How To Use Tags Correctly
If you read yesterdays post you probably figured out that tags are really important for your blog posts. And like I promised, here is how to use tags correctly to get optimal views and follows for your blog:
1. Timing
Timings are really important when it comes to blogging topics and tags. If you find out that something is trending or being searched a lot that day that relates to what you write about I would suggest adding that to your tags and you will definitely notice a spike in views.
2. Amount
I’ve noticed that a lot of people don’t know how many tags to use and often use too many or too little which effects their stats badly. In my opinion the perfect amount to use is between 5 and 10 because if you use less than five you will lose a lot of views you could have got and if you use more than ten WordPress will categorise your post as spam and it won’t show up on the tags section of the reader.
3. Be less specific
I’ve heard a lot of people encourage using specific tags but to be honest I have found using less specific ones actually helps more. This is probably because a less specific tag like “food” is much more likely to have a larger following then something more specific like “salad.” However, if you prefer you can also add a couple of specific tags with your non-specific ones.
4. Be honest
Don’t lie in your tags section. Even though it’s difficult to get views sometimes and using false tags may get you more views it will actually be a bad thing for your blog in the long run. People will figure out your posts are just clickbait and you will end up decreasing your following instead of increasing it. Plus, since most people will figure out you’re lying they will most likely not revisit your blog.
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thanks for this advice; will start using tomorrow!
👍
Awesome hope it helps!
Hi There,
You really have some good advice thank you, but can you help me understand exactly what a tag is, I need to be sure we are on the same page, thank you.
Thanks and sure! Tags are something on your post that will helps the audience understand what the topic of the post it for example if it’s a poem the tags would be something like “poem”, “poetry”, “poems”.
Do you think there is a sweet spot for the number of categories you use for posts? I typically use 3-5 but didn’t know if that really impacts tags / where posts show up!
Usually it’s recommended to use a single category per post. However, at most you can use 2.
Always avoid overlapping category with tags, it may impact your site discovery on google and WordPress.
Interesting – I always assumed that overlapping categories and tags would help google ranking and WordPress discovery!
Actually it results in duplicity of tags, and impacts Google ranking of a site.
Indeed it helpful 🙏
I usually use 1-3 I feel like using too many categories kind of effects your posts negatively as well but I’m not so sure about categories so if 3-5 work for you you should definitely stick with it!
Great post, it is definitely informative with great tips.😊💜
Thank you so much!!
You are certainly welcome😊💜
shared your post 🙂
Thank you so much!!
You’re welcome
Never lie, that’s very true.
You will get a bad name in no time.
Yes exactly it’s so not worth lying!
Nice post and advice
Thank you!
Checkout my link too
Thank you for the tips!!
You’re welcome hope they help!
cheers Pooj.
I knew tags were overall a good thing, but in moderation. But I didn’t know that the “sweet spot” was 5-10 tags. Thank you; I learned something here.
So glad it helped!!
I’ve started to expand my tags, its great advice. Thanks for doing this.
Thanks hope it helps!
Thank you so much 😉
Hope it helps!
Always helping the people out… good post. We need more happier and positive writer/bloggers in the space. 🙂
Thank you so much!!
Thank you for this post, really needed it; always tried using too many tags lol.
Lol I did that too and then realised it did more damage than good.
Straight to the point. ;]
Hope it helps!
I really appreciate your post. Great tips to keep in mind. Hope you have a good day. 🙂
Thank you and have a good day too!
Thank you so much for this! We had our own thoughts but weren’t totally sure.
-Mike and Joya
https://marriedstrong.com/
You’re welcome and hope it helps!
This us definitely true! Great post 😊
Thank you!
Thanks for sharing! So are tags more effective than categories? A post about this would be great!
They are from what I’ve seen but I will definitely work on a post about that!
These are great tips! Thank you!
Thank you hope they help!
Hey Pooja, I didn’t know where exactly to put this comment but I would like to say a huge thank you. You’ve supported and liked me and my sister’s blog, since we started and you continue to show love. Your content is amazing and I didn’t know you’re like a celebrity in these blogging streets 😂😂 keep doing what you do. I love it ❤️ and thank you again 🙏🏾🙏🏾 from V
You’re very welcome I’m happy to support a blog I love so much!💖
Thanks! Great advice.
Thanks hope it helps!
Thank you for the advice. I’m still trying to grasp blogging. I do want it to be conducive and constructive.
You’re welcome and hope this helps!
I hope so, too. I’ve only been blogging for a few weeks now. I’m looking for the most persuasive and productive advice I can get. I love the flow of you and a couple other bloggers.
I’m glad that we have this community. 📚💖
Thank you so much and I’m so thankful for this community too!
Is there such of a search engine for tags on wordpress and if there is what tags should you be using?
Is there a search engine for tags on wordpress and if there is what tags should you be using?
I think the tags section on the Reader is like a search engine and I would suggest searching for tags that are similar to what you write about like maybe “travel”.
I just started blogging and rarely used tags. Not anymore! I feel better knowing why tags are used. Thank you!
You’re welcome just make sure you use less than ten!
Hi, your advice is so helpful. I just started my blog and am trying to figure out how to make it work. Thank you!
So glad to hear that!
informative
Thanks!
Thank you so much for the post. I ll try using this technique in my blogs
You’re welcome hope it helps!
Hey Pooja. First, thanks for following my blog. As a new blogger, I love to see people following my blog instead of just passing by. Secondly, can you elaborate on how to know what tags are trending, like statistically? Love your posts, so concise and on point.
