Categories and tags offer up opportunities for increased engagement and traffic that most bloggers waste.
There are many benefits to creating and maintaining a well thought out category and tagging system when blogging. For one, the user experience can be vastly improved by well-constructed navigational elements. But secondly, categories and tags offer an opportunity to increase traffic to your site via search engines.
One client of mine runs a large blog that attracts around 250,000 unique visitors per month. Around 5% of those visitors are referred by tag pages listed in search engines. And those visitors are far more engaged than the average, with higher time on site and page views, and a lower bounce rate. That’s an extra 10,000 engaged visitors per month, and this is for a site which is poorly optimized for tagging.
So, if you’re interested in improving the user experience and boosting traffic to your site, read on to find out how you should optimize your categories and tags in WordPress.
What About Duplicate Content Penalties?
Before we start, let’s push this little issue to one side.
Google (and other major search engines) will never penalize a WordPress site for having archive pages that publish and point to the same content. They confirmed this way back in 2008. When Google comes across duplicate content, their algorithm will adjudge which version is the original, and place that above the alternative options.
There is in reality just one valid reason why you might choose to noindex taxonomy/archive pages — when the pages are of no use to searchers (e.g. date based archives). If a page is of potential use to a searcher, it should be included within the index.
I would recommend that you keep your post’s content to excerpt length when published on taxonomy and archive pages. Not only will this resolve any duplicate content/devaluation issues, it will make for more easily browseable pages.
How to Categorize and Tag
If you are in any doubt as to the difference between categories and tags, read Everything You Need to Know About WordPress Tags. But in a nutshell, if categories are the table of contents for your blog, tags represent the index. And as you will know if you have ever read a book with an index, it can really come in handy.
The key to categorizing and tagging your content is rooted in the old contradictory axiom, “Less is more”. You must strike a good balance between offering as few options as possible, whilst giving the reader a choice that they will be satisfied with. Furthermore, you must always remember that each and every page on your site should have a useful purpose. You shouldn’t tag a page for the sake of tagging a page — you should do so because grouping posts by that particular tag could be of use to a reader.
An easier way to think about it is this — all categories and tags should represent a keyword that a reader would potentially search for. For example, if I’m looking for a chicken recipe, I might search Google for “chicken recipe”. In that example, “Recipes” could be a category, and “Chicken” could be a tag. Both are useful and functional taxonomies.
Don’t go overboard when categorizing your content. A post should typically be in no more than one or two categories, and tagging should be limited only to the most relevant topics covered in the post. Furthermore, if you find no obvious way in which you can tag a specific post, don’t tag it. Not every post needs tagging.
Finally, I recommend that you use title case when creating your categories and tags. Just bear this in mind for the time being — I’ll explain why later.
Utilizing Categories and Tags on Your Blog
First of all, let’s address something that is so uncommon in the blogosphere, that I almost feel it must be a taboo of some kind — linking to categories and tags from within your pages and posts.
Not only do I consider this okay to do, I actively encourage it. Remember — you are creating categories and tags that are of use to the reader, so why not link to them? Say I’m on a health and fitness blog, and I’m reading a post on running. Half way through the post I encounter this text:
If you’re into running, we recommend that you check out our running section here on the blog.
I might open that up in a background tab (which will of course reveal the “Running” category on the blog). Now let’s say I’m particularly into marathon running, and I come across this text later on in the post:
Some say that marathon training is more difficult than the marathon itself.
The above could be a contextual link that points to the tag archives for “Marathon Training”.
Both links above are great examples of how you can interlink to both category and tag pages in a way that benefits the reader. Generally speaking, the more you interlink on your blog, the more engaged your readers will be, so take every opportunity to keep them on your site.
One side-effect of linking to categories and tags repeatedly (by interlinking and/or navigational links) is that link juice will be passed to those archive pages, which means that they will have a chance of ranking in Google. Because you are focusing on producing a limited number of highly relevant and useful categories and tags, each page has a chance of establishing itself for keyword terms.
Optimizing Categories and Tags for SEO
Now let’s get down to the nuts and bolts of the matter — optimizing your taxonomy pages so that link juice flows in the right areas, and editing onsite SEO so that each taxonomy page looks useful to the reader.
You need to get your hands on the free SEO by Yoast plugin. If you don’t already use it, say hello to the best SEO plugin for WordPress, hands down. Whilst there are an awful lot of beneficial things you can do with this plugin, in this article we are going to focus solely on optimizing your taxonomy and archive pages.
First of all, navigate to the “Titles & Metas” settings page:
On the first tab of that screen, under “Sitewide meta settings”, check the “Noindex subpages of archives” checkbox:
Our aim is to rank one page for any given taxonomy, not several. If Google indexes taxonomy subpages, it will probably not do a great deal of harm, but could potentially take away from the strength of other pages. Given that there is no benefit in these pages being indexed, you may as well ensure that they are not.
Next, navigate to the “Taxonomies” tab. Here you will be able to set title templates for each taxonomy type and choose whether or not they should be indexed and/or followed by search engines. The way in which you present the title of each taxonomy page is important in making it clear to a search engine user that the page is of use to them. Here are the settings I use:
As you can see, the “noindex, follow” boxes are unchecked, which means that the search engines will both follow these pages and include them within their index (which is exactly what we want). Furthermore, I have created a title template that, trusting you have named your categories and tags well, will be readable and informative to the searcher.
Based upon the above template, a title for a tag on an imaginary blog could read as follows:
Michael Crichton | The Best Sci-Fi Books Blog
If you’re interested in Michael Crichton (and sci-fi), a title tag such as that showing up in your search engine results page (SERP) would be quite compelling. This is why I previously advised you to use title case when naming categories and tags — a lowercase tag would look far less presentable in the SERPs:
michael crichton | The Best Sci-Fi Books Blog
Whilst I don’t typically advise that you include your blog’s name in title tags for posts and pages, it is perfect for providing context (and additional relevant keywords) for what might otherwise be a mysterious category or tag.
If you’re having trouble in creating title templates, click on the “Help” tab to see a list of variables that you can include (such as &&term_title%% and %%sitename%%).
Once you’re done setting your title templates for categories and tags, click onto the “Other” tab. You will see options relating to author and date archives. If you’re running a single author blog, you should disable author archives. And personally I always think that you should disable date archives, unless the date of a post is in some way pivotal to how people might search for your content.
Wrapping Up
If you take the time to create and maintain a limited set of highly relevant categories and tags, you will see benefits in time. For instance, I launched a new blog just a couple of weeks ago, and although Google has only crawled it once (ten days ago) and I have only received a handful of visitors, I have already received a couple of search referrals via taxonomy pages.
Forget about “tag stuffing”, or creating a vast list of unhelpful categories. Focus on usability and ease of navigation, and you will reap the rewards.
allisonlewisphotography.com
Hi, above you said that having a single post in multiple categories can lead to duplicate content, but what about tags, assigning multiple tags to a single post, doesn t that too lead to duplicate contents? Because, tags do have a URL right? Will it effect the SEO?
Sourabh Kumar Upadhyay
Offcourse Tom, using the category and tags in WordPress boosts the site SEO. But this mostly works for Small WordPress sites. But for a large WordPress blog tags and categories should be noindex, which tells Google not to show these things, but do follow and use resource pages rather. Which will give better conversion to the site.
Emmanuel Obarhua
Thanks to this article I have done some crucial improvements on my blog’s taxonomic. One problem I had was that the plugin dubbed my categories as archives which wasn’t helpful. I operate a blog. The articles in the categories dubbed archives are still current. The archive tag simply made a searcher feel they are dated or may not be currently useful . Thanks to your article Tom I was able to fix this problem in one place. Thank you very much.
clare
I have a question on this topic…. When assigning tags, should you assign a tag that is the same as the category name?
