What Are Post Tags & Why You Should Be Using Them

by Ana on February 1, 2011 · 84 comments · Blogging

This is a guest post by Ana Hoffman of Traffic Generation Cafe.

I can’t believe it’s taking me so long to look into the topic of tags and how they can benefit our blogs. To be quite honest, I’ve been clueless on whether to use them or not to begin with or how to use them properly. Judging by the guest posts submissions I get and the tagging used in those posts, looks like I am not alone.

So, the questions of this post:

what are tags?
what benefit they bring?
how to use them the right way.

What Are Tags?

A tag is simply a label or a keyword you assign to your post.

Are they the same as keywords? Yes and no.

Your tags COULD be the same as your keywords, but you can dig much deeper with your tags whereas you are limited with your post keywords to whatever feels natural to the reader. You should still optimize your posts for your chosen keywords.

When you add tags to a post (you do that in the “edit” mode in the right-hand column of your WP dashboard), you are basically telling your blog to automatically create new pages based on those tags.

Take a look at the image below; these are some of the tags I am thinking of assigning to this post:

blogging tags image

So, in addition to creating a page for this post, my blog will automatically create 3 additional pages titled “what are tags“, “blogging tags“, and “keyword research“.

Should you bother using tags?

My main problem with tags was the fear of duplicate content.

Contrary to popular belief, duplicate content is not syndicating the same article to several directories. Duplicate content happens when Google finds different paths to the same content on your site.

For instance, the same post on your blog can be accessed via the main post page, category, archives – by month, day, year, whatever, etc. We the readers understand that it’s still the same article and have no problem finding it different ways.

However, to the search engines that’s the definition of the duplicate content.

Getting back to tags now. In my uneducated and unresearched opinion, tags would simply create yet another path to the same content.

Wrong!

What are the benefits of using tags?

When you use tags, you instantly create new pages for your blog that are fully indexable, searchable, and rankable. In other words, you create additional content that can bring search engine visitors.

The magic really happens when you start using the same tags over and over again. This way, you start sending more and more link juice to the tag pages, thus potentially increase their importance as far as search engines are concerned and hopefully get them ranked higher.

Let me also remind you that all of this happens behind the scenes without your active participation. All YOU need to do is to add proper tags to each post.

Tips to Make the Most of Your Tags

1. Research your tags like you would any keyword. What’s the point of ranking on search engines for something no one is searching for?

2. Use the same tags consistently.

3. Avoid duplicate content issues by displaying excerpts on your archive pages instead of full posts. You really want to give your readers just a hint of the content and direct them back to the original posts.

To accomplish that, open your archive.php of your theme and replace the_content with the_excerpt.

4. Track your tag performance.

Thanks to Google Analytics, it’s free and easy, and you have no excuse to not do it. Here are the instruction on how to set up your tracking.

From your dashboard, click on “Advanced Segments” in the left sidebar, then “Create New Custom Segment“.

track tags google analytics

Find “Landing page” in the drop-down menu under Dimensions => Content, and drag and drop it to the right.

Set condition to “Contains” and value to “/tag/“(WordPress default for tags).

analytics tag tracking image

You will also need to name your segment (“Tags” would be appropriate) and you are all set.

Now in order to check on your traffic from tags from your dashboard, all you do is click on “Advanced Segments” in your top right corner this time, check “Tags” segment and click “Apply“.

tags tracking in analytics

This is what you will see as a result:

tags results graph

As you can see from the graph, my tag traffic (orange line) is absolutely flat, since I haven’t paid any attention to tags in the past.

That’s all about to change now though.

Marketing Takeaway

Start using your tags the smart way today. Not much else to say. Unless you want to eat some hay. What do you say?

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{ 82 comments }

Tom from Jobs At Sea February 1, 2011 at 12:35 am

I’ve found that when used properly, Tags can be a fantastic source of additional traffic source. I hadn’t thought about the duplicate content problem though (so thanks for the except fix).

What are you thoughts on auto tag plugins? Do you use them?

Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 2, 2011 at 5:49 pm

Hi, Tom – no, I don’t use autotag plugins. The whole point of using tags effectively is to make sure your are using the right tags that can bring more website traffic.

