Do Blog Tags affect SEO at all anymore?
-
We're trying to standardize the use of tags on our site amongst writers/editors, and I'm trying to come up a list of tags they can choose from to tag posts with - and telling them to use no more than 10 (absolute maximum) per post. We are also in the process of migrating to a new CMS, and have 8 defined categories that will all have their own landing page within our "News" section.
TLDR:
Do blog tags have any impact on SEO anymore? Are they solely meant to help users find articles related on popular topics, or does creating a tag for a popular topic help to improve organic visibility?
Full Question:
With the tag standardization, I want to make sure we're creating the most useful and effective tags; and the UX/SEO sides of my brain are conflicted. To my understanding, creating a tag about a high volume topic in an industry helps establish the website's relevance to Google/other search engines about that topic and improves overall relevance; but the tag feed page (ex: http://freshome.com/tag/home-protection/) isn't really meant for organic search visibility. So my other question is, is it worth it to noindex the tag pages in the robots.txt? Will that affect any benefit to increased relevance for Google (if there is any)?
I'm interested to hear others' thoughts and suggestions.
Thanks in advance!
-
I think our news section is beginning to fall into the "is this too big to not run the risk of duplicate content with tags" category - so that makes sense to me. And that's great you saw the organic search traffic increase; my guess it that it lessens any "dilution" of targeting from having too many similar pages.
-
I tend to use the subcategories/categories for the standalone "hub" pages on a topic, rather than the tag pages. And I agree that it's important to not have too many uses/not enough uses of a tag, which is really where the need for standardization comes into play.
-
I agree, I think it needs to be a nice blend of UX/SEO in the tagging (like most things) - use the insights from search to inform what users are interested in, but also frame them to make for the best UX.
Also, I tend to agree with you on the 10 being too many - but the nature of a lot of our articles leads to the need for multiple tags (state, city, etc.) since we publish a lot on laws/policies/regulations that happen in an area, and it also relates to other tags we use across the board. It's all a balance
-
Thanks for that visual! It breaks it down the differences pretty nicely.
-
Crawl resources could be managed through priority use in sitemaps.
-
Hi Netzkern,
It actually sounds like you agree with me!
The way you are talking about 'tags' is how most people tend to use categories and sub-categories. I agree that categories and sub-categories are fine (if they have sufficient content, like you said).
Generally, with 'tags', you don't need to be overly strategic with how you use them - they are usually only there for users to find more closely related content on your site (more specific than what the categories or sub-categories offer).
My general advice is to "noindex" tags and never use them to try and grow your organic traffic.
Cheers,
David
-
After reading all the comments below, it somewhat all goes back to what I was trying to say - tags can help with SEO, but typically don't. Keeping them SEO unfriendly whatsoever might be not the best idea. Noindexing them might help with crawling resources and duplicate content, but not always.
-
I'd have to disagree with David, strongly so.
But then it is probably a matter of what "tag page" means for you and what you do with your tag pages!
Is a tag just something you slap on articles and stuff to simply have all a page that merely displays them all? Well yeah, then I'd tend towards noindex. I'd also wonder how many people really use a tagging like that - and have a use for it.
Personally I favour the other approach where tag pages are made into a page that can stand alone, for example giving a general overview over a topic and then listing the tagged articles for more specialised content. (Yes, you need a certain minimum of articles for tags to be useful at all ... and too many of one tag is probably also a warning sign of over-specialisation.) Of course this is not possible with every website and organisation. I have found, though, that such "hub pages" work exceptionally well for more generic than long term searches.
TL;DR: The importance and treatment of tags and tag pages largely depends on how you define their role.
Nico
-
Another vote for noindexing tags.
They serve very little (no real) benefit for SEO and cause more headaches than anything else. I never really want to see tags indexing and competing with primary internal pages that actually carry the information I want people to find.
Use them, but just don't index them.
-Andy
-
I would No Index TAG pages on your blog/website. The SEO benefit from these tags is limited the userbility benefit is evident.
Using tag pages is still not a bad idea as they can help with fine tuning your category level targeting.
Also the attached image is a great example to compare the two from this post - https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success
-
Hi David,
I have to disagree with Dmitrii a bit here.
