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
Hi
Ref: 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: )
My question is this - are yu referring to creating a page called Tags in WP admin or some other way. If in WP, what, other than give it the title 'Tags' should one do with it and how does it get populated with tags? Sorry I am not a ph programmer but I did created a page called Tags and added the code as above into the page.php file for my theme.
The BIG problem is that now none of the links to tags work anymore!
Please help.
PS I had All in One SEO Pack plugin installed and thought maybe this was the cause but no, even after deactivating it things were still broken.
Steve
It's me again just one thing ALL works great but, I can only get the Archive when my tags are posted via regular posting and not when tagging a from a page??? I use Simple tag WP plugin, to post tags in pages, but for some reason they are not picked up as an archive like my post do. Any suggestions??? Maybe I need to do some single.php hacking??? Look forward to some more of yours or anyone else great SEO insight...Thanks again Jon.
Vladimir AWESOME Work and Post! This SEO Tag Method Works like gangbusters...just love it and ALL the other good SEO info you Share. Thank You
Nope, I do not think so.
Hi Vladimir,
I am really fond of using WP Cumulus for displaying a tag cloud, does this SEO trick still work with the flash using WP Cumulus?
Thanks,
JR
Hi Vlad,
I should take a minute to thank you for all this info its extremely helpful and easy to follow for even newbies like me.
I had one question. I am using your theme Amazing Grace, and I noticed there is no page.php template file.
So when you mention above to add:
)
to page.php, where can I do that with your theme.
Any help is very much appreciated.
Very nice. Specially This post helps in 2 ways. Using Google analytics and using Tags in WordPress Blog.
Duplicate contents are biggest threat, which can be over come with custom excerpts.
Vladimir,
I agree with you on indexing the tags pages, but I think that category pages should be indexed as well, depending on how you do things. If you've got 30 articles in a category called "acid reflux" and you use breadcrumbs nav with the text "Acid Reflux" it serves the same purpose as a tagging page.
In this case, I wouldn't use the tag "acid reflux" on any of those posts, just in the category link. But, I would allow that cat page to be indexed.
For duplicate content concerns, it's up to you whether you allow the_excerpt to show in category pages or tag pages. Allowing the excerpts seems to me like it would just scream duplicate.
BTW, I love you tags explanation. I am so working this into our company blog. We are already over 1000 visits per day organic, without tags.
-Seth
Vlad,
Once again, awesome information! Since I first stumbled across your site, I was wondering how to make a dedicated Tag page and how to use it for added SEO. Also, thanks for explaining how to set up the Google Analytics to test the success of that page.
Giacomo, it's not important what SEOs say, but what SEOs do. We all have different experiments and methodology. I would noindex categories, and leave the tags.
Thanks for the tip!
Now I'll sit and wait... to see what happens :)
@Ivan
If this is the case, then how do we place the new tag - as Vladimir sites his own example of 'fresh yogurt drinks'?
Hi Vladimir,
Only a question...what do you think about using noindex meta robots with TAGS (and also CATEGORY)? Many SEO says that is the best thing to do to avoid duplicate content.
For instance look here: http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/ (section 3)
Thank you
G.
@ Hardeep - Remove the line in the WP Theme you are using that calls the tags to be displayed on a single.php page (the page that displays the blog post). Or just comment it.
DO NOT TOUCH THE DATABASE! :)
Hi
I plan on using this but have questions:
1. You mention "each page on the website will point to this page". Because this page, like other pages, is in the header - is that why?
2. Is it important to deactivate other tags? Why? "Instead of listing tags after every post" - how do I do that.
Regards
Hardeep
Hi
I plan to use this. However:
1. You say "each page on your site points to the tag page". How is that? Because the tag page will appear on the header?
2. Do I need to disable normal post tags? How do I do that? One way is take specific dump from database that I can reimport when needed. Is that how you propose to do it? Why is it needed?
Regards
Hardeep
Very interesting post, thanks. Now I need to find a way to apply this to my site, as I have a lot of tags and I use them in a strange way.
Why not put your Tag on your Tags page, in H1, to even further optimize the page for that Tag?
Great tip. I've seen with Google Analytics that tags often come up in the keywords that led to my blog. I'm still working on sculpting the best words for my niche, travel.
One question I have is on the naming of tags.
Some have suggested naming them so they match technorati category pages that have good page rank. I notice that many of the technorati tags with PR are single words.
Example:
Solar page has PR 5
http://technorati.com/tag/solar
Solar panel has zero
http://technorati.com/tag/solar-panel
Suggestions?
thanks vladimir,
very useful posting
Another great post!
I’ve just created Tags page. Any tips on how to get rid of the sidebars on the tags page?
You can check phrase 'fresh yogurt drinks' in Google, and the tag I used is actually already on page 1 ;)
Great psot Vladimir!
Od oktobra sam postavio tagovi stranicu i sada generiše u proseku 150 landing page posetilaca dnevno.
Hm, interesting spin of a subject. I had mostly read that tag pages should be blocked for indexing because of duplicate content issues and dynamic nature - user may land on tag page for specific post but actual post may have moved to other page already.
Maybe modify index so it always shows all post (excerpts) on tag page without splitting into pages?