Autotagging is anything but targeted.
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Tom from Jobs At Sea February 2, 2011 at 6:13 pm

But the whole point of auto tags is that they give you a list of tags as a starting point. I’m not saying that you post your article without reviewing the tags – but it gives you a great place to start (and some tags you might not have through of).

I personally use an auto tag plugin, but remove quite a few and add my own additional tags before I finally approve my post.

Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 7, 2011 at 12:26 am: I see your point, Tom, but it usually doesn’t take me more than a minute or two to come up with a few tags for any posts – it’s easier for me personally to do it that way.
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Brankica Twitter: liveurlove February 1, 2011 at 1:11 am

I am so gonna do this in Analytics now (1 AM here).

I was thinking about this indexing thing and turned my tags to nofollow. Why? Because some of my tags are the same as categories. I know it is a different looking URL but I wasn’t sure about this.

Ana, would you advise me on this? Should I un-nofollow (lol) my tags and what if one or two of them are the same as categories.
I can’t imagine changing all those URLs and messing up my links….again.

Thanks for the tutorial.
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 2, 2011 at 5:55 pm: Don’t think too much about it, Brankica.

No-following your tags doesn’t solve duplicate content issue; noindexing does. However, noindexing defeats the purpose of creating more pages with tags.

So I wouldn’t worry about it; I would think that even if the names are the same, your category and tag pages would still produce different results.

What are you doing staying up so late anyway?
Ana @ Traffic Generation recently posted..Can a minute of your time and a camera help you get more traffic Ask Flickr

Sire Twitter: AussieSire February 1, 2011 at 1:57 am

Hey Ana, you sure do get around, not bad for a shiela

Thanks for opening my eyes as I never really knew what they were there for. I always assumed them to be another form of keywords.

Still being a bloke we usually tend to play around with things when they’re staring us in the face and so I’ve always made use of the post tags.
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 2, 2011 at 5:58 pm: I suppose I do get around, don’t I, Sire?

Glad you’ve been using tags just because they are there – sometimes I wish I could do something just because it’s there without needing to know WHY it’s there.

My best.
Ana @ Traffic Generation recently posted..How to Use Your RSS Feed to Turn Junk into Treasure

papalogic Twitter: papalogic February 1, 2011 at 1:59 am

Ana – very insightful guest post! Learned lots of new things.

I consistently use tags on my posts, but did not know about the Google Analytics customizations you mention. On that note, once you set it up, is it on a go-forward basis only or does it look retroactively as well?

It’s amazing how powerful Google Analytics can be. I clearly don’t use it to its full potential and I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only one (rather, one of many).

Thanks for the step by step explanation with screenshots as support. Those are always the most helpful.

Nice to discover Traffic Generation Cafe as well!

papalogic
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 2, 2011 at 6:01 pm: We are very welcome and saw you made it over to my blog!

To answer your question: once you set up your segment tracking, you’ll see the results retrospectively, which is a great thing. Google Analytics rocks!
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Moosa Hemani Twitter: mmhemani February 1, 2011 at 2:29 am

WOW! Ana awesome article… never really though of tracking the tags performance… Thanks for the hint!!
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 2, 2011 at 10:26 pm: You are very welcome, Moosa!
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Farnoosh Twitter: prolificliving February 1, 2011 at 5:19 am

Ooh I am so glad to read this, Ana, because I have spent countless hours optimizing tags on my site over the last year or so. I was almost shocked when you mentioned the possible problem with Google finding it duplicate content….glad that’s not the case and I had no idea about Google Analytic set up. Great and useful post, thanks Ana!
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 2, 2011 at 10:29 pm: You are so very welcome, Farnoosh – glad I could add to your to-do list!
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Marbella February 1, 2011 at 6:45 am

Hi Ana,
As normal do you write good articles; to using tags is one very important for the SEO in a blog or site. Don’t be afraid to have 15 or 25 tags on every article, so long they are 100% relevant to the text.

