Are blog tags the same as keywords?

Back in the early days of websites, back when I was coding sites solely with HTML and nobody had smart phones, we added keywords to the site’s meta data to tell the search engines what that site was about. It looked kind of like this:

<meta name="keywords" content="dogs, puppies, canines, hounds, mutts, pooches, doggies">

Then, on September 21, 2009, Google published an article stating they would no longer use meta keywords in ranking web searches. One of the reasons is because people would abuse this tag, stuff tons of keywords into it and try to get their website ranked for unrelated searches. I remember a time when searching for a website meant scrolling through pages of spam results to find one that was good. So this was a necessary change at the time.

But a trend I noticed after, that I still see in sites I login to today, is that people started to think that tags for their blog posts were the same as keyword tags, and they started shoving all their keywords into tags. I’ve logged into sites to see as many as 50 tags on a post, usually single words that without context, don’t even accurately reflect the content of the post.

So today, I wanted to clarify what tags are for and how to use them effectively. I say blog post tags, but you can have tags on posts, products, events, or other custom post types.

What is a tag?

In WordPress, tags are a way to organize and categorize your blog posts (or products, etc). They are words or phrases that you use to organize your blog posts into similar topics, much like hashtags on social media.

How is a tag different from a category?

In WordPress, both tags and categories are tools used to organize and classify content on a website, but they serve slightly different purposes:

1. Categories:
   • Hierarchy: Categories are hierarchical, meaning you can create parent and child relationships between them. For example, you could have a parent category like “Technology” with child categories like “Gadgets” and “Software” underneath it.
   • Structure: Categories are typically used for broader topics or sections of your website. They help create a structured hierarchy for your content, making it easier for visitors to navigate your site.
2. Tags:
   • Non-hierarchical: Tags, on the other hand, are non-hierarchical. They don’t have a parent-child relationship. Each tag is independent of others.
   • Detailing Content: Tags are more flexible and are often used for specific details related to a post. They provide a way to highlight and search for specific topics or elements within your content.

In general, categories are broad sections of your content, where tags represent more detailed part of the article. For example, if someone wrote an article on a class of medications, they might categorize that post as “pharmacy” and then tag the post with the names of those medications. A tag is a smaller subset of an overall category.

If someone is reading a post that is tagged with those subtopics, like the medication names from my example, and they want to read more articles on one of those medications, they could click on the tag for that medication and be led to more articles on that exact medication.

It’s a useful tool for organizing your content into smaller, more detailed groups.

Does using tags help with SEO?

It can, but often not in the way that you might think. People go into tagging thinking they are adding keywords to their post for the search engines to find but the search engines aren’t reading your tags as keywords in that way. Just by virtue of adding a bunch of tags, that won’t help your site’s SEO.

However, if you tag correctly, and you set up nice tag archive pages, that can help with SEO. Let me delve into this further. The point of blog tags is to link together similar content. So if someone wants to find more content on one topic, they can see everything you’ve written about that topic by clicking on a tag.

Each tag you create will create a new tag archive page in your website. And the more content you write on that topic, using that tag, the more content your tag archive will have on that topic. And the more content you write about one specific topic, the more value the search engines will see in your tag.

I have written a number of blog posts that I’ve tagged with the tag “analytics.” And so my website has an archive of all the blog posts I’ve written that have that tag. This page is an indexible page by search engines, with articles of all similar topics that include analytics.

Additionally, I added some introductory text to the page as well. You can even optimize each tag as a keyword on your site, and complete full on-page optimize for your tag archive pages. That can help SEO.

However, adding 50 tags to your post won’t do you any favors, especially if you only use each tag one time. Having a tag archive with just one article probably isn’t going to get you a lot of SEO benefits. Having an archive of many articles using one tag, that is where you start to reap the benefits of tags.

Tips for using tags correctly

• Tags are meant to group similar articles, products, or events. If you are only going to use the tag once, then you shouldn’t create it. Maintain consistency in your tagging approach. Use similar tags for similar content to create a logical and organized structure.
• Use specific tags that accurately represent the main topics or themes of your articles. Avoid generic tags that could apply to a wide range of content.
• Avoid excessive tagging. Too many tags can dilute the focus and effectiveness of your tagging system. Aim for a reasonable number of relevant tags per article.
• Check for and avoid duplicate tags with similar meanings. This can help maintain clarity and prevent redundancy in your tag system.
• Ensure that tags are directly relevant to the content of the article. This helps users find related posts and improves the overall user experience. Just because you might mention something in the article, doesn’t mean it’s relevant to the crux of your article.

Some examples of good and bad tag use

Tagging articles with the neighborhood, suburb, or city is a good way to use tags. This is especially good for event planners and realtors. When people are relocating, they are looking for information on specific areas and this helps them find information on the area they are looking for. However, this only works if you are tagging articles specifically about those locales.

If you are a realtor and you tag every article with the name of the city you are a realtor in, that doesn’t provide any benefits to your user. It doesn’t differentiate one article from the next. You may think that because you work in that city, that it’s a relevant tag, but the content of the article needs to be specific about the area you are tagging. There needs to be a real connection.

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Adding tags that without context aren’t useful. I’ve seen people add tags like “yum” when writing about food. And I guess that’s related if you are a recipe blogger. But I probably wouldn’t sort articles looking for similar articles that also are tagged with “yum.” And if you are a recipe blogger, wouldn’t all your recipes be yummy? (At least I hope.)

However, if you are a recipe blogger, you might categorize a post under “Baking” and then add tags like bagels, rolls, biscuits, pies, etc or whatever specific baked good the recipe is about. Then I can see other articles for recipes about bagels, which makes much more sense than adding “yum.”