Hello! For CMS users WordPress, WordPress tags are well known. The system has paid and is paying a lot of attention to tags, allocating for them separate tab consoles for management and editing. Today we will look at what WordPress tags are and why they are needed.

About WordPress Tags

I wrote how to work with tags in the article. Let me briefly remind you here that WordPress tags are a tool for additional site navigation, organizing searches and creating archives by tags.

When talking about tags, you need to remember their important features:

• WordPress tags, unlike categories, cannot have attachments;
• Using tags, you can combine posts from different sections of the site.

I talked about all this in the last article. In this article, we will look at the importance of WordPress tags in website promotion and try to conclude whether tags should be blocked from indexing or not.

What explains the need to block tags from indexing?

You've probably come across publications by webmasters who advise blocking WP tags from indexing. It is not difficult to block tags from indexing. To do this, it is enough to specify the appropriate directive in the robots.txt file, which must first be created. (Details in the article:). Just first, let’s think about it: is it necessary to hide tags from indexing?

How WordPress Labels Are Shown in Code

Search engines do not read texts like people do, they look at the site code and analyze the site based on the meta tags written in the code.

Important! The tags that we set in articles are NOT written in the keywords meta tags. The question arises where the labels (tags) specified in the article will be written.

Note: Without SEO plugins, in the WordPress system, it’s not even possible to create meta description tag articles.

Where will the labels (tags) specified in the article be written?

• Tags will be visible visually, at the top or bottom of the article;
• In the code, tags will be located in the body of the article (in tags ), as a link with a label anchor text.

Note: The visual display of labels can be removed by making a correction in the template code.

Conclusion 1: As you can see, WordPress tags are not SEO tool to promote using keywords (keywords) and spam your site with WordPress tags.

Let's look at the experience of a WordPress optimization guru

Let's turn to a major WordPress optimization specialist, the “author” of the famous “Seo Yoast” series of SEO plugins. Let's look at the Seo Yoast blog.

• Firstly, Seo Yoast in the robots.txt file does not block anything from indexing, which is what it advises you to do;
• Secondly, open any article on the official Seo Yoast website. We look at the tags of the article and see:

For search engines, they indicate tags in meta tags: . This display of tags can be done using an SEO plugin, for example.

For visitors, tags for the article are indicated in the widget in the form of a list.

Conclusion 2: By creating a group of tags for a WordPress article, we create not only an additional “beacon” for the search engine, but also create a full-fledged link, otherwise: a page in the search.

WordPress Label Design

If a tag creates a page in the search, then this page needs to be designed correctly, namely:

• Take care to label the tag correctly. The tag label is a variation of the name for the URL and must be CNC;
• Add a unique description to each tag, 150 words recommended. You can do this on the Posts→Tags→Edit tab (under each tag).

The Importance of WordPress Tags for Website Promotion

Thanks to the properties of tags indicated at the beginning of the article, we can:

1. Tags can be used to promote low-frequency queries and at the same time be used as an advanced navigation tool.

For example, article about summer tires. We post the article in the section: passenger car tires. For additional navigation, we create tags: Bridgestone summer tires, Continental summer tires, Pirelli summer tires, etc.

2. Using the created tags we get additional search queries, in addition, on the site we get navigation by tire manufacturers. By adding the tag “Bridgestone summer tires” to all articles, we can display articles by the tag: Bridgestone summer tires.

Another example. This site has a plugins section. Each plugin has a main purpose, a plugin type. For example, SEO plugins, security plugins, etc. In order not to split the plugins section into subsections, you can add a plugin group label to each plugin by its type. We will get groups of plugins by tags: seo plugins, security plugins, etc. The same tags can be assigned to articles or files from other sections. Thus, combine materials from different sections.

Practice using tags

Some practical advice on using WordPress tags. From my practice I would like to note:

1. If you close already indexed site tags, you are guaranteed a drop in search results and, as a result, a drop in site traffic. 2. Yandex and Google (Yandex is even better) index WordPress tags and it’s stupid not to use these features.

Note: Despite the low likelihood of receiving sanctions for using a large number of tags, they must be used wisely. Logically substantiated words and phrases that are thematically related to the texts of articles (descriptions of goods) must be added to tags.