Ana from Blog Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 1, 2011 at 10:39 am: Thanks, Marbella, and I agree – you can have quite a few relevant tags on each post; it can only benefit.
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John February 1, 2011 at 8:42 am

Hey Ana,

I think this post might be the most detailed post I have read on tags. I always knew it was beneficial for me to use tags but I didn’t know for exactly what though. Thanks for the tips on using excerpts on my archive pages to avoid duplicate content. I also like the idea of using Google Analytics to track my tag performance. Great post Ana, I learned a lot.
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 1, 2011 at 10:33 am: That’s exactly why I started doing the research on tags, John – I realized I had no idea what purpose they served.

And now we both know.

Ana
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Andreas Twitter: linknami February 1, 2011 at 9:12 am

Tags label a blog post within a category so that the reader can find certain posts faster than browsing the whole category archive. Also it enables the blog author to inter-link blog posts between different categories.

Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 1, 2011 at 10:30 am: I agree with your points, Andreas; however, I doubt it that tags are used much by the readers – from all the research I’ve read.

I would use them with search engines in mind.

Ana
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Donace from hostgator promo February 1, 2011 at 9:21 am

I used to have loads of tags; since I jumped in a month ago I’ve cleaned up all the tags and reduced them to some odd 30 or so I have used to use often. Trying to re setup the tags and get them ranking
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 2, 2011 at 10:31 pm: That’s exactly what I am focused on as well, Don – quality and rankings. There’s no point in doing it otherwise.

Ana
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John Soares Twitter: TheJohnSoares February 1, 2011 at 10:18 am

Ana, excellent info here! I do try to be consistent with tags, but I haven’t done the advanced tracking with analytics.

In addition to my main blog for freelance writers, I also write a hiking blog. I’ve found that I actually make page 1 of Google for a few tags, and also for some categories.

I’m going to follow your advice here and apply it as best as I can. And I’m headed to my Wordpress dashboard right now to see how Thesis handles tags.
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Ana from Increase Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 1, 2011 at 10:36 am

Glad to hear you are getting actual results with tags, John – goes to show how beneficial a little work put into this could be.

Ana
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Ari Herzog February 11, 2011 at 1:39 pm

Ditto on never thinking about tracking tags (or categories, which I also added as a segment). In fact, despite using Google Analytics, I’ve never ever clicked the “Advanced Segments” link. Lots of options there. Is there a guide somewhere (outside of Google), Ana?
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Ana from Get Targeted Web Traffic Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe March 5, 2011 at 12:19 pm: Ari, I could’ve sworn I answered your comment, because I remember looking up the info you asked for. I guess it got lost in the neverland of Kristi’s spam folder.

Here’s a great and overwhelming resource: http://www.grokdotcom.com/2009/02/16/the-missing-google-analytics-manual/

Ana
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Rhys February 1, 2011 at 10:40 am

Massive proponent of using tags. I ranked for a searchable (if not particularly competitive) phrase on page 1 in Google with the tag phrase, which was handy as immediately they had access to fresh content.

Didn’t know about the Google Analytics trick. Nifty.
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 2, 2011 at 10:38 pm: Awesome, Rhys – I am starting to use my tags the smart way now; look forward to better rankings!

Ana
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Karen Twitter: BlazingMinds February 1, 2011 at 10:45 am

I went through a stage of wondering about my tags and the duplicate content problem, but I never stopped using tags and with the advent of the live Google search I’ve been adding “long tail” tags instead of single words, which does help with the SERPs, I’ve also found that using something like Zemanta, helps with choosing a good selection of tags
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 2, 2011 at 10:43 pm: To be quite honest with you, I’ve never been a big fan of Zemanta, Karen, but never thought of it as a “tag tool”.

Ana
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Udegbunam Chukwudi February 1, 2011 at 11:48 am

While we are on the issue of duplicate content, you should also activate nofollow on your tag links with this plugin: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/add-relnofollow-wp_tag_cloud#post-651553
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 2, 2011 at 10:48 pm

I am not sure why you would use NoFollow on tags, Udegbanum, since the main goal for doing tags is to get them ranked on search engines and it’s really hard to do if you refuse to give them a “vote” even within your own content.

The post you referred to talks specifically about tag clouds, which is not at all what we are discussing. I am actually against displaying tag clouds on a blog.