Eg your category is “Parenting” – and tags might be “Parenting Toddlers”, “Parenting Teens”…. should you also assign the tag “Parenting” to all parenting articles? Or is that covered by the category. Does this affect search results in any way?
Anishad Y
Optimizing categories and tags are very useful for WordPress SEO . You have to seperate different topics by categories and i believe concentrating on one niche is more important to rank well on google. Thanks for informative post
Carl Robinson
Really useful stuff, thanks very much. I guess it’s also wise to make the category names match the keywords people are searching for?
Steve
Can you duplicate a product category and say a custom post type category? For example, I have a nutrition website and I have product categories and research categories. For example, I have products for high blood pressure and research articles for high blood pressure. Is this bad for seo?
http://haiphatgroup.com.vn
Very descriptive blog, I enjoyed that bit. Will there
be a part 2?
bandar 66
Hi there everyone, it’s my first visit at this web page, and
post is truly fruitful in favor of me, keep up posting such articles.
Raj
How many Tags are enough to a single post, can you please tell me?
Mikhail Nasa
Sometimes I find my colleague stuffing tags on a post, or even rewrite the title post on a tag. That really grind my gears.
Rehan
I made the same mistake (Several Times). My intention was not to stuff tags or keywords. I did that just because I had no idea of how harmful could that be. In the light of my personal experience, I suggest everyone to stay away from this type of tactics.
Nirjon Rahman
What are the best practices for writing Page titles for category archives
Viraj Shah
Even I have the same query. Did you find the answer? What is more relevant for Google bots? Tags or Categories?
Scott
Is this article still relevant in 2017? I’m debating on having tags and categories together, in a widget on my homepage and wondered if you thought this would be a good idea.
Elias Jireis
Hi,
I was thinking about incorporating categories and tags for my upcoming blog/niche website which is about “portable laptop stands”. I was thinking of making a few categories, even one or two, for example, categories could be: “Stands”, or “Laptop Stands”, or “Portable Laptop Stands”, and tags could be: “Lightweight”, “Portable”, “Adjustable”, etc etc. What is your take on this matter? How would you work around categories and tags for this kind of website? Would love to know. Also, What do you think (SEO-wise) is better, having a category or tag named “Portable”, for example, or “Portable Laptop Stand”, which sounds more explanatory and understandable mainly for the SERPs? I’m not sure about that because as a tag or category, for example, when the user is on the website, and he/she encounters a tag like “Portable”, he/she would know that I’m talking about a “Portable” laptop stand, since the site is all about portable laptop stands … But I’m not sure that Google and other search engines understands this the same way. Your opinion?
Appliance
Nice guide, It will surely help.
Thank you!!
Confidence Post
Wow.. Thanks a lot for this guide. I have been looking for a much more clearer explanation about Wp categories and tags for seo…
Thanks again
Grow Pinterest Followers
Very good post. I absolutely appreciate this site.
Thanks!
Web Design
The ways explained to boost SEO are quite helpful and really applicable
oussama touzni
Hey ,I’m running a wp store , and I’m looking for a way to use product name as a tag automatically , can you help please .
Thanks a lot
c qui ce numero
This info is worth everyone’s attention. Where can I find out more?
Gaurav Verma
I don’t use tag. But after reading your article i should try tag for my wordpress website
Chris Gongsun
Very useful advice. Thank you.
Cassio Murilo
Good job!
I think of tags like ecommerce, product and color.
Ex: chair, black
Category – chair
Tag – black
Or product and size or other feature.
But color, size and other features can also be subcategories.
What do you think?
Sukanta Das
It is really a good point to clear idea about Category & Tag. but still it is not cleared which is related to blogs posting for seo services.
Rajesh kanyal
Hi, Thanks for this post it will help me and my blog a lot. I was tired by the mess tags and categories.
agung
really good post. Exaxtly I needed to know about this topic was in your article. Thank you very much
Anisa
Learned a lot from this post but still a little confused. Should I also use my keyword as a tag?
Joy
Hey Anisa, I personally have had luck using keywords as a tag, but only if I have enough content to make it worthwhile, and only if I’m not targeting the keyword on a content page already. To extend and improve upon a sites’ current SEO…consider a tactic similar to this…
You’re targeting keywords on a product page like….yoursite.com/products/product-A. Then in your blog, assuming you’ve written a few articles related to “Product A”, you could create tags like, “Product A Tutorials”, “Product A Maintenance Tips”, “Product A Reviews”…or whatever else you can create content about surrounding Product A. Make sure to link back to the Product A page from each of your articles, and then create unique meta-data for whatever “Product A” tag you create.
Example of meta:
URL: yoursite.com/blog/tags/product-a-tutorials
Title: Product A Tutorials | Your Site
Description: Learn how to use Product A better with tips, tricks and how-to’s in one of our easy-to-read tutorials.
Tarso
Hey Tom, good content!
I’m facing a problem with my blog. Cannibalization.
I was advised to use categories and tags to avoid cannibalization.
I’d like to know your opinion about it. Do you mind?
Let me detail my case a little bit.
I’m creating a lot of articles with long tail keywords, but the beginning of each long-tail keyword has the same short-tail keyword. And maybe I’m been penalized for that.
Let’s take a simple common example:
– how to make money
– how to make money online
– how to make money with facebook
– how to make money with youtube
– how to make money with blog
…and so on.
I have different sites, so different subjects, but the problem is the same.
I do have a main category calling something like that “how to make money”.
So, these are my problems:
1. URL: I just use the “postname” in the url, no categories. My url postname for each article used to be “how-to-make-money-‘last_words'”. So the base is always the same “how-to-make-money”. Should I start showing the category_name at the url and remove the “how-to-make-money” from the post_name’ slug?
2. Should I use the tags to represent the “internet”, “facebook”, “youtube” and so on?
3. If I do that, how am I supposed to call the post slug? Anything without using the words “how” “make” “money” “facebook”, or could I repeat at least the word that is already a tag, in this case, “facebook”?
4. Can’t I use “How to Make Money …” in the title of each article? So I should use something similar to that, but not equal, like “Generating Money With Your Facebook”?
Sorry about all these questions, but this topic (cannibalization) is messing with my mind and I need to restructure my blog, but I’m not sure how to do it right.
Hope you can help me.
Thanks a lot!
Jeremy Chartier
Thank you for the metaphor. Using the “Table Of Content” versus “index” explanation cleared it up immediately for me. Thanks again for the help!
Ashish
Thank you for your in-depth contribution. I’m learning and writing about WordPress and this has been a great help to differentiate between tags and categories for me.
Hillside
Hi; thank you for explaing about Categories. I thin that Categories in wordpress is oneof the most important thing to structure our site.
tej
Hi Tom,
What harsha said that is exactly currect one. Only few small sites are now using more tags and categories to make their sites top in google. But my doubt is, How to use tags and categories with out harm. Please share your Ideas. Thank you.
Worlds recipes
Nice article. But still confuse .between tag and cat
iyan
well thank you..
Rizky
Ido agree with your post. Yeah, Google shouldn’t penalize the website as long as it is useful for reader.
Besides that, I think Google has some algo so that it can decide which content should be put in the first page.
But in this article I think you still don’t explaon how to choose a term as category or tag.
It is really confusing, especially for micro site…
Alban
Hi, nice post. For example if I had a website and my domain is bestdogtraining.com… my 1 category is called dog-traning….the post permalink it is 10 ten best dog training tips…
1) Is my category confusing google, and will it hurt to rank that particular post.
2)Since my keywords (dog training) are already in the domain, do I have a over-optimized permalink in keyword sense?
Please some help
mahesh
iam install the pulgins its showing the wordpress under maintance..
svreddy
From last 2 years, I am facing same problem. How to use tag option in word press sites with out harm. No where I didn’t get full information. Please share how to use tags in posts with out harm from google panda….