Label description value

There remains a question that we will not forget. In the boxed version of WordPress, without plugins, there is a “Tag Description” field. How can it be used?

The mark itself is already key phrase(word). Moreover, the label is an additional key to the article (product). In addition, tags combine articles from different sections. If we make unique descriptions for tags, we will get additional pages with a unique description and additional queries for articles from different sections. If at the same time, in the archive of labels (tags), we display the latest blog posts, we get a lot of unique content for well-defined keys.

meaning of WordPress tags: Tag Archive Page

Errors when working with tags

There are a few, it seems to me, mistakes that should not be made when working with tags.

1. There should be no tags with empty content on the site. That is, do not allow tags that do not have materials. You can control this on the Labels tab in the “Records” column; there should be no labels with the value “0”. 2. Do not open tags for search engines, but this can be done in the robots.txt file or one of the SEO plugins, tags without descriptions. Such pages create “junk content”, which can be assessed by search engines as a negative factor. 3. Do not make template (repetitive) descriptions of tags. This increases duplication of content and can be assessed by search engines as a negative factor. 4. Do not allow the names of categories and tags to match exactly. Use declension and cases more to create from marks.

Overall Conclusion: The Importance of WordPress Tags

WordPress tags can group site posts based on various similar characteristics. In this case, entries can be included in different sections of the site. This improves site navigation and, as a result, improves behavioral optimization factors. An example is above in the article.

Each WordPress tag is a separately created permanent site link, which, with appropriate design, can become a separate and unique page in search results. Therefore, we do not block tags from indexing.

Conclusion

By setting tags for site articles and formatting them correctly, we increase the number of queries for which this article can appear in the search results.

1. Tags in WordPress
2. How to assign tags
3. Attaching tags to articles
4. Font in tag cloud
5. Assigning tags while writing an article

1.Marks inWordPress

What are the tags for?

Of course, you can post the article in all these sections, although this is not particularly good. And if you want to point to some element of the article, for example, Google gadgets, but don’t want to make a separate section for them?

This is where tags come to the rescue. You can assign several tags to one article at once, and when your reader clicks on the “Google” tag on the main page of the site, the article you are looking for will appear, although you posted it in the “Site Promotion” section. In other words, tags in WordPress are a navigation element that does not duplicate, but complements the search (and distribution) of site materials by category.

2. How to assign tags.

First, we will try to assign tags to already completed (and published) articles, and then we will figure out how to assign tags to articles in the process of writing them, which will be much easier.

In the Administration Panel, go to the “Records” section, “Record Labels” subsection:

Let's open it, fill in the name of the label - “History of Russia”. We will not fill out the tag label and tag description located below:

At the very bottom of the page, click “Add a tag.”

But look at the main page of the site: there is nothing in the “Tag Cloud” section (these are tags). Here, as in the case of “Sections,” labels will appear only when they (i.e., labels) are assigned to a record.

3. Attach tags to articles

Again we go to the “Records” section, but now to the “Editing” subsection:

Mark the required entry (put a tick in the checkbox). Click on the button in the “Action with selected” window and select “Edit”. Click the “Apply” button:

The line “Article on history” expands and takes on the following form:

In the “Tags” window, write the name of the category - “History of Russia” and click the “Update entries” button. And immediately a new label appeared in the “Tags” column:

Let's try to write two tags in one entry. Mark the following entry (put a tick in the checkbox) --> Action with selected --> Edit --> Apply. We write two tags (History of Russia and free books), separate them with commas:

Click “Update entry”.

In the next book two marks appeared. Let's look at the main page of the site:

The marks have appeared. When you hover over a label, it changes color to blue and becomes underlined, i.e. it has all the attributes of a link.

And a description also appears: when you hover over the “History of Russia” label, the inscription “2 entries” appears in a rectangle, when you hover over “Free books” - “1 entry.”

If you click on “History of Russia”, you will see that two entries are highlighted, and they are located in the “News” section, and not in “History” at all. In other words, no matter in which section there is an entry with the tag “history of Russia”, when you click the corresponding tag it will appear.