Ana
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Udegbunam Chukwudi from Patchwork Of Tips February 3, 2011 at 5:00 am

I use All In SEO plugin which has no provsion for adding no index to tag pages so my best bet to prevent the whole duplicate content thingy is to add nofollow to the tag links.

I added the tags on my blog to increase the keyword weight and help in getting better Google adsense ads.
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Udegbunam Chukwudi from Patchwork Of Tips February 3, 2011 at 11:38 am

I had to add nofollow to the tags because my intention was to use it to increase the keyword density on my pages and not increase the number of indexed pages on my site. I was also kinda scared that duplicate content issues would arise from the use of tags.
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 7, 2011 at 12:30 am

I see your point, Udegbuman, but once again, nofollow doesn’t prevent the search engine indexing your tag pages.

By the way, keyword density has no affect on your rankings.
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Udegbunam Chukwudi from Patchwork Of Tips February 7, 2011 at 7:44 am: OMG now that you mention it, it NEVER occurred to me despite the fact that I knew nofollow wasn’t a way pf directing the search engines not to index a post.

Most folks say keyword density has no influence on search engine rankings but in my opinion, ever since I started the whole business of tagging my posts, SE rankings have improved in a way. Maybe it’s just a coincidence anyway
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Dennis Edell from Direct Sales Marketing Twitter: DennisEdell February 1, 2011 at 12:43 pm

Finally! I’ve personally been wondering on tags for years with no straight answers that made sense. Although the one thing everyone agreed on was NOT too many tags per post, for what it’s worth.
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 2, 2011 at 10:50 pm: So glad I could clear it up for you, Dennis!
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Mavis Nong from Attraction Marketing Twitter: MavisNong February 1, 2011 at 1:17 pm

Hey Ana,

I’m so glad that I decided to pay Kristi a visit today, otherwise I would have missed out on your insightful post!

Thanks for shedding some light on tags – I always thought they were just keywords. How many should you use per post? Is there a limit?

All the best,
Mavis
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 7, 2011 at 12:32 am: No limit per se, Mavis, but I wouldn’t go wild about it either.

I usually stick to up to 10 per post; I know many people so a whole lot more than that.
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Kyle from Finally Fast February 1, 2011 at 3:15 pm

There is actually no reason to fear tag pages as duplicate content. Most current blog software automatically enters what is called the “canonical” link element to the main page URL in the header of the source code. This lets Google (and Bing and Yahoo! too) know that the main page is the original source of any material linked to elsewhere on your site. It’s a very useful element/tag.
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 4, 2011 at 2:39 am: Very well said, Kyle, I couldn’t agree more.
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Keith from Bizhax February 1, 2011 at 5:17 pm

I could be wrong (that never happens!) but my understanding of duplicate content does NOT include excerpts which is what you will find on archive, category and tag pages… If that is true, then there is no need to worry about what Google indexes (some people hide tag and category pages from being indexed).
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 7, 2011 at 12:36 am: That is very true, Keith, and that’s exactly what I said in my post.

And by the way, not all themes automatically use excerpts for their tag pages.
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Angela Artemis February 1, 2011 at 8:05 pm

Anna,
I’m still a bit confused between categories and tags. I’ve been using only categories for the last year. Do you think that my ranking in Google has suffered because of that? I will begin using both categories and tags and make sure they differ from one another from now on.

Also, where do you find the Google ranking screen. You said to “go to your dashboard.” Sorry, to be dense, but which dashboard?

Thank you so much for sharing this with us.
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 7, 2011 at 12:42 am: Categories and tags are two entirely different things, Angela.

You were absolutely right to have categories on your blog and you should continue to do so.

Tags are a good addition, but mostly not for users, since very few users use tags, but mostly to make your blog “bigger”, meaning to add more pages to it, which search engines like.

By “dashboard” I meant when you log in to your Google Analytics account, what you see is your dashboard.
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chiropractic marketing February 1, 2011 at 8:45 pm

Many blog systems allow authors to add free-form tags to a post, along with (or instead of) placing the post into categories. For example, a post may display that it has been tagged with baseball and tickets. Each of those tags is usually a web link leading to an index page listing all of the posts associated with that tag. The blog may have a sidebar listing all the tags in use on that blog, with each tag leading to an index page. To reclassify a post, an author edits its list of tags. All connections between posts are automatically tracked and updated by the blog software; there is no need to relocate the page within a complex hierarchy of categories.

Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 7, 2011 at 12:43 am: Sounded like a complicated way of saying what I just said in the post.
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John Garrett Twitter: johngarrettx February 1, 2011 at 9:49 pm

I learned the hard way about using tags. I was strictly categories for the longest time, but then I realized I was missing out on a great way to sort and relate the articles to one another, so I went back and added all the tags.

Luckily I wasn’t too far in yet. Anyway I just implemented the GA Tags segment so I’m looking forward to seeing what results I can see in my stats. Thanks much!
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 4, 2011 at 2:44 am: Hi John, I’m looking forward to seeing great results for you
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Alex February 1, 2011 at 10:02 pm

What do I say?
I can live by the bay, make things out of clay, what do you say?

Tag that as a ‘Happy Gilmore quote’ as I know that is searched for a lot – and there you have your first tag visitor

No, wait – this is Kristi’s Blog – D’OH!

Great Post Ana – one of the best on Tags that I have read I have to say – and something that I will be linking to whenever I reference the blasted things in future.

Thanks Kristi for having Ana – not that you could ever say no to that face

Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 2, 2011 at 6:04 pm: Ahh…. You know “Happy Gilmore”, Alex…

Yes, I am a sucker for brainless movies and have a tendency to quote them a lot. Nice to know you are digging it.

And thanks for the compliment, Alex – always my pleasure.
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Antonio del Drago February 2, 2011 at 12:25 am

You’ve really given me something to think about.

I had avoided using tags because, well, they seemed redundant. I also was under the impression that I could be penalized for “duplicate content.” Google’s mysterious ways can make us a little paranoid sometimes.

What hadn’t occurred to me is that Tag pages are building more content. And as we know, content attracts search engines. Hmmm…

Also, is there a maximum length for the excerpts on the tag pages? In other words, if the excerpts are too long, will that somehow anger the Google duplicate content demon?

Thanks!
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 7, 2011 at 12:46 am: I don’t think you should worry about duplicate content that much, Antonio. I’ve recently read a lot of info on the fact that Google can actually look past what they previously considered duplicate content.

Just create your excerpts for a user. 2-4 sentences are usually enough.

Andrew from Build Blog Twitter: andrewrondeau February 2, 2011 at 3:49 am

Ana

Great advice. I use SeoScribe and it provides the ‘best’ list of tags to use for your blog post each time you publish.

Didn’t know about the GA tip – now set up and will monitor.

Andrew
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 4, 2011 at 2:42 am: That’s great, Andrew! Keep me posted on your progress.
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Mia February 2, 2011 at 5:31 am

Until now i’ve though that tags are the same thing as keywords. Hm.. it seems I was wrong. Some directories ask for tags, so it would be useful to start creating some. Great post!

Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 4, 2011 at 2:46 am: Thanks, Mia, I’m glad you were enlightened on that
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TJ McDowell February 3, 2011 at 10:39 am

I’ve seen that adding a tag adds an extra page, and honestly, that’s one of the reasons I’ve been unsure of whether I should really be using tags. My thought is that it will spread my page’s page rank thinner than it needs to ie the distribution of page rank to other pages (and other blog posts) will not get as much link juice because I’m creating another page. Thoughts?
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 7, 2011 at 11:35 pm: Well, your PR leakage happens only when you start linking to other pages on your blog.

If you don’t link, you don’t leak.

However, because tag pages tend to be so keyword-oriented, they have a great chance ranking in SEs than any one of your posts. So why not give them some links and see if you can rank then in SEs?

I think tag pages are of huge use and I wouldn’t worry about PR leakage within your own site too much.
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Anna February 5, 2011 at 3:30 pm

I have been using tags for some time already and I did really noticed some change – I got some traffic from my .. tags. So I agree with everything your wrote.
By the way, this post should be placed in workbook on SEO – clear presentation of the material. Good job!

Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 7, 2011 at 11:38 pm: Thanks, Anna!
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Brad Harmon from Big Feet Marketing February 5, 2011 at 10:31 pm

Very informative post, Ana.