Somnath
Thanks a lot for sharing. Keep up the good work. Cheers!! 🙂
neeraj
Hi Harsh,
thanks for sharing this knowledge. i will try this once with my blog as well….as you mention this will be helpful for short WP…it would be great if work for me
Yuswardy
Thank you so much for the valuable article. Arrived here after searching what is the difference between categories and tags in WordPress. And your article not only explaining what they are, but also explaining thoroughly how to maximize them for better SEO. Already apply it to my blog right away. ^_^
Also click the checkbox below, to signing up for your newsletter. 😉
Emily Johns
I have wallpaper website. Do i need to no index my tags ?? If yes which plugin is best.
mike ram
hi, Tom, thanks for the post, I am building a sports website, and using categories is the only way (I know of) of allowing readers to quickly find their favourite league or team. But this creates ‘duplicate’ posts, for example if Arsenal play Chelsea and I do a match report I have to put it both teams category, they are both Barclay Premier League so I get pitchside.eu/bpl/chelsea/post-title and also pitchside.eu/bpl/arsenal/post-title is this ok? Or is there another way I should be doing things? Much appreciated.
shubehndu bhatnager
I just want you know that if i am using multi-categories for my article then is it bad for SEO or NOT?
Adam Smith
So how do search engines rank your site without tags and how do users find those pages?
Jaswinder
Very interesting and useful article on the topic. I used to write many categories and tags for one post, but now I started to delete some of them, which are useless.
Is it necessary to install Yoast Seo or any other SEO Plugin? I hate too many plugins in my dashboard.
Makcit
I really enjoyed reading this because it’s helped me understand tagging a little bit more. I do have a question though. Is it okay to use phrases or partial sentences in tagging? For instance, if I tag a relationship post with ‘breaking up’ and ‘relationship goals’ is that alright or does it have to be one word?
Nemanja Aleksic
It’s okay to use phrases, but it will also be harder to show up on Google search, because the people googling it will have to enter the same phrase. This is actually a good thing if you’re targeting a niche with specific keywords, e.g. “SpongeBob wig” for a novelty wig store 🙂
Patience
Thanks for the great tips on organizing my tags, I will put it into use on my sites photo album I am working on. PEACE!
App for PC
I have to agree in what ever the blog post say. Not only me everyone has to agree with that. The penalties should be keenly observed when there will be any change in the algorithm.
Lovisa Karlsson
I am also thinking about the same query for a long time. Nevertheless, I have no answer. Now I got the answer from your blog. Thanks for sharing it.
makeonlineshop
Hello, I find a bit stupid that in 2016 WordPress woocommerce still proposes to setup CATEGORIES and TAGS.
It is always bad to have products displayed at different URL.
Am I wrong ?
Mike Luque
I am so glad I stumbled onto your post. My taxonomy was a mess. I went from over 180 tags down to 34! I also worked the capitalization thing.
Shaily
I was confused about the use of Categories and Tags, but your article solves my problem. I also found that indexing both can’t hurt SEO. Thanks for your valuable article for those who are learning WordPress and SEO like me.
Habib Rana
Good guide,its really help me.Thanks from heart.
George
I am familiar with most of the tips, but deindexing the subpages was a good hint! Thanks.
Farah Elise
Hi All this was very infomrative. I am wondering if anyone uses the blog.com site to blog. (not to be confused with blogger).
Serhat Dmar
Tom, hi. Thanks for all. I applied the changes you mentioned in your article. My website looks and feels better than before.
Craig
Hi Tom, thanks for the post, I am building a sports website, and using categories is the only way (I know of) of allowing readers to quickly find their favourite league or team. But this creates ‘duplicate’ posts, for example if Arsenal play Chelsea and I do a match report I have to put it both teams category, they are both Barclay Premier League so I get pitchside.eu/bpl/chelsea/post-title and also pitchside.eu/bpl/arsenal/post-title is this ok? Or is there another way I should be doing things? Much appreciated.
Rohit Singh
Thanks I was not have good idea to have one or more tags for y post but thanks for clearing this up for me
Sarah
Thank you, this is so very helpful!
jagmohn Singh negi
First of all thank for your valuable article.I searched a lot about this topic and there are lots of different views about tag.
But as I know its helpful to improve your site rank in Bing but Google never consider these tags .try to use strong and few tags in post.
Chris
Awesome post on exactly what I have been looking for. Thanks.
Serhat Damar
Hi Tom. You informed us about the proper usage of categories and tags, thank you. I will check my site from this viewpoint
and do the fixes on it.
Malin
Oh I used to use lots of tags even when I check my competitors posts I saw they are using tags exclusively so I’ll keep using them.
Tali Deals
Very good to know. I always wanted to know if tags were going to cause penalties. I’ve been told yes, then I get told no and as you mentioned they do get indexed by google and can bring in more SEO traffic. So hopefully in my new blogs my tags aren’t going to cost me some de-ranking penalty.
Jessy
Hi everyone,
I would like to know if there is a limit of tags in a post. I mean, it is more relevant to have 5 or 6 well-targeted tags or it is better to have a large list of tags for a post ?
Concerning the Alt Text for a picture, it is also the same thing ?
Thank you very much for your help !!
Have a great day,
Jessy
Doug
I’ve had a WordPress-sponsored blog for over three years and in all that time I’ve been mystified about tags. I mean, I put them in, I have categories, but I am just not getting much interest. It must be me… I’m an old school html guy who did websites ten years ago with meta tags and keywords, etc. and I am totally confused on tag usage in WordPress. I understand the theory & concept.. (the “book/index” analogy, etc.) but I have no idea on application since there seems to be so many ways to do it. I put tags in my posts, assign categories, put I have no idea if it’s correct usage or not. That cloud stuff just seems a bit “busy” and dorky to me and all those word and phrase links inside the post text just distracts me from the content. I ended up in here after doing a Google search asking what tags are. Ugh! Frustrating.
Ben Jamir
Thank you for such wonderful explanation. Categories and tags were always confusing to me..
thanks for sharing.
Alice Teacake
Thank you so much! I was using lots of categories and up to 15 tags in my posts. My friend turned round and told me this was completely wrong for SEO a couple of days ago. I googled this and you turned up and yep, turns out you’re right and my friend is right too! Thank you!
uju
So basically you’re saying the fewer the tags, the better it’s SEO ranking.
jokeDog
Excellent, very insightful.
Keep up the good work.
jokeDog
Excellent!, thanks a lot.
Keep on the great work.
Billy
Fantastic article, I didnt quite understand tags until I read this, I knew it was there to kind of represent the topic and get you ‘out there’ more but didnt understand the formalities of it, very interesting read and will go over it again tomorrow. Thank you.
Arjan
Very good post. Everything I needed to know about this topic was in this article. Thanks.
Christoffer
Thank you for a great post.
I have both categories and sub-categories on my WordPress page. Say for instance I’m writing an article about a computer program. I have the categories structure that is Computers > Software.
Up until now I have been posting in both the Computer and Software category. Is this a good way to do it? I do have articles that are listed in more than two categories as well. Say that the example also has something to do with connecting your computer to a TV. Then the whole categorisation are.
Computers > Software
Sound & Picture > Connectivity
That is four categories in total. Is that I stupid way to go by it?
Thanks /Christoffer
john b
so if I understand you can have multiple pages in a category.
Can you have multiple tags on a post?
When I ran a semrush test it came back showing duplicate content. For example site.com/tag/love/ and site.com/tag/funny/ show the same results and according to semrush it’s considered duplicate content since the same info appears on each page.
So should I only use 1 tag and 1 category per post?
thanks in advance for your help.
Dan at TLFN
Hi John B,
I have been told by an expert that it is best practise to assign one tag per blogpost, so I am going to try it out now. Not sure if it is the best way to generate large traffic but it keeps everything clean and organised, so probably worth doing in the long run.