Pay attention to this Special attention and place your marks carefully. Always put the most important tag (label) from your point of view first: in the future this will be useful when displaying similar entries!

4. Font in the Tag Cloud

But why do tags different size font: “History of Russia” has a large font, and “Free Books” has a small one? Let's experiment. In the “Edit” subsection of the “Posts” section, we note three books at once:

We will assign the same label “Philosophy” to all three. What happened?

Firstly, in the “Editing Posts” section, all three books now have a label – “Philosophy”.

Secondly, in the “Post Tags” subsection a new tag “Philosophy” has appeared. Please note that there are 3 entries in this label:

On the main page of the site, the picture has changed and it becomes clear that the font size directly depends on the number of entries. Moreover, this size will change automatically: when you add entries to a certain category, it will increase, and all others will decrease.

This increase-decrease will not occur indefinitely. If there are a large number of headings, they will become visually the same in size. To keep them different, you need to use moving tag cloud plugins, but we won’t consider that here.

6. We assign tags in the process of writing an article.

We write any new article, and in the “Post Labels” widget write the name of the label (tag):

To assign a tag to your article, you do not need to take any further actions. Click the “Publish” button and look at the result on the main page of the site:

The “Interesting” tag you assigned is attached to the article.

That's all the wisdom.

Greetings, dear readers of the blog site!

Every blogger should know what are tags in wordpress, why they are needed and how to use them. Last time I talked about how. Today, in continuation of this topic, I’ll tell you what kind of marks these are. Read the article to the end and receive a gift!

In the administration panel of your blog, you probably noticed the “Tags” section.

In fact, tags are somewhat similar to rubrics - these are words that will help site visitors find articles on similar topics. The difference between labels is that they are more precise and specific. You can set article keywords as tags.

Example:

The site may have a section of articles “ programming“, and articles in this section may contain tags like “ php”, “working with functions”, “scripts“.

At the same time, the “WordPress” section may contain articles on similar topics, for example “scripts”.

This is how tags help. group articles thematically.

What are tags for in wordpress?

Labels in WordPress make site navigation more convenient for visitors. Let's say a person read your article, liked it, and at the bottom of the article he sees tags (topics of the articles). He clicks on one of them and gets a list of articles on similar topics.

Thus, you also kill the hare called “Behavioral factors”. The visitor stays on the site longer and makes more transitions. Search engines see that your resource is interesting and rank it higher in search results.

What do tags have to do with website promotion?

Don't forget that tags are also links between pages on your site. Do you already know what linking is and how to organize it? If not, then subscribe to updates and very soon you will receive an email notification about a new article that I will write.

Search engines love it when site pages link to each other. Do you understand what tags are? Then start adding tags to articles on similar topics.

Important! Do not create tags without reference to the article. There should be no tags that do not belong to any article. This will have a bad effect on promotion.

Search robots index all headings, headings, categories, keywords, tags. Therefore, keep your WordPress site organized.

It will be best if you add tags immediately after writing the article

How many tags should there be?

There are no specific numbers – minimum and maximum. It is important to approach this issue with balance. There shouldn't be too many tags.

According to some bloggers, 25-35 tags for a blog would be optimal. Think over the structure so that it is convenient and understandable for you and your readers.

You can use several tags for one article, but I would not recommend using more than three.

As I said, every blogger should know what tags are and why they are needed on a blog. I hope this article helped you figure this out.

I've heard there are other uses for tags. If you know something more about this, then share it in the comments.

Still have questions? Also write them below in the comments.

Do you want to increase the TIC of your website? Watch this video)) Have a good mood

Sincerely,

Artem Gubtor

Let's figure out why WordPress tags are needed, how to work with them, whether WordPress tags need to be indexed and how many tags are needed to promote a site.

What are WordPress Tags

Close bot tags

1. There are two ways to close tags. The easiest way is in a file, which should be in the root of your site. The robots.txt file contains a directive that prohibits (Dissalow) search engines from crawling pages with tag in the URL:

Disallow: /tag/

2. Second option, use a plugin SEO optimization, which in its functionality will have a tool for closing tags from search engines. I use Yoast SEO ( https://ru.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/) in which with one button you can close everything you need from search engines.

