This is the last post in Google MythBuster Series and I hope you all enjoyed this series. In my today’s article I am going to discuses a bit about WordPress “post tags” option and will tell you does these tags helps you to get high rank on Google or not. I’ve seen many bloggers stuffing 10-15 tags in a single post and when I asked them why they do it, their reply was “to rank higher on Google”, lets break this myth in Google MythBuster Series:
No, not at all
Google does not give any attention to the tags and it does not helps you to rank higher in Google SERPs. Why, here is the reason:
- As you’ve already used those keywords in the post itself so Google does not considers it as a ranking factor.
- They can be good for normal visitors but not at all affect your search engine rankings.
Tags are only used to tell human visitors about the topic of your article, rest there is no use of “Post Tags”. So creating a huge list of tags and putting it in your articles is just a waste of time when it comes to Google rankings and it can help your normal human visitors to surf for the similar articles.
Do you use WordPress “post tag” option ?
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- Does Paid Links Has Effect On Search Rankings Of Your Blog : Google MythBuster Series Part 8
- Does Changing Hosting Company Effects Search Engine Rankings : Google MythBuster Series Part 12
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I think google treat the tag as internal link. Therefore if we put the keyword in the tag, it will work as internal page SEO.
Hi Dana,
I don’t think that “tags” helps in internal page SEO, there are 2 reasons for it:
1. The tags are no follow
2. The tags does not point to a particular post page.
Yeah, may be you are right. I do not have backup for tag yet.
However, for WordPress categories (which I think work as similar as tag) do work for my niche blog.
Tags should be used smartly and repeatedly to make exploring you blog easy. Rather than thinking of every WP feature from a SEO angle its wise to think from the readers angle.
Just my two bits of wisdom
Hi Aditya,
Hmm you are 100% true that tags helps to make our site more flexible and helps readers to surf our site in easy way, I took “tags” as an seach engine ranking factor because most of the bloggers thinks that tags helps to rank high in search engines. I saw a Wordpress user stuffing 20 tags in a single post and when I asked him why you do it, he said “to rank on Google”. So, my motive was to break this myth.
You are 100% correct that every Wordpress feature should not be seen as SEO factor !!
I diasagree with you on First point. What if the words used as tags have not been covered in article but are still relevant to the article? This might be a myth but it has worked for me.
@Aditya Totally agree with you.
@Paritosh
Can you share your experience with us, how tags helped you in getting high in search rankings.
I’ve been thinking about this. Maybe it could help a little =)
By tag it’s seo terms tagging and not just the wordpress tags !!
@ paritosh
Tags really hep as you said..
There are visitors landing from on 2nd page of search result to a key word which is not an exact match of the text on your page. The next time a search is performed, google recognizes the internal link and shows your page up the order !!
I’ve experienced it !! Let me quote a few who used it..
Labnol – Amit in the past
Amit bhawani – still using it
The concept of SEo is largely abused these days and tagging is a real abuse. It’s like automatic content generation!!
Waiting for Gagan’s reply on it !!
If you meant just wordpress tags, they too have a role in SEO. refer to the article by Vladimir Prevolac !!
Hi Srinivas,
Can you share Vladimir Prevolac link please !
Read long ago so had to digg deep to find the link..
http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/improve-search-engine-placement-with-tags
What I stressed was on search terms tagging as used on
http://bookbing.org/rapidshare-premium-account-give-away-july-2010/
have a look towards end of the post to see it in action !!
And regarding SEO on comments prevolac has a plugin for that too !!
Spend some time to experiment on a high traffic blog like yours so newbies like me will be benefit from it !!
http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/seo-expirement-with-tags-continued
Read this too !! fresh yoghurt drinks !!
I have the keywords and the tags as same.
i mean whatever keywords i set, i use it in post tags as well.
I use the tags infrequently, but I don’t do it for Google PR. I do it because I have a lot of content, and anything I can do to link up to places where folks can pop in and possibly find more things in the same category they happen to be reading isn’t a bad thing.
Tags are for humans.
Categories are for Google.
Hey Ron,
Thanks for the one sentence explanation.
For what is worth, my experience is different: using tags that complement the post is very beneficial for seo and does not detract “juice” -it increases traffic and ranking.
Say your post is about the ever present “dog training”. You add some variations in the post tags, such as “puppy training” and “how to train wild dogs”.
Of course you get the exact matches from the phrases that gave you most visitors or from google’s suggestions at the end of the search results.
Those tags will rank as pages in google and bring visitors to the post.
Also, in my experience, this is a great way to bypass the mayday issues and improve long tail traffic.
But your mileage may vary -I got here looking for up to date advice on this exact issue, and you rank quite well.
I think this myth can be busted only with tests. One thing if blog dont have any tags at all , thats not good for SEO and too many tags do same.
FYI: I have several tags ranking in google now. I’ve been using tags on every page and it does bring in google traffic.
Is this post not applicable to Blogger blogs?
Because somebody just clicked onto my blog through a search for one of my labels.
http://www.google.co.in/search?q=shanti+bhushan+scandal&hl=en&biw=1440&bih=718&prmd=ivnso&ei=Qru3TZnIBYekuAOZ9b2iAw&start=20&sa=N
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