Often overlooked, and sometimes misunderstood, tags can be significant source of search engine traffic if used properly.
In my experience, search hits landing on tag pages can attribute to as much as one third of all search engine visitors for a site.
Why are Tags so good ?
Quite simply, tags automatically generate new content for you, which can be indexed and ranked, thus also receive search engine traffic.
If you assign the tag 'fresh yogurt drinks' to the post, WordPress will automatically create a new page where all posts with the tag 'fresh yogurt drinks' will be listed. Assign a couple of tags to the post and you have automatically generated couple of new pages to your blog that are indexable and can attract search engine visitors.
The power of tags really comes to play when you reuse same tag over and over again. Because posts usually list tags at the end, these reused tags will have more incoming links to them, and thus pick up more of Page Rank juice. With greater Page Rank, they are also more likely to be shown in the search engine results.
Vlad's Tag Tips
- Pick your tags. The only point in ranking tags in search engines is if your tag is actually a phrase that will be searched for and thus generate visitors.
- Have excerpts on your archive pages instead of full content. You want tag pages to give only a hint of the content, and you also want to prevent duplicate content issue. (hint: Open archive.php of your theme and replace the_content with the_excerpt).
- Use 'tag sculpting'. This is similar to normal seo sculpting technique, and is especially efficient for new sites. Instead of listing tags after every post, create a dedicated tag page and display the best tags there. Since the tag page will be linked from all pages of your site, it will accumulate massive amount of page rank and proceed to spread it evenly among your most important tags. When the overall page rank of the site grows, you can enable the tags in post again. (hint: To create a dedicated tags page, name it 'Tags' and add this code to your page.php, after the_content line: <?php if (is_page('Tags') && function_exists('wp_tag_cloud')) wp_tag_cloud('number=45'); ?> )
- Track your tag performance. Success does not exist without acknowledgment so you need to have a way to monitor actual impact of tag optimization. Luckily you can set this up using Google Analytics advanced segments and here is how.
On the Google Analytics sidebar look for advanced segments, and then click on "Create new custom segment in the top-right corner.
Find 'Landing page' under 'Dimensions/Content', and drag and drop it to the right. Set condition to 'Contains' and value to '/tag/' (this is WordPress default for tags).
Go back to Dashboard, select your new segment from the advanced segments select box (found above the main analytics graph) and you are set.
Here is the illustration of tag optimization from an actual site.
Incoming traffic to tag pages was increased ten times (from 50 to 500 visitors/day), which in turn increased overall site traffic by around 20%. And these numbers scale as well. Tag pages also tend to have low bounce rates and high pages/visit numbers.
Conclusion
Tags can be very powerful way to improve search engine rankings and traffic to your site.
But as with all SEO efforts, this is no magical way to increase traffic. Careful planning and conideration should be made in planning your tag strategy. Mind your tags!
(update 24.01.2009: You can check phrase 'fresh yogurt drinks' in Google, and the tag I used is actually already on page 1)
Continue reading:
- SEO Experiment with Tags continued
- How to Improve Page Rank? Linking is the Key!
- SEO Case Study: From Zero to a Hero in One Month
Posted in: SEO, WordPress
TAGS:create tag page, fresh yogurt drinks, google analytics improve ranking, google analytics tag placement, google improve search hits, how improve search placement, improve google hits, improve search engine placement, improve search page placement, improve search tags, improving google hits, improving search engine placement, search engine placement, tag cloud, tag page, tagging improve search, tags page, wordpress improve google hits, wordpress seo, yoghurt drinks pictures, yogurt drinks
Hi! My name is Vladimir Prelovac. I am a computer engineer by profession and an adventurer by state of mind.
42 Comments
Vlad,
I was doing some research on the proper use of tags in relation to categories. I like the idea of initial "tag sculpting". I'll put that to use on some sites.
Thx,
R
and what are your thoughts on custom taxonomies Vladimir? they work well for structure, but are they as SEO-able as tags?
