Every blogger wants to make their blog Search Engine friendly and drive more traffic.
Tags on WordPress blogs are one of the tools available to do just this.
In this post we’ll look at several helpful techniques to help bloggers manage their Tags.
A Bit About Tags vs Categories
Much has been written about Tags and Categories for WordPress blogs.
According to Wordtracker, failure to use Tags and Categories correctly is just one of the more serious mistakes that can lead to poor Searcg Engine Optimization (SEO).
You can think about Categories like the Table of Contents for your website. And Tags are like an Index.
The benefit of an Index is that it allows you to reference connected themes across many difference types of content.
How I Use Categories and Tags on My Blog
I use Categories to create focus on subjects of interest. I have categories like Digital Marketing, Foresight & Strategy, Leadership, and Productivity. These are all subjects I like to write about on a regular basis.
I use Tags to highlight processes that cut across these subjects. For example, ‘How To Tips’ is a Tag that is relevant to the post “Warning: 7 Headline Techniques To Explode Web Traffic“. This article is under the Category of Digital Marketing. And I’ve also Tagged the same post with the term ‘Copywriting’.
That’s part of the value of Tags…you can create multiple references to the one post. In theory we could also assign multiple Categories to posts, but in practice we rarely assign a post to more than two categories. Tags are quite different….and I have some posts that have five or more tags.
WordPress automatically creates new pages for tagged content in the form of an ‘archive’ page. So any tag you create will automatically generate a new page of content that pulls together any post that is tagged with that term. Here’s an example of my ‘How To Tips’ page.
Search Engines see these pages, which is why they’re valuable for SEO. Here’s an example how the same Tag and its Archive Page is indexed.
But people who visit these pages also want to be able to find relevant content that is appropriate for the tag.
For these reasons it’s worth thinking carefully about how we apply Tags.
Balance Your Content by Managing Your Tags
Rather than applying tags randomly to a blog, I find it helps to be intentional about how we apply tags.
I have about 30 tags I use regularly.
Now, you could have thousands of tags if you wanted to, and there would be nothing wrong with this.
Personally, because tags are very visible in the navigation of my blog, I’ve chosen to have a small group of Tags. This helps me focus on what content I wish to create. It also helps my audience, because these same tags show in the navigation of my blog and can be used to filter content.
How to track the Tags you Use
I track these tags through a content spreadsheet. So, for every post I write, I add the title of the post to the sheet and allocate tags.
This helps me know whether I’m biasing my writing toward specific themes. One of the benefits of this is that you can see in one place all the content you’ve written, and how this content spreads across a variety of tags.
Every week I look at this sheet to define what content I’ll write next. Basically, I check which tags need a bit more love, so I can intentionally balance out content on my blog.
Download the Tag Management Template
You can download the template I use to keep track of Tags.
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Use this if you’re just starting your blog to map out the tags you wish to use. Or, if you already have a blog and don’t yet use tags, you can use this template to create a list of tags for your existing posts. Then all you need to do is add these tags to your posts in WordPress.
I hope you found this post useful. If so, please consider sharing your thouhts by leaving a comment below.
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1 comment
Thank you for sharing this post. It is very informative.