Kind regards,
Dan
Avenger
Wow! I so admire you! Please let us know how it goes!.Thank you for posting
Sam
Still confused. does using silos based on categories with tags is good idea ? and what about breadcrumbs ?
Sam
Thanks for the article.
Just started my new blog and wondering how to organize categories.
Daniel
Thanks for the article.
I wasn’t sure how best to handle categories and tags, but this article helped clarify it.
This showed up high in the search results for SEO, so you must know what you’re talking about.
I also adjusted the templates in Yoast SEO based on your advice. That’s something I wouldn’t mess with otherwise!
-Daniel
Wilton Calderon
Iam confuse..help:
This is the way i should use ? %%Noticias y Tecnología | Internet, Tecnología móvil y Noticias Social | Tecnología Geek%%
or i shoud use the carapter? %%title%%
just in case, when i use Noticias y Tecnología | Internet, Tecnología móvil y Noticias Social | Tecnología Geek on yoas SEO, i have to this on the wordpres general seting, wich them show the from page with a very long title, litle help to get this.. Thanks..
Maria
Hi Tom! Thank you for your great article! I have a doubt. When I write an article I always put it in 2 categories, one is Blog (which is common to all my articles) and the other depends on the article. Can I have penalties to act in this way?
Deepak Kumar
Is it Ok to add number of tags to a single post if your are using Adsense on your website. Is there any violation in Google Adsense Terms?
Jen
Thank you for the Yoast tips! I knew I needed to clean up my categories and tags but I didn’t realize I could customize what showed up and how within Yoast.
Samantha Hussey
I’d be interested to know where it is possible to edit the information shown in browser tabs for category and tag pages…I have looked everywhere…
Ayush Chandra
I am little confused, i have a blog, using Yoast SEO Plugin. When i see results of my posts in Google then it shows the name of Category associated to that post instead of showing post url below title. What is it? and is it good or bad. How to fix it? I Hope you will tell me (no response on this around the Web 🙁
Jonas
Great post. Clearly explained.
Zeeshan Raza
Nicely described but I still have confusion like, a same post exit an a category and 6 to 7 tags… By using SEO by Yoast. Google ususally index my all categories and tags.. so is google or other search engines tak it as duplicate content??? Explain Plz..
Igor Kolosov
Hi Zaechan!
As Tom mentioned on the beginning of the post, Google is not penalising archive/tag pages. Also, it may not be a good practice to have 6 to 7 tags on one post. Tags are there to show the main few topics covered, maybe up to 3. So if you use this carefully, you shoudn’t have problems with duplicated content all over the website
Jane
I am just getting this website, (Administrator edit: link removed) off the ground. It is not my first website, but the first one I’ve done entirely myself. This article is very helpful, though I don’t understand all of it, i.e. taxonomies and meta tags, but hopefully I’m getting there. I noticed this article is over 2 years old. Anything new we should know? What about if using Divi from Elegant Themes. Anything specific to that? Thanks for all the info!!
Neha Gajjar
Good explanation and learn something new today,
thank you author for sharing your knowledge. 🙂
Umer
I have a question about tags. I use to add 3 to 4 titles in tags which are related to my post title. They appear in searches and fetch a good traffic. The question is that is it in accordance with guidelines of Google? Or a tag should only be comprised of one or two word phrase. As I am using quite long tags having more than 5 words. Please reply.
Live Streaming
I’m with you.
Luis Cabrera
Hi… I have some questions here.
My blog has all tags and categories empty right now.
I have noticed when checking google seach results page that my competition blogs have hundreds of tags (I think they are all indexed) but no exact content in their blogs. Maybe just a little bit related. So thanks to that they get organic traffic.
The reason I am here is I want to know if I should copy my competition´s strategy or do the oposite. I even don´t know what would happen if I tag all my posts (350) with the same tag (max two or three).
Thank you in advanced
Nathan
Hi Luis,
Great question. I advise against tagging all of your posts with the same tag (or category) as that will create a number of pages that show the exact same result as your general blog page. So it won’t provide a better experience to a human browsing your articles. Instead try and build collections of your articles around topics.
In Tom’s article he uses the example of a health & fitness website that has a number of articles on the topic of running. Other categories might include:
Food
Swimming
Luis, using your example of 350 articles the health & fitness blog would have 350 articles in it’s main blog. Then those articles would be split up across the categories. E.g.
50 Running articles
100 Food articles
25 Swimming articles
+ articles across other categories. Some articles may even be in 2 or more categories.
The categories (or tags) make it easier for a visitor browsing your website to find articles they’re interested in.
When it comes to SEO the key thing to remember and focus on is that the search engines are trying to make the web experience better for humans. So if you make your website experience better for humans then it’ll also be better for the search engines.
I hope that helps answer your question?
Nathan
Pen9 Creative
P.S. What are the 3 categories you’re thinking of using for your blog?
Kasper Plouugmann / Squazz
I always wondered about how important tags were, and when I though Google Analytics saw the first visitors via keywords that lead to my tags, I knew I had to do something about it.
Thanks for enlightening me, especially the guidance through the Yoast plugin helped me understand the taxonomies and get a grip on that part 🙂
Tonya, The Crafty Mummy
Thanks for the info – I really need to get my content better organised and this was really helpful, especially the tips for setting in the SEO plugin. Off to do some editing!
Poetry from me to you
I’m finding the catagories bit hard as I can’t find a list anywhere of good broad catagories.
Alix Tate
Very nice information, now can you come to my website and tell me exactly which tags are best for me? haha, I know I must learn and work to participate in the power of the web. Thank you, for the hard work knowledgeable bloggers like you give to us noobie bloogers. Cheers!
Alixtate.com
Shakeela
Does it affect if we delete categories to SEO purposes?
Sherrie | With Food + Love
Hi there –
I found this super helpful, especially the part on distinguishing categories and tags – thank you!! I feel like I have far too many tags and categories and I really want to clean them up. If I delete a category will it negatively affect post urls?
Thanks in advance!!
yotam
Great article. I stumbled uppon it while searching how can I keep my tags and categories searched while still prioritizing the original content in search. My problem is that the original content is surprizingly prioritized after tags and categories, while the tags are extremly relevant in bringing quality traffic to the site…
Tom Ewer
Glad you liked the article Yotam! 🙂
Anuj Sharma
This article just came in search while I was looking for a second opinion on whether to create a new category or manage through tags. I would say worthwhile time spent reading the article. Thanks for the great write-up, Tom.
Knowledge Network
Yes, I am agree with you TOM that categories and tags are both very important. But before I discover your blog, I already set to non-index of my categories and tags because I read some blog advise that it must be non-index to prevent violation to Google. After that, my traffic generated from search engine was gone. I am very disappointing for that. That is the reason why I challenge to search in the internet about that and I found your very informative blog that decide me to index again the categories and tags. I hope my search engine traffic will come again. Anyway, thank you for the useful blog you share… :=)
Ram
In Many forums I had read that Excessive use of tags or Categories will trigger Google Penalty.
After reading your post & reference to Google Article, now I can assume that Google Penalty doesn’t apply.
Thank You TOM
sherin
Well this will change my style to optimize using category tags in wp..
But until know i still confuse to choose the right keywodrs tags inside my post..
Varun Chopra
This is my wordpress site (Administrator edit: link removed). The site is based on sms & messages and m confused that how can i do optimization of this site. I have provided keywords and description and kywords in categories only not doing SEO of posts. Suggest me something after reviewing the site.
Kathy
On our website, we are categorizing and tagging blogs. When our site gets crawled, we are getting duplicate content warnings for this. Any suggestions?
Love
I would recommend that you keep your post’s content to excerpt length when published on taxonomy and archive pages.