On my first blog, I was so undisciplined when it came to adding tags that I have 200+ after 100 posts. On my second blog, I have a very strict pre-planned tag structure, but I no followed, no indexed them because of concerns over the duplicate content (thanks to Thesis I can correct that with just a couple clicks now that I know not to worry).

Thanks for clearing up my confusion on the whole tag issue.
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Ana from Traffic Generation Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe February 7, 2011 at 11:39 pm: You are so very welcome, Brad – Thesis does make it easy for us, doesn’t it?

Have a great night!
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Kimi February 8, 2011 at 3:34 am

Ana,

Earlier, i was afraid using tags, by default they are dofollow, but because i use All in One SEO, i can disable this “dofollow” too.

However i was not sure, but then i went to visit yoast website, and he had with the old theme dofollow tag clouds.

At the end, i check my visitors stats, most of them click on tag clouds because my content is somehow poor organized, so i guess tag clouds help them alot.

Because of this reason, i am using tag clouds until today, but i nofollow them.
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Ana from Get Free Targeted Traffic Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe March 5, 2011 at 12:06 pm

Hi, Kimi: take a look at this post I wrote on tag clouds not so long ago:

http://www.trafficgenerationcafe.com/google-tag-clouds/

Ana
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Kimi March 5, 2011 at 1:10 pm: Ana,

Thanks so much for the link, I have read it, however I guess it depends on the blog’s content?

Because my blog has all mixed up topics, not only about wordpress, this is why tag clouds are useful for my readers.

Thanks! Have a good wekend
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Thomas Twitter: techwork_dk February 13, 2011 at 4:54 am

Hi Ana
Thank you for bringing up this topic about tags. I am glad that I am not the only one confused about how to use them and how to benefit from them. No doubt about that they create a lot of great link juice to a site, but very quickly had a problem with Google Webmaster tool telling me that I had a lot of duplicate Meta description (Google don’t like that). I kind of panic and removed all tag links from my sitemap.xml to avoid this issue. Also did I block access for search engines with my robots.txt to avoid my tags link to from being indexed. After reading this post it seems clear for me that I will have to fix my Meta description issues and make my tag links be available for Search engines again. Thank you for clearing thinks op about tagging Ana.
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Ana from Get Targeted Web Traffic Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe March 5, 2011 at 12:13 pm: Thomas,

If you in your blog dashboard you go under your post tags, you can edit each tag individually optimizing them for search engines.

That’s why I don’t recommend to have a million and one tags – that’s pointless, but if you have strategically a few you would like to rank for, then change your description and title for them including your keywords.

That should take care of any dupe content issues, which are not that big of a deal to begin with, trust me.

Ana
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Rian February 13, 2011 at 9:24 am

Thanks for the great post anna,

I also think that Tags is important for optimizing our blog because google will crawl our tags and it will show in search engine result page. For optimizing our tags you can find the best phrase for our tags with google keyword tool or Market Samurai so we have tags that popular on search engine.

John McNally February 17, 2011 at 7:00 am

I have been using tags ever since I started blogging. I understood they were keywords but I didn’t realise that separate pages are created for them. It makes sense therefore that I should reuse the same keyword tags to create more authority. Thanks for pointing this out to me Ana.

John
Tagging in Leamington Spa, England
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Ana from Get Targeted Web Traffic Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe March 5, 2011 at 12:15 pm: How’s weather treating you these days, John? Gloomy and overcast? I think there’s a lot of charm in it, although it can get to you after a while.

Back to your comment, you are welcome!
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Larry from Heart Rate Monitors February 19, 2011 at 10:17 pm

I stumbled on (what I think) is a unique use for tags. I have a review site where I review lots and lots of heart rate monitors. I assigned different features of the HRM’s to tags. It allowed me to have a cheap ‘search by feature’ function by simply listing the tags. It’s not as useful as a real e-commerce-type search function but it was cheap (free) and easy. I did nofollow the links on each page. I should reconsider that. I didn’t put the tags into my google sitemap file but they are still being indexed.