Thank you and for what tags are trending I usually just Google it. I don’t know if that’s helpful but that’s what I’ve been doing.
Thanks.
😀
wow i had no idea that if u put more than 10 it counts as spam lol. i mean i don’t really put that many but i didnt know there was kinda a boundary!
Yeah I didn’t know for a long time either but now that I do I try to spread the word to help other bloggers out!
Ma’am!
I’ve really enjoyed your posts.
They’re being specific to my own peculiar challenges.
I hope to contact you for a better talk.
God bless you.
Keep giving us sweet posts.
😁😁😁😁
Thank you so much!
After reading this blog post I went through all of my blog posts and added tags and took tags out. This was really helpful. thank you.
I’m so glad the post helped!
hi,
Interesting post, and i shall use ‘non-specific’ tags here afterwards for sure.
I also wonder if there is a way to update tag for few of our own older posts? Any guidelines would be good, but may be not the Bulk action of ‘tag’ to all posts. Thanks again
Thanks! Yes if you edit older posts and go to the tags section of individual posts you are editing which is found on the right hand side you can add tags to specific posts.
Very helpful! Thank you!
Thank you!
Thanks PoojaG. Your posts are really helpful. A question I have is how do I efficiently determine which tags or topics are trending. I’d like to set up an automated way to gather up current events that are related to particular subjects—based largely on tags used in my posts. When those subjects are trending, I can update or publicize previous articles or write new ones. But, searching for this by hand is very time-consuming. If you have ideas, I’ll look forward to reading about them in an upcoming post. Thanks so much.
I’m so glad you find them helpful! I think Ubersuggest would be really helpful for that- they have a lot of features that will help you find the best tags to use, what’s trending etc. Hope that helps!
Hi. Thank you for your thoughtful and useful posts.
Creating an efficient and effective tag and category structure is one of the more important promotional steps bloggers often overlook. It’s important to get it right. And you’re dead on about people who use too few or too many tags are losing out.
Just a heads up, though. The maximum number of tags and categories is 15, in any combination. 🙂
I double check this on my blogs every now and again to make sure it hasn’t changed. But I think it won’t because it’s in WP’s documentation.
https://wordpress.com/blog/2014/04/21/better-tagging/
*Remember posts tagged with a combination of more than 15 tags and categories are removed from the Reader to ensure that tags contain relevant content. You can use any combination of tags and categories, as long as the total count doesn’t exceed the magic number 15.
Cheers!
(And keep up the great work. 🙂 )
You’re absolutely right about the 15 tags, I need to edit that and this comment was stuck in spam too, sorry!
Have a great rest of your week too.
No worries on the spam thing. In fact, apologies for posting that twice. :/ The first one disappeared into the ether when I hit send. No notifications. Thought it might’ve gotten apam filtered due to the link. Tried again without one. Also disappeared into the ether. Left it at that. 😉
There are a couple or three pages around that “recommend 5 – 10 tags as optimal” and also mention if there are too many tags, WP won’t put the post on the reader. I think over the years some people have misinterpreted that, and posted 10 as a hard cap. It’s possible you saw a site that said 10 was max.
I started blogging way back in 1995 (OK, it wasn’t called blogging then 😉 ) But only came to WordPress dot com in 2015. It took a few posts on the new blog to figure out the hard cap, even then, was 15 tags and categories. I probably had to find that page I posted the link to before it dawned on me. 😉
Yeah WordPress tends to put a lot of comments on my site that are real comments in the spam folder for some reason 😞
Wow, we started blogging on the same year. Well on WordPress at least. I started in 2015 too. I think I must have read one of those posts that mentioned 10 tags are the most one should use and didn’t realise till later on that 15 was actually the maximum. 😂
🙂 2015 was a good year.
I don’t get as many comments as you so, unsurprisingly, not quite so many end up in the spam folder. But this does remind me to go see what Akismet has filtered out lately.
Oh… one other thing: if a post goes over the 15 tags + categories limit, it won’t show up in the WordPress reader at all. Not in the tags section, not in the categories section and not in the “newest posts” feed. (Learned that the hard way more than once. 🙁 ) The post is basically invisible until the search engines index it.
Yeah it’s a good idea to check your spam once in a while. I do it every few days just in case.
I’ve read about that too and now I go out of my way to make sure my tags are never more than 15.
Good post.
One correction, however. The maximum number of tags and categories is 15, not 10, and in any combination. (I’ve tested this.)
From WP’s document “Better Tagging for Increased Traffic”
*Remember posts tagged with a combination of more than 15 tags and categories are removed from the Reader to ensure that tags contain relevant content. You can use any combination of tags and categories, as long as the total count doesn’t exceed the magic number 15.
Thanks and you’re right it is 15 tags. I wrote this post quite a while back and at the time I thought it was 10 tags because I had read that somewhere like 5 or 6 years ago. And it might have been at the time, not too sure. However, it’s 15 tags now and I need to edit some of these older posts.
Thanks so adding that information and I apologise for the late reply. You were unfortunately stuck in my spam.
Thanks for the link to this, Pooja. I had no idea about the amount of tags. I always thought the more the better. Would making changes to amount of tags I’ve used in past posts make a difference, or should I just implement this going forward?
I had the same issue but I learnt a few years ago that it’s better to use a smaller amount of tags. It does help to change the amount in older posts too but mainly implement it going forward.
Okay. Great. I’ll see if I can do both, but will definitely heed to this going forward. Thanks!
My pleasure!