Tom Ewer
Thanks for the recommendation! 🙂
Krista
Please forgive my newbie/no clue how to code question: You say towards the beginning of your post to link to categories in your posts. “you are creating categories and tags that are of use to the reader, so why not link to them? …
If you’re into running, we recommend that you check out our running section here on the blog.” That is exactly what I want to do, but can’t figure out how. I am doing a weekly popsicle recipe posting this summer, and I would like to have a sentence on the bottom that says something like “see more popsicle recipes here” that can be linked to the popsicle category (which would hopefully show all the popsicle recipes as excerpts). But I can’t figure out how to do this. I also would like to link to the category from an image in my sidebar. Is that possible? Here is a link to a popsicle post on my site: (Administrator edit: link removed) Thanks for any help you can give me, and thanks for the great article.
Kacey
Oh my word thank you! I’m seriously just scratching the surface of how to blog. This has been extremely helpful. I was under the impression that tags and categories were **pretty much?** the same thing. Not so much. 🙂
indianchica
Wow! One of the most helpful articles I’ve found on google, to explain the differences between tags and categories! I am a newbie in the blogging world, and still learning my way around. Just 5 posts old and so far I’ve been wondering if I really must use tags. I liked the hierarchial categories so much that I have only used categories on my posts so far. Your article makes a lot of sense. Now I know when I might like to add some tags too on my posts. Thanks for sharing this information in such a clear way.
Tom Ewer
You’re welcome 🙂
Earl
Hi Tom,
I’ve searched extensively and cannot find an answer to the following question. I feel that adding a list of categories in our sidebar helps the user find articles and navigate our blog. We currently have 26 categories. Will this practice hurt us from an SEO standpoint? Should we use the old drop down menu instead?
Thanks in advance for your advice.
ansateza
You can use your categories and link to all 26 or even more. It may leak your home page link juice but will improve your category page SEO.
debt debs
Hi Tom
Good information, I’m going to Pin this post for reference.
I’d like to get clarification on a couple of things:
– is this meant for WordPress.org sites as opposed to WordPress.com? The reason I ask is because I don’t have the “Titles & Metas” settings page in my blog dashboard. debtdebs.com
– regarding title case – do you think that my blog name, therefore header link 1, being in lower case is an issue? It’s part of my brand because I thought it sort of looked cooler than with title case due to the juxtaposition of the d’s and b’s – i.e. debtdebs versus DebtDebs (Although my blog template has the title all in uppercase DEBT DEBS, but I don’t think I can change that).
I’ve changed my categories and tags as a result of this post. I hope it works well, I don’t think I really knew what I was doing before.
Thanks and cheers
Tom Ewer
Hi Debs,
Yes – it is meant for WordPress.org sites.
Brand always takes preference over spelling and grammar in my opinion 😉
Cheers,
Tom
Sean
Can you help me? So for this particular blog post I put nutrition as the category and for the tags I put protein, carbohydrates, post workout. Would you do the same?
(Administrator edit: link removed)
Thanks again this article is great! going to read it over a couple times.
Dan
Tom,
Nice article. Would wonder what you comment might be on the use of SEO features for categories and tags that Yoast SEO affords and what you think it’s effect is on SEO. Personally I give all my categories and all my tags SEO titles and descriptions and have noticed a positive impact on SEO.
Tom Ewer
I certainly don’t think it will do any harm, and a meta description for categories and tags is good for usability (i.e. people will be able to get a better idea, at a glance, how the page can best serve them).
Robb
This is exactly what I was looking for. (…you must have tagged this one just right.) 😉
Robb
Tom
ha ha… thanks Robb!
Kathleen
Morning Tom!
I think I understood.
I’d like to progress and develop my blog.
I am not a geek or a techie, we have to remember that the bulk of people writing blogs are chatting about their latest gourmet dining experience, new baby or knitting patterns.
Please keep up the good work, but don’t forget the poor folk who are not up to speed with geek speak!
You lost me at ‘optimizing taxonomy’!
Kind regards, and thank you
@poshpedlar
Tom
Thanks for your thoughts Kathleen. There definitely is a wide array of bloggers out there. If you have specific questions about this post I would be happy to answer them! Optimizing taxonomy refers to making a group of terms as functional and effective as possible.
Cheers,
Tom
gypsychick
Hello Tom! I’ve read and printed your terrific article. But I’m a new blogger and basically an idiot so if this question is too dumb, please ignore me. My blog covers a year after losing Mom. As it rolled along, it became fun, wacky and positive as opposed to sort of grief management. After three months I do want to use categories and tags in an effective way. In the simplest form, would my categories all be something like MOM and tags that are the basic subject of each post? Like “Holidays” “Funeral” “Gypsies”? Thank you and again, please ignore me if this is so basic that you’re shaking your head.
Tom Ewer
Hey Gypsy Chick,
Send me a link to your site and I’ll take a look 🙂
Cheers,
Tom
J+C @ WineDineDaily
Good example with Chicken Recipe since we do have that tag to consider and thinking of reducing the amount of tags.
Tom
Thanks, that’s great!
Roy Moses
Good stuff over here!
I feel now like I have been using tags for no reason and every post has a different tags that just have a relation to what they are about… I am going to cut back on the tags and try to merge them a little bit, thanks!
Tom Ewer
You’re welcome!
Roger
I am confused with the “how to” use the categories and tags. But upon reading this post, the only thing that is on my mind now “is not to use tags” for every post that is not closely related to other post’s topics.
Kristian
So what category is this article under? Maybe I’m blind.
I see “You Might Like” but that’s not the same as a full list of other articles in the same category as this one 😉
Tom Ewer
Don’t get me started on our categories and tagging 😉
This is definitely a case of do as I say but not as I do! We’re working on something big here at the blog that will change everything though…
Kristian
Sorry, couldn’t help my self!
It’s a very good site though and I’ve recommended it to a couple of friends.
Alonso
Great Post. Very informative. Now I have to go back to 500 post and included tags.fml.
Paul
Great article.. but there is one aspect thats still confusing for me. For example using Moz Analytics for my site..
site/category/podcast
is flagged as duplicate for:
site/tag/podcasts
so which should you do?
Andy Saks
Great article, very helpful. I’m still confused about one basic thing: how do I get the tags I have set up to appear on their associated blog pages? I use WordPress and have added tags to a bunch of recent posts, but the tags don’t appear on the post pages after it’s published.
Do I have to program code into each individual blog page? Into the WP Editor? Check a box in the WP Admin? Where and how to activate tag visibility?
I’ve looked far and wide online and no one explains this, I must be missing something obvious… all help appreciated. Thanks –
Tom Ewer
Hi Andy,
That’s a theme issue — i.e. your theme isn’t set up to show tags. You can change your theme’s files manually to include tags but it requires a little PHP fiddling. It’s not really within the scope of this article I’m afraid, but if you ask on the WordPress.org forums I’m sure someone will help you out.
Cheers,
Tom
Chitraparna
Hi Tom,
The article is immensely useful.
My question: does it harm a blog’s SEO if I delete any category? Let’s I have some posts in A category and I want to shift them to B. Once I do and delete A, will it create any duplication problem, 404 errors or anything else unknown? Please guide.
BTW, can you please update the screenshots? I see new additions by Yoast on the tabs specified here.
Thanks a ton.
Tom Ewer
Hey Chitraparna,
So long as all the links update appropriately, there shouldn’t be an issue. Google we de-index the now non-existent pages and reindex accordingly.
Cheers,
Tom
Anil Saini
I’m new user of WP. Actually i started blogging with Google’s blogger platform. And blogger have not such option of category. This really help me to understand deference b/w category and tags. Thank you so much Tom Ewer. 🙂
Tom Ewer
Thanks Anil, glad it helped 🙂
John K
Great post Tom. I have blocked tag,category and archive thru yoast seo plugin as i thought it will create duplicate contents in google’s eyes. But you have shown the right way to use it.
Also, the use of ‘title template’ in tags and category is excellent advice.
Thank you.
