hosting, SEO, WordPress, etc. were. We all start knowing nothing.
So back to basics.
What is tagging?
Tags are taxonomies. They are another way to organize vast amounts of content. Categories are the main topics. Tags offer another categorization dimension. Here’s an example.
Niche: Cars
Decent categories: Luxury, Sedans, SUVs, Crossovers, Minivans, Pickup Trucks, Electric and Sports Cars.
Possible Tags:
• Red, White, Blue… all colors
• Toyota, Volvo, Mercedes… all brands
When should you start tagging posts?
You can start right away or wait until you have a sizeable batch of content If you have a clear plan for your site, you can probably set out good tags right off the bat. If not, it might be good to wait until your site is filled out.
The advantage of having plenty of content is it’s more clear what your tags should be. With my thousands of articles, it’s not that hard to choose decent tags and then apply them to multiple articles quickly.
Can you tag pages (as opposed to posts) in Word Press?
By default, Word Press won’t permit you to tag or categorize pages. However, as the old saying goes, there is a plugin for that.”
I use Ninja Pages plugin to add the ability to add categories and tags to pages.
How many tags should you create?
There is no magic number. It will depend on your site and how you want to go about it. There is merit in being very liberal with tagging. In other words, you might want to have hundreds or thousands of tags for nuanced navigation.
For now, I’m taking a different approach. Pm carefully chooses tags and creates them only when I have 3+ articles for any particular tag. This results in not all that many tags compared to other sites of a similar size. Over time, however, my list of tags will grow.
Indexing Tag archives
By default, Yoast Plugin noindexes tag archives, which keeps them out of Google. The reason for this is many SEOs consider tag archives as thin content – usually, because you can quickly end up with dozens or hundreds of tag archive pages.
What I’m about to tell you next is highly controversial in SEO circles. Most SEO information recommends keeping tag archives noindexed.
I take a different approach. I actually index my tags. Note that I only create a tag if I have at least 3 posts to it so that each tag archive has some post excerpts.
I want to make it very clear that I could be making a big mistake doing this SEO-wise. By indexing tag archives, you are indexing a lot of arguably thin content (especially if you have dozens or hundreds of tags).
Make the decision to index tag archives very, very carefully.
There are two ways to index tag archives.
The first option is for individual tag archive pages which are done as follows：
The other method is for all tag archives which is done as follows：
Go to the Taxonomies area in Yoast:
Toggle indexing on as follows：
More tagging tips
1. Review your tags regularly
It’s a good idea to review your list of tags regularly, especially if you have other people working on your site. Ifs easy, when tagging a post, to inject the wrong word or input a singular when normally it’s plural. You want to keep your tag list clean and accurate.
2. Avoid bad tagging practices
Bad tagging (IMO) is being inconsistent, random, or way too one-off about it. I avoid tagging if I don’t expect to add more than at least a few applicable articles. However, if I suspect I may expand on a topic, 111 tag it with that topic. Sometimes it’s a judgment call.
I’m sure some people disagree with me and are very liberal with tagging. I may get more liberal as time goes on but for now, I’m taking it slow and steady.
3. Add tag links at the bottom of your posts
I display the list of tags for posts both at the top and bottom of posts. Most themes only display at the top by default
However, you can ask your theme developer for the code snippet necessary to display the tags and then use Adlnserter plugin to place it below your content The code snippet will be PHP, which you can convert to a usable shortcode with the Insert PHP Code Snippet plugin. You can also do this with categories.
4. If you delete or change a tag URL slug, redirect it
Tag management will require deleting and changing Tag URL slugs. This is fine as long as you add a redirect I use the Yoast Premium SEO plugin which creates redirects automatically when a URL slug is changed. If you don’t want to pay for the plugin, you can create a redirect manually.
If you delete a tag, you can either serve the 404 error page or redirect it to something relevant.
5. Outsource tag management at your own risk
I’ve issued all VAs instructions that they are not to create or add tags. I find too many mistakes are made. Since it doesn’t take long to tag a couple of new articles each day, I do it. I’m not saying it can’t be outsourced… but if that is what you do, review their work to ensure you do not end up with hundreds or thousands of useless tags (along with tags with spelling errors).
6. Maintain a list of potential tags
I have a growing list of potential tags. These are topics on my site that I have only one or two articles on that tag topic. I maintain the list for more article topics to cover and once published, I can create a new tag.