What will we achieve with this? We will reduce duplicate parts of articles in search results, while simultaneously reducing the number of pages in the search and, as a result, the number of site visitors. Not a happy result.

Now, let's estimate what threatens if we leave tags in the search. If you have 100 articles, each article has an average of 5 tags, then this is 500 pages in search. Not weak! What about duplicate parts of articles? For duplicates, Yandex penalties are possible. And what is the probability of a fine, like everything with Yandex, it’s not predictable, maybe there will be, maybe not.

Why am I saying this? Yes, the fact of the matter is that you yourself will have to decide whether to hide tags from search engines or not. Let me give you an example. I disabled search flags on one site. After three days, visitors to the site decreased by 1000-1200 units, which amounted to 30-40%. Not good at all. Moreover, there was not even a hint of any sanctions from the search engines. So, I cleaned up unused tags, added citations to some articles to reduce duplication, added unique descriptions to tags, and opened up tags for search engines. After a couple of weeks everything was restored.

How to remove unused tags

In the previous paragraph I mentioned cleaning marks and deleting unused marks. I'll tell you how to do it.

Remove unused labels from the administration panel

In the site console, open the tab Appearance→Tags.

In the table with labels, you see the “Attached Posts” column. So, the table should not have labels with the value zero “0” in this column. Mark unattached tags and delete them (Action → Delete → Apply).

Remove unused tags from database

SELECT * From wp_terms wt INNER JOIN wp_term_taxonomy wtt ON wt.term_id=wtt.term_id WHERE wtt.taxonomy="post_tag" AND wtt.count=0;

Replace with your database prefix.

In the screenshots below you can see the results of this SQL query before and after WordPress tags have been cleared.

Use a site cleaning (optimization) plugin

For ease of use, install the site, they are often called plugins technical optimization. With their help, you can carry out a comprehensive cleaning of the site, including unused tags. I'm using the plugin: Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions ( https://ru.wordpress.org/plugins/rvg-optimize-database/), highly recommend.

All posts or articles on the site are available from special pages with links to each article. Usually in the sidebar of the site there is a block of links called “Categories”. Each section leads to its own page, and from this page you can go to a specific article.

A rubric is a way of sorting content by meaning. What is a Mark and why is it needed? Label This is another way to sort content by meaning, similar to categories. Links to tag pages are displayed in WordPress in a special block called “Tag Cloud”.

Why is this necessary if sorting by categories has already been done? This is sorting by one more criterion. Helps make site search even more convenient and flexible.

For example, there is a website dedicated to cars. Home page optimized for keyword"Cars". The site also contains records that are logically distributed according to headings and meaning. Let's say there are three sections on this site:

• SUVs.
• Minibuses.
• Garage equipment.

In the “Off-Road Vehicles” section there is an article about how to overcome a water obstacle.

In the “Garage Equipment” section there is an article about how to make better lighting.

Each article is in its own section; on what other basis can they be combined? It’s possible if, for example, you post a video in both articles. Then you can make a “Video” tag and tag each of these articles. In the cloud of tags, or, as they say, tags, there will be the word “Video” - this is a link that, when clicked, will open a page with other links to all articles that have been marked with the tag or label “Video”. What tags to create and what records to tag for more flexible sorting is up to the webmaster. The tag can be added before publishing a new article, or later. You can remove the mark. Each article can have multiple tags. Two or three marks are quite appropriate.

So, a label or tag is, like a category, a way of classifying and sorting content. Technically, if you click on a tag, a separate page is displayed that contains links to articles that have been previously tagged. These articles may be from different categories, and this is how it should be - this is normal for tags.

Create a new label

To do this, go to the WordPress admin panel: Posts – Tags – Add a new tag

Give the new label a name. One word, otherwise it will be difficult to place all the tags in one “Tag Cloud” block.

Make a shortcut for the tag.

Write the same word in Latin, this is necessary to form the UPL address of the page on which links to all articles tagged with this label will be displayed.

Add a description for the tag.

You can make a brief one or two sentence description. Check to see if the theme displays this description on the page, see how it looks. If you don’t like it, you can remove the tag description.

Button: “Add a new label” will complete all work on creating a new label.