Tom Ewer
Thanks for your comments John! Glad it was of use to you 🙂
Michael S. Doran
Great article, thank you! I have always used catagories pretty well, but this will certainly help me do an even better job. I needed a better understanding of how catageories and tags differ and now I have that. Thanks again.
Tom Ewer
Thanks Michael! Glad it helped 🙂
Mujahid Waseem
why my site is not come in search with diffrent tags…
Danielle
YAY!!! After all these years, A CLEAR, THOUGHT OUT, and WELL WRITTEN article about the importance of tags and categories!!! Plus you integrated the Yoast WordPress Plugin, and showed us how to properly set it up! Thanks, and Happy New Year!
Tom Ewer
Thank you very much Danielle! And a Happy New Year to you too 🙂
David @ Zuziko
finally an explanation that I can understand. I have not been using tags because I really did not understand exactly what they where for. A lot of other pages I have read on this scare me away with the duplicate content issue. Now I see they can actually be beneficial for me especially with the type of site I have.
Thank you so much for this article Tom
Tom Ewer
My pleasure David! Glad it helped 🙂
Reddy Rk
That a very Good Idea, very usefull.. thank’s
Tom Ewer
My pleasure Reddy 🙂
Daniel
Its really easy to make and i like this configuration, due to help google to find you without over optimization
Thanks a lot
Tom Ewer
Glad it helped Daniel!
Ankit
Yes, its very easy to post, Thanks for the author !
Lee Wilde
Very useful information, thanks. I really wasn’t sure what the difference was between categories and tags before I read this.
Tom Ewer
Glad it helped Lee!
Julian @ SlideHunter
Hi,
I recently submitted a question to the support forum but seems nobody responded it. The original question was posted here: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/seo-metadata-for-archive-page-using-custom-post-type-cpt?replies=1
Basically I am finding some difficulties to configure the meta descriptions and title for the custom post type page displaying all the custom post type posts.
I already configured the Titles & Meta -> Post Types -> Title template, Meta description template and Meta keywords template for the custom post type but this is not taking effect for the page (like the archive page (?)) listing all the custom post types.
Any advice will be strongly appreciated. Thanks.
Tom Ewer
What plugin are you using?
Rossana Roble
I have a new WP website and am afraid to click on the Plugin updates? My fear is that something will drastically change my site. Is this a legitimate fear?
Tom Ewer
Hey Rossana,
Not to say that anything won’t definitely go wrong, but you shouldn’t worry too much. What you *should* do is make sure that you have a backup before you update. That way, if anything does go wrong, you’ve got something to fall back on.
Cheers,
Tom
Julian @ SlideHunter
Hi Tom. I was using WordPress SEO By Yoast. I finally could find the way to troubleshoot the issue. Seems we need to fill the Custom Post Type Archives section (need to scroll down to the see this section on this page SEO -> Titles & Metas -> Post Types). I have updated the thread in the WordPress.org support forum.
Thanks.
Tom Ewer
Great to read you got the problem sorted and thanks for coming back to let us know about the solution Julian!
elvinson
i lost my categories traffic , almost half.. how to gain it back …any tips
Tom Ewer
Afraid not…Google works in mysterious ways!
Javed
Thanks for the great article. I just set everything accordingly. Hope for more visitors now. Thanks again.
Tom Ewer
No problem Javed!
Adhitya Chandra
Ooops, I got wrong way in tagging my posts. That’s why my posts would not appear in Google SERP. Thanks for the tips, Mate.
Tom Ewer
No problem Adhitya 🙂
forex
now i’m indexing categories and tags again
amj
i am new in this thing, but i have a question, is it important to use tags or keywords the same in my article ?
tags or keywords should be in the article too ?
Pijush Mitra
You clear my doubts about categories and tags. Thanks 😉
BBrian
“if categories are the table of contents for your blog, tags represent the index” … great line, thanks!
Kind Attention
Yeeaahh.., really that sums up, very apt way of putting across! 🙂
Categories >> Table Of Contsnts
Tags >> Index
WOW!
Kind Attention
Really that sums up in that line where it says what has been enumerated below, very apt way of putting across! 🙂
Categories are like Table Of Contents
Tags are like Index
WOW!
Tom Ewer
Thanks for the comments!
TVD
Good article, but there is no mention either here or in the help tab of what any of the taxonomy variables do. What’s the output? What’s %%term_title%%, etc? I can’t find that anywhere. Tons of Google searches, too.
TVD
I found an answer to my own question. The main variables are explained at http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-wordpress-seo-by-yoast-page-variable-inserting-extra-sep
Thanks for writing.
pavelsarker
nice& really so helpful
Joe
This is good stuff, thanks. I got to this post because I just saw in Google Webmaster Tools that I have duplicate title tags for my blog roll. Hopefully I fixed this by clicking no index of subpages of archives. Now, I like what you say about optimizing Categories & Tags. How do I get these codes that you place in the title template? I have no idea what that stuff means, or where to find it, or how to write it.
Skip
Really great read and it gives me a lot of confidence that I’m roughly doing things right. I’m thinking about installing a plugin that auto-links words within a post to tag archives if the 2 are the same. The nature of my site means this may be useful because my tags are normally iPhone apps and so inappropriate linking is unlikely. This article gives me more confidence that this could be a good idea. Thank you!
MJ @ The Flying Couponer
Great post! I will stop using too many tags LOL!
BH
You say that categories are like the table of content and tags are like the index. Does that mean you would advocate having identical keywords and tags.
For example, if you had a marathon and a shoe category. Could you categorize a post in Marathon and then tag “shoe” as well because it’s mainly about marathon but has a bit about shoes as well?
info
I’m currently using the SEOPressor plugin. Will adding the SEO By Yoast plugin effect anything? Thank you for this article
Daniel Salgado
Clear and easy to understand. Thanks for the helpful article!
sureyea
Hi Tom really great post. one question do i need to un-check meta robots box for category and tags in Yoast SEO.
Usually i use two categories and several tags for a single post. If i don’t check it looks like duplicate content within my websites is that true.
Willem-Siebe
Sorry, me again. Let’s say I do have my:
1) main blog page;
2) single author archive page.
Both identical content. You are right that this won’t cause a penalty, the article you mention (from Google!) is telling us:
QUOTE:
they’re talking about things like having multiple URLs on the same domain that point to the same content
Having this type of duplicate content on your site can potentially affect your site’s performance, but it doesn’t cause penalties.
But, on the page about ‘duplicate content’ (see https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=nl) it looks like they are telling a different story. The story that you won’t get penalized stays the same, but they do list some options to prevent it: better prevent it than let Google decide right ;-).
On this point I do have a question, because they mention:
Understand your content management system: Make sure you’re familiar with how content is displayed on your web site. Blogs, forums, and related systems often show the same content in multiple formats. For example, a blog entry may appear on the home page of a blog, in an archive page, and in a page of other entries with the same label.
Do you understand this? We both know that a category page and a homepage of a blog are usefull for the user, and should be indexed by Google… so totally normal that an individual blogpost (excerpt or full) is available on those pages. So why do they mention this. Besides that, ‘knowing how your CMS works’ isn’t really an advice they are giving how to handle the situation they are describing.
I’m really curious what your answer is to this ;-).
Kind regards,
Willem
Willem-Siebe
Hi, you say about duplicate content:
There is in reality just one valid reason why you might choose to noindex taxonomy/archive pages — when the pages are of no use to searchers (e.g. date based archives). If a page is of potential use to a searcher, it should be included within the index.
But if a page has no value of a user: with the noindex you only prevent that the page shows up in Google SERP’s. The page still excist, people can view it and people can link to it…
Let’s take a one-author blog as an example, this has a link to the author archive, this is the same content as the main blog page.
When I follow your advice to noindex this, this maybe solves the problem that it is not showing on Google SERP’s, but people can still view this page of no value AND people can still link to it.
