You already have blog posts but later found out that you need to categorise and tag them. You read of tags and categories and how they affect your SEO. Now you want to learn more about WordPress tag which in turn helps you make a decision whether to add or remove them. Simply put, another name for a tag is “label”.
Why do you tag post or articles?
Very simple; you tag post or articles for easy identification, collation and navigation. When you have different post or articles coming in at different times and possibly from a different author, tagging them will enable you to have quick access.
For example, you have a post about food, and you have Human Food and Pet Food as a category.
Under Human Food category you have articles;
- How to Bread and tea article (tag as breakfast)
- How to prepare Rice with chicken (tagged as lunch)
- How to prepare Beans (tagged as dinner)
- How to dish Rice and meat (tagged as breakfast)
- How to prepare Yam and egg (tagged as lunch)
- Benefits of eating Semovita (tagged as dinner)
Under Dog food category you have articles on;
- Bead and egg (tag as breakfast)
- Cake with pie (tagged as lunch)
- Bones (tagged as dinner)
- Milk (tagged as breakfast)
- Yam and egg (tagged as lunch)
- Beef (tagged as dinner)
If you observe well, we have only three tags namely Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. Now, for example, you clicked on Breakfast tag, all food under this tag will come forth with indication pointing to the category they belong. Some WordPress theme provides options to include post tag beneath the post content.
- Milk (dog food category)
- Bread and egg (dog food category)
- Rice and meat (human food category)
- Bread and Tea (human food category)
What is the SEO benefit of tag on blogs?
The SEO benefit of tag depends on how you name them. If you have a dog as a tag, anyone searching for a dog might find your site depending on how popular your site is but if you narrow the tag to a more specific name of a dog, people searching for that specific dog’s food may find your site than those with general dog name.
This is possible if your tag has a good SEO description. You must use keywords when describing your tags and categories. For a search engine to follow your tags, you must turn your tag to Index and do follow.
Remember, when people come to your site through a tagged post, make it navigable and provide quick links and related post to decrease bounce rate. You can customize your tag page to look more attractive by editing the CSS.
Lately, I found out that Google crawler see post tags as keywords. Although Google no longer uses the keyword as a ranking factor, the present of tags on a post gives Google search engine crawler a better understanding of what a post is all about.
How to add Meta description to post tags.
By default, WordPress does not provide options for Tags Meta description. Personally, I use this plugin. With this plugin, you can add Meta description to tags and categories very easily.
When not to use a tag.
- Don’t use tags when you do not have a good number of posts on a category.
- Avoid giving a post too many tags. Google might see this as spamming.