(re: http://justintadlock.com/archives/2009/05/06/custom-taxonomies-in-wordpress-28)
Must I do this for your Amazing Grace theme or it's already done?
Really very helpful post.and it seems to sound rocking the traffic with the tags...Hurrey !!!
It would but categories are not as flexible as tags, and if you enable both you will have lots of duplicate content.
is there a dupe content issue if you multi-tag posts?
so if more than one tag archive is showing the same post except, is that a problem?
Hi,
according to your explanation (internal link juice by reusing tags) I suppose the experiment also would work with categories being reused.
Why not combining both by using categories as tags, i.e., categories get rel=tag. WP enables this. Maybe a combined "cat-tag" ranks even better than tag alone? Anyone has any comment on this idea?
Vladimir, thank you so much for this excellent post! I've known of you for some time because of your beautiful Amazing Grace theme, but I've only just come to your blog to read your articles. I'm so glad I did!
I've been recently wondering about the benefits of tags vs categories and just generally about the whole taxonomy issue. I've been thinking that tags are a much better (ie finer-grained) way of telling search engines what your site, and specific articles are about. But I was still quite confused in my thinking. Your article has changed all that, it makes so much sense. I'm going to implement all of your suggestions and track it to see what happens. Then I'm going to come back and read every other page of your site!
I really, really appreciate the mini Google Analytics tutorial. So many articles talk about tracking with Analytics but they never show you how to, and I haven't had the time to go through the learning curve with it. So thank you again for filling in the details. I'm adding you to my RSS feed right now.
VERY interesting Vladimir. A question or 2.
1) Can you safely assign multiple tags (to a single article) without duplicate content concerns..? If the same excerpt text appears in multiple tag archives, is that (enough of) a dup content issue..?
2) How is it exactly that "the tag page will be linked from all pages of your site" if you remove the "tags after every post"..? Via a "Tag" page in the main menu ..?
Vladimir,
Thanks so much for this info. I have implemented it but please, how can I remove all my sidebars and Ajax tabs from my Tags page
http://princesioni.com/tags/
Hi Vladimir,
I have a another question, which is probably a bit stupid. I'm rather new to all this.
You wrote:
Instead of listing tags after every post, create a dedicated tag page and display the best tags there.
So if I don't use tags on the post, how does the post get connected to any tags on the tags page? Do I need to do something else? I set up the custom request in Google Analytics.
Vladimir, I got this to work! Thanks so much for posting this.
I just have a couple of questions. My blog is very new, with only 11 posts. I am using All in One SEO. Should I no longer add tags from my tags menu to my posts and just add the categories and keywords? Should I delete the tags I have added to the posts I have?
Thanks for all your help.
It's not old. I just didn't want to seem like a latecomer to the party! I can't believe I just found your site.
Thanks for all this info. It's helped me more in a couple of hours than all other sites in weeks.
There is no archive.php. All that's available is:
* Comments (comments.php)
* Footer (footer.php)
* Header (header.php)
* Main Index Template (index.php)
* Search Form (searchform.php)
* Theme Functions (functions.php)
* bfa_postinfo.php (bfa_postinfo.php)
* comments-paged.php (comments-paged.php)
* legacy.comments.php (legacy.comments.php)
The thread is not that old. Code should go to your archive.php
Hello, I know this thread is old, but I am also wondering about where to post the code if my theme has no page.php. I tried posting it in the index.php page, but that did bad things to my blog!
Thanks for any help you can give me.
Vladamir.
re you comments "I would noindex categories, and leave the tags."
In this case, do you think it's worthwhile having multiple categories..? Or would it make sense to have a single category like "News" (where navigation/menu structure is not an issue) ..?
Hi
Problems solved... down to permnalinks setting, an .htaccess file not writable and so on. BTW I created a new page 'Tags' and after a while it populated automatically with my tags. I disabled the Tag Cloud in the sidebar too. The links are all working now and I'm looking forward to evaluating how well these changes work in bringing in more traffic.
Steve