That you mention noindex when discussing duplicate content, is not clear to me. A better choice to prevent duplicate issues would be a 301 redirect…
Do you agree?
Kind regards,
Willem
BrandNewTip
btw how many tags per post should I use on my website?
Too many is not good for doing seo, is it?
thanks for instruction with seo yoast
jamoroki
I am trying to open the zipped download of SEO by Yoast. Anyone know how?
manu
Thanks a lot for this tutorial. Is it ok If I am using the following logic?
manu
Sorry, the code was stripped out. Here it is
if(is_single() || is_page()) {
[meta name=”googlebot” content=”index,noarchive,follow,noodp”]
[meta name=”robots” content=”all,index,follow”]
} else {
[meta name=”googlebot” content=”index,noarchive,follow,noodp”]
[meta name=”robots” content=”all,index,follow”]
}
Yogesh
Hello Tom
I was totally confused between tags and categories but you article answer all my question.Its really a great article with lot of knowledge.Between i want to know how much tags should we use for a each post to index it well.
ALso i have seen many website using more than 25+ tags for every post . . whats the reason behind that ??? Is it Black Head Technique !
Thanxx in advance 🙂
Marcy Calabrese
Hello and thanks for this great info.
I am not understanding how to set title templates in the taxonomies.
Do I just put in the title or do I put the words in between the %s?
I am confused on this part completely. Thanks
Alison
Golden! You explained this topic exceptionally well and have truly clarified this topic for me. Thanks so much and I look forward to coming back!!
A.R.
Shahnawaz
Dear Tom Ewer; I want to thank you very much, this great for me and my website, It is not best but too much batter way to increase traffic. tags and categories are the most important to getting more traffic.
Thank you very much because I am finding to sol this problems from 2 months. Now I am feeling relax.
Paul Sarwana
Thank you for the post, Tom. This is by far the best web page that explains about how to use category and tag. Before reading this I thought category and tag are like keywords. You show me that that is not the case.
serenamariani
Hi Tom,
thanks for this useful article- as a rookie, I was doing the haphazardly tagging thing (although not to the point of choco-goodness ;). My bad! I am doing a bit of an SEO cleanup and have been told to streamline my tags and get rid of the underused/silly ones. Problem is, if I simple delete them from the WP dashboard “Tags” menu, I am left with lots of 404s in my sitemap for links of the type
http://www.blogname.com/tag/deletedtag
Do you know of a way to avoid this and actually get rid of those pesky tags? Thanks a lot
Oh9.org
Okay, so I always pretty much used tags. And yes, when I look at my analytics it seems like there is indeed higher engagement.
What I really wonder about, is about the tag cloud. Is it useful to put it somewhere on your page?
Tom Ewer
I use it on my Archives page; I think it’s useful in the right context.
Haku
So, I want to try and be sure on this. If I am using this plugin (Simple Tags) to automatically link to a tag’s page when I use it in my post, I won’t be penalized for having, say, 15+ tags that get used in this manner? I’m talking about tags that refer to a Genre/Language etd, etc.
For example:
Genre: Action, Comedy, Sci-fi
Language: English
And of course many more things could be used like that. I have an upcoming blog focusing on things like TV shows, books, and short stories (and more) so I don’t want to hurt myself by auto linking.
But this means that every post done in this manner will have quite a few links going back to tag pages (1 link per tag per post at most)
Tom Ewer
Hey Haku
As long as you are tagging conscientiously it sounds to me that these links would provide value to the end user. I see no reason why Google would penalise you for that.
Cheers,
Tom
Jack
first i really appreciate your information, but i am really confused now, just built a site through wordpress, and do a lot of search online about whether it is good to index tag and category page, but got different answers, not a SEO guru ,so i kind of made a disicion just out of my feelings, got to say that it is tough when it comes to SEO, anyway i love ur blog, pretty sure i will come back on a regular basis. nice job
Tim Brownson
Hi Tom, only just found this site when searching for “should you use tags in wordpress or does google see it as duplicate content”.
My SEO guy has done an astounding job getting me back on the front page of Google for the term ‘Life Coach’ after my previous company had almost got me de-indexed for black hat tactics.
He ran some SEO tool, the name of which escapes me now, and after a week pulled up a great long report basically saying I was knee deep in duplicate content.
I didn’t have any real duplicate content, i.e. intentionally and about 900 posts so I was confused. Anyway to cut a long story short it seemed that WordPress was generating a unique URL for every tag and ever time I published in more than one category.
I spent a couple of days stripping them all out and after I did watched the site climb back up the rankings again. I can always tell when I hit the front page because it’s like night and day in terms of cold inquires coming in.
So anyway, I’m totally confused now. What you’re saying makes sense and it never really made any to me that Google would slap me for using such a staple of blogging. On the flip side I trust my guy (he’s done SEO for some huge corporations and helps me as a favor as much as anything) and since we did that a couple of months ago I have seen an improvement that I cannot put down to anything else because I haven’t changed anything else.
I know I’m late to the party here, but any feedback would be appreciated. Could it be my theme that is quirky and confusing Google, I use Atahualpa?
Tom Ewer
Hey Tim,
The first thing I would say is that if something has worked for you, rely on your own personal experience!
Having said that, I am adamant that using tags responsibly and having them indexed by Google should have no adverse impact on your rankings. There could be a thousands reasons why Google was unhappy with your site and correlation does of course not necessarily lead to causation.
Cheers,
Tom
Tim Brownson
Thanks a lot for taking the time to respond Tom, much appreciated and your advice is taken on board!
manik
Hello,
Do I need to display the tag under post? or if i will hide them from visitors by not displaying then will search engine find these tags link?
Tom Ewer
I’m afraid I don’t understand your question Manik, sorry 🙁
Christian Karasiewicz
Manik, you need to display the tags under your posts. When you hide them (which I’m assuming your removed them entirely), this means the search engines cannot see them and therefore cannot index them because they aren’t listed on the page.
Raj
Excellent information about categories and tags,this useful info. clear my all confusion about how to use this two categories and tags perfectly in my wordpress blog.
All of Themes
Great post! Thanks m8!
Mark
Thanks Tom,
Excellent post. There’s so much conflicting advice on this issue but I’m sure you’re right.
I was a chronic over tagger and I have recently no indexed and no followed all my tags one one of my sites.
My rankings for my posts themselves do seem to have improved but my traffic levels have crashed as my tags were generating lots of traffic.
I’ve also carried out a review of exactly which tags were generating the traffic and I’m going to ‘switch those back on’ but also just stick with a user focused tag set.
I was wondering, if do index but no follow makes more sense in terms of retaining link juice to the main pages, or are you then just penalizing the tag pages instead of the posts?
ALSO I REALLY like the theme on this site. Is it available anywhere?
Thanks again.
Mark
Tom Ewer
Hi Mark,
I think your assumption is right. Unfortunately it’s a custom theme and isn’t available, sorry!
Cheers,
Tom
Mark
Thanks Tom,
What’s your view on tag clouds in sidebars being potential keyword stuffing?
(My email seems to have replaced my name on that last comment by the way, be grateful if you could remove it)
Thanks
Mark
Mark
The name that is, not the whole comment – if possible…
Tom Ewer
Hi Mark,
I wouldn’t recommend the use of tag clouds. Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYPX_ZmhLqg.
Having said that, I do use a tag cloud in the Archives page on my blog (http://www.leavingworkbehind.com/archives/) — I do think they serve a purpose in the right context.
Cheers,
Tom
RB
Tom – Very insightful! Opinions vary on tag/categ indexation but I agree with reasoning here.