The GA tip is awesome. I’ll certainly do that now.
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Ana from Increase Website Traffic Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe April 24, 2011 at 3:56 pm: Sounds like a great idea for tags, Larry. And you are welcome!
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Jane | Find All Answers Twitter: problogsuccess March 4, 2011 at 10:34 am

Hey Ana,

Surely an eye opener. I haven’t taken tags so seriously so far. I did know that tags play a crucial role with creating more link flow within the site, but just like you I was afraid of the duplicate content issue. Deleted quite some tags because of that.

The analytics tutorial is excellent. I have set that up. And lol, just like yours, my orange line is also flat lying beneath, poor creature.

Jane.
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Nick April 22, 2011 at 2:49 pm

It seems internal duplicate is myth, could you please confirm it because I’m doing noindex to my tags.
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Ana from Increase Website Traffic Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe April 24, 2011 at 4:01 pm: I am starting to see you all over the place, Nick.

No, it’s not a myth, but you don’t have to noindex your tags.

Check out this post: duplicate content penalty.

Ana
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JamestheJust Twitter: TheAvgGenius April 23, 2011 at 12:36 am

Thanks for the input, Ana – tagging is something I’ve done but not with much insight. Ironically, I have all the tools necessary to find great tags to use, so that’s just laziness on my part.
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Ana from Increase Website Traffic Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe April 24, 2011 at 4:03 pm

I can see that happen, James; I am the same way.
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Karo from Blogging For Beginners July 7, 2011 at 7:28 pm

Hello Ana,

It’s good to see you here.

I never thought much about tags myself, though I do add tags to my blog post when I publish on a blog, but I just usually added it because it’s an option not because I really knew the benefits, until recently. And after reading your post it made me understand even more.

A month and a week ago, I started a niche site challenge for a keyword that is fairly competitive. It’s my first niche site so I decided to do it as a challenge to rank the site on the first page of Google in 2 months, this was inspired by Pat Flynn.

Anyway, I have been working on ranking the site for the keyword. But I am not there yet. But surprisingly the tags (my niche keyword) started ranking really high for the keyword search.

Using my content strategy, I often add the niche keyword to all the derivative keyword posts I write – Keywords that contain my primary keyword.

My niche site is experiencing the Google Dance, here today and off tomorrow. As at writing the site is not even on the top 20 pages of Google for the keyword, yet I have a tag post on the second place in Google for my niche keyword, and it’s been there for some days now, beating all except one authority sites on the first page of Google for the same keyword.

Until I read your post, I couldn’t understand why a post without backlinks and less than 2 weeks old will be on second place for a competitive keyword, whereas the blog I have spent time building links to isn’t even on top 20 for same keyword. Though the last decent ranking for the niche site was on page 7.

I went into detail because I want people to know this really works, but I believe it worked as fast for me because I have used the keyword repeatedly as tags and the blog itself was optimized for this same keyword.

Some tips:

This is not a secret strategy now for ranking sites. I think it depends on the content strategy you’re using and whether the site is optimized for the keyword – That’s if you want to see the fast result with tags.

It could be seen as a secret to rank smaller niche sites, I mean like in my case where your keyword is competitive, you can have a tag for a post or two in the top of Google and be getting some traffic before your site itself ranks for the keyword. I have just started tracking my tags after reading your post and obviously the tags is responsible for most of the traffic the site is getting now.

Better to use the niche keyword only repeatedly for posts where it describes the content, not for every single posts you write, this will not be appropriate. Like in my case I was just adding it to the posts where it fit without even knowing I was doing some good. Remember it pays to keep things real.
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Ana from Best Autoresponders Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe July 11, 2011 at 11:33 am

Love your thorough explanations, Karo – your example of tags ranking highly on Google is awesome.

One point you made very well: consistency in using the same tags over and over. I think that’s where most bloggers make a mistake – they list every single tag they can think of for every single post, thus completely diluting the purpose of tagging your pages.

All the best to your first niche site – many more to come!
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Angel Alvaro October 30, 2011 at 7:46 pm

Hi Anna,

Thank you very much for a very detailed post about tags. I have been wondering what they are for and why I am seeing blogs with a lot of tags. Now I know how to use them properly and why I should use them. Thanks again.
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