On using tags in blog posts

[benschiltz]

Hi I was wondering if the amount of tags given to a particular blog post in wordpress affects SEO?

I have noticed that my blogs have dropped considerably in rank on google. I went from high up on first page to 20 - 30 pages drop.

ben

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Ben,

I haven't heard anything about tags and SEO so I'm not sure if that could be an issue.

Was it a fairly new blog? It seems people often get a good ranking at 1st then settle down or even drop way down for awhile.

 

[benschiltz]

relatively new

hi

the blogs are somewhat new, probably about 4 months now.

 

[Nelle]

Ben, About how many tags are you using for each post?

 

[benschiltz]

tags

from 6 to 10 tags each post. I thought about deleting some tags.

 

[Nelle]

10 tags does seem like a lot to me. Especially if they are variations on the same few words. Then I do think it might cause a problem.

From what I can tell, and this is just subjective, Google is very fast at spotting folks to try to game the system and penalizing them. So I would cut down on the number of tags unless they are all very unique and justified by the text in the post.

I would also think for 10 tags that you would have quite a long post. If you have a short post with 10 tages, that might trip some review as well.

Generally I have about 3 tags per post and my posts tend to be about 500 words.

 

[bobwilson37]

It's always better to use upto 8 tags in any blog or property page...You can give your tags beyond the limit also, but some blogs will be strict in their terms and conditions..So they will strip out them immediately.....

 

[djbaxter]

It's always better to use upto 8 tags in any blog or property page

Why? On what do you base this conclusion?

I doubt that tags or the number thereof are a huge factor in SE ranking at all, frankly. Use them, or don't use them - they're more a navigational and internal search tool than anything, aren't they?

 

[Rob_TID]

If you are displaying a HUGE tag cloud on every page, then remember that if it is too big, it will actually be the bulk of content on some of your pages.

 

[djbaxter]

Tag clouds are also so darn ugglee!!!

 

[StarWAHF]

I generally go with about 6-10 tags per post, but my posts are quite long sometimes. I started off small posts with larger tags and have worked my way to smaller tags of only up to 10 (rarely) and have been writing over 500 words on my posts.

It all depends if your using the same keywords over too. I try to stay away from that.

 

[Nelle]

I just make sure that everything on my blog is there for a reason and doesn't look like spam to a search engine. I'm just getting very conservative. Even if there isn't a google penalty today, it seems like they work every day to weed out spam at a deeper level.

So I've really started to focus on building a blog that adds tons of value and is easy to use. So if 10 tags were really necessary to help blog readers, then I would add them.