Do have a question. Currently, in Yoast, I have” title template” for tag + categ are populated with (%%term_title%% Archives %%page%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%), while “meta description template” is (%%category_description%%) and (%%tag_description%%) respectively. I should point out that it’s a new blog with no real content just yet and my goal is to have elements set up correctly for smooth sailing. That said, as categories and tags get added, do I need to be filling out their descriptions so that yoast’s “description templates” pull thatt info? What is the benefit of naming categories? Lastly, if I don’t name and with my current set up, what would a search result end up looking like (what will meta be?)
Thanks in advance!
R
Tom Ewer
Hi RB,
Creating meta descriptions for your taxonomies certainly isn’t necessary (I don’t do it) but it won’t do you any harm.
I’m not sure what you mean by “naming categories.”
Cheers,
Tom
RB
Thanks Tom! I won’t bother with meta descriptions for taxonomies then.
What I meant by “naming categories” is entering a “Description” for them when created, otherwise (%%category_description%%) wouldn’t pull any info.
Would you know how the “meta description” in a search result of a category appear if no description is entered? I imagine it would pull the first blog entry associated with that category? Using your example:
Running – Health & Fitness blog
(Administrator edit: link removed)
April 13, 1013 – ????????
Tom Ewer
Hi RB,
Google pulls what it deems to be relevant content from the site and displays it in the meta description. It won’t necessarily just be the text at the top of the page.
Cheers,
Tom
Lasse L
Thanks Tom,
A great article, which gave me some answers I’ve been searching for a long time! I’m using SEO by Yoast, but your explanation are the best i read untill now, thanks again!
I use some tags on my site, but have been very confused regarding the question about duplicate content, but can understand there’s no need to worry. The article from Google, which you are refering to, are dated in 2008. Does the recent Panda updates changed anything regarding this?
BR from a SEO newbie. 🙂
Tom Ewer
Hey Lasse,
The short answer is no 🙂
Cheers,
Tom
Nathaniell
Thanks for this post. I have always, and accidentally used way to many tags. With all these recent Google updates, I’m really trying to do as you said, “less is more” type blogging.
BTW, for anyone who is doubting this strategy, it must be working because I constantly run into ManageWP’s blog in Google looking for stuff. I’m also a member of the service, and think it’s great that ManageWP practices what they preach.
Thanks guys.
Cam
Hi,
I was wondering why a post should be in no more than one or two categories?
Joshua
Thanks Tom! It’s funny how long I’ve gone not really paying that close attention to the differentiation between tags and categories. Great article.
Nick Graff
Thank you Tom! That was more than I expected. I never thought of linking to my categories or tags. I will use that. Thanks!
Ranvir Singh
Greetings,
I have a newbie question here:
Do categories and tag metas need to be visually displayed via blog posts for search engines to sniff out? I purposely hide my category metas on blog posts and only display tag metas to keep the posts nice and clean.
Does this mean I have unlikely chance of search engine robots not picking up my content or can search engines still see the meta tags and categories behind the scene?
I hope this question makes sense.
Thanks in advance, this post was awesome.
R
Tom Ewer
They don’t have to be displayed on every page, no. It would be helpful to have them linked to from somewhere though. However, the very existence of the pages is helpful in itself.
Ranvir
Thank you for your prompt reply!
This blogpost was extremely helpful!
God Bless.
Frases
Thanks a lot for the post.
Tom, do you think that now its importante put the name of the site each time in each post, I think that its like lots optimitation for the site.
Great post
Tom Ewer
I think that’s good for branding but not vital — it’s up to you!
Nina
I was tagging my posts but I didn’t have much of a clue what these were actually for until I read this article. I really appreciate that you’ve given some real gems of information here: the Yoast settings and interlinking to the category and tag pages. This really makes a lot of sense. Thanks!!
Tom Ewer
It’s my pleasure Nina 🙂
Deny
I use All in one seo and i customized my tag name and slug for seo propose and i get excellent result!
mahadzira
Tq for the tips. Before this i was crazy on linking and tagging. Your advice on tagggin and yoast plugin sure help me much..tq admin
Tom Ewer
No problem 🙂
Trevor McCann
Great post Tom. I used to probably over tag a bit, but I pulled back on that. I even find that many tags out rank the posts in search engines. ;P
Tom Ewer
Is that a bad thing?
Joao Rostli
“category pages with introductory text” and “resource pages” ?
What about a post about this? Very interesting stuff.
My website (Administrator edit: link removed) needs a lot of your tips.
Rocky Rawat
Hi Joao, These have to be exact as usual
Keith Davis
Enjoyed reading this one Tom – flowed very easilly.
Categories and tags have always baffled me.
I use categories, but have never used tags.
Mike Schinkel in his comment above said:
“I’ve been explaining these same ideas to people for years but I gotta say I’ve never heard it explained more clearly and concisely than this”
And I have to agree with that.
Thanks for posting this one.
Tom Ewer
No problem — thanks for the kind words Keith!
Scott
Thanks for this post it will help a lot, my blog is almost 4 years old and my tags and categories are a complete mess
Tom Ewer
I know the feeling Scott 😉 my own blog is a mess — I do intend to go back and optimize my categories and tags soon.
Mike Schinkel
I’ve been explaining these same ideas to people for years but I gotta say I’ve never heard it explained more clearly and concisely than this: “If categories are the table of contents for your blog, tags represent the index.” Kudos!
Tom Ewer
Hey Mike,
Thanks, but I can’t take credit for that way of explaining it — I read it first over at Lorelle on WordPress 🙂
Cheers,
Tom
Michael Kleina
Wow, i found this site because of an entry in facebook. Fantastic, i will try this.
Harsh Agrawal
For a Small WordPress site it’s good..but for a larger WordPress blog I recommend to keep categories and tags as noindex but dofollow and use resource pages rather.Which will have better conversion….
An example link: http://www.shoutmeloud.com/wordpress-guide
Tom Ewer
Care to share the reasoning behind your opinion Harsh?
P.S. That link is broken.
Harsh Agrawal
Tom
For many reasons:
1) When we try to tank categories and tags…. They keep changing…I mean pages.. So there will be Keyword dance depending upon Keyword density and other on Page factors..Even generating backlinks to categories and tags pages won’t be that easy..
2) When we have resource pages:
We control the content and instead of showing all the content from a particular category…We can only link to best of content from particular tag/category…. We can also control the ON page SEO…And since it’s a valuable resource page…It’s more likable to get natural backlinks and even you can easily get backlinks for such pages by guest posting or pitching it to others….
One easy way to make most out of:
Create a resource list page.. For example, 101 ways to manage WordPress site..
You can have ratio of 50:50 where first 50 links are from your site and rest 50 are the best of link from web… This way you will get benefit of outbound link SEO…
Do let me know if you still see that link as broken.. What message you getting?
404 not found or something else??
Tom Ewer
Hi Harsh,
You’ve made some great points. I also like resource pages, but I don’t necessarily think it’s an either/or situation. For instance, I quite like category pages with introductory text, which I suppose is a sort of hybrid of the two. Also, resource pages require ongoing upkeep, whilst category pages are updated automatically (with fresh content, which Google loves).
The page is working now 🙂
Cheers,
Tom
Aniruddha
Hie Harsh,
I am really happy to see your comment and getting idea over resource list page. So you are using category and tag along with resouce list pages or just resource list pages ?
Muhammad Jahanzaib
Thanks, Dear Harsh, Can You Tell Me That, Tags Are important in WordPress or Not? Because I m using Just Categories in WordPress.
Vaidas
Hello Harsh and Tom,
can you please explain in more details what do you call the resource pages? Is it the page which is filtered by the category and tag together? Is it possible somehow to make google indexing such pages? Maybe there is a way to write meta titles, descriptions and keywords for such pages?
Thanks in advance..!
vinutha jadhav
I think the tags are not necessary some of them tell that using the tags will penalize the site is it true?
Maria
Hi, I have a website isocials.org. Can I no index tag taxonomy, or I should index them.
obuh
I doubt. Tags are very useful and helps in SEO rankings.