I would say the answer to your question depends on the size of your site and how many articles and tags you are talking about - on bigger sites with more tags, they can become quite an issue.
On a big-ish news site that I own and run (14,000+ articles), I added "noindex" to all tag pages (2,000+) and then blocked them in robots.txt a few months later (once Google had crawled and removed them all from index).
The reason for removing and blocking them for search engines is that tag pages generally don't offer anything unique or of substantial value when compared to other pages on your site site, and they can also use up a lot of your "crawl budget".
For the site mentioned, I saw around a 30% organic traffic increase after implementing these changes.
The tags are still there for users, but they are not visible to search engines and means that search engines are now only crawling pages that we want indexed and ranking, instead of wasting their time crawling thousands of links to thousands of tag pages.
Basically, don't think of tags as a way to "help your SEO" because they probably won't and they have the potential to do the opposite.
If you think creating a particular tag will help you get long-tail traffic, write an article about that topic instead! I guarantee you it will perform a lot better than a tag page.
Cheers,
David
-
Hi there.
Well, one thing is for sure - do not block tags in robots.txt. That won't help anyhow for sure.
As for organic rankings - at the last company I worked for, I've seen some instances when tag page was ranking for a longer tail keyphrase. So, I would keep tags somewhat SEO friendly. But, as you said, main reason for tags nowadays is UX. Therefore I approach it this way - UX/navigational help first, but, if possible, also make tag SEO friendly. Also 10 tags is too many to my opinion. I believe that recommendations are 2-3 tags, maybe 4, but over that is a murder.
Hope this helps
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Harms of hidden categories on SEO
On our website we have some invisible/hidden categories on our site. Can anyone advise whether these are harmful in terms of SEO?
On-Page Optimization | | CostumeD0 -
Ajax tabs and seo and sitemap
I am in the process of simplifying my website so that there are tabs in each section which load dynamically by ajax all of the subpages.Each subpage has funny url with a hashtag.
On-Page Optimization | | paddyaran
Does this mean each page does not have its title , or metatags?, Is this bad for seo?. Many of these pages have only a paragraph of text. I also am making a sitemap which links to the pages as a normal page. Would this mean I have a duplicate content issue with seo?.0 -
Are outlinks an essential element for onsite SEO?
I recently read the blog post by Steve Webb about performing a SEO Audit (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-perform-the-worlds-greatest-seo-audit). In the article he mentions that it's important to have outlinks to high-quality websites. So my questions is if this is an essential element of onsite SEO?
On-Page Optimization | | Nick_Johansson0 -
Seo category or specific seo page?
To rank in google.bg for key phrase like "seo optimization for web" which do you thing is better: To make most of the backlinks with anchor text "seo optimization for web" to point to a link that is a category with many seo articles or to point to a single page from this category?
On-Page Optimization | | vladokan0 -
Blog.mysite.com or mysite.com/blog?
Hi, I'm just curious what the majority think of what's the best way to start a blog on your website for SEO benefits. Is it better to have it under a sub domain or a directory? Or does it even matter?
On-Page Optimization | | truckguy770 -
Do Blog Comments On Your Site Help SEO?
There is a lot of debate as whether or not having comments on your blog is helpful from an SEO perspective. Proponents believe that more comments (1) creates more content, which search engines love, (2) creates more relevant keywords that can be searched, and (3) helps with "freshness" of the site/content leading to greater site authority. Others like Joost de Valk believe that comments can actually hurt SEO because keyword density cannot be controlled. He argues that his top SEO content are pages not posts for this very reason. What is your opinion?
On-Page Optimization | | marcperry0 -
H1 tags the same on all pages - problem?
I generally use wordpress as a CMS and have the H1 tag coded in the header.php include file. This results as it being the same in all page - I normally do something like Keyword - Company name and set the company logo as the background and move the text off screen using text indent (CSS). Is having the same on every page a bad thing? I might be tricky to change so their all unique.
On-Page Optimization | | JamesJacobs0 -
Will a Media Wiki guides section affect my sites SEO?
Hello, I currently run a Wordpress site that has a large guides section. I've reached the point where a lot of the larget guides need to be split into smaller posts which then link to each other. As we all know, long guides are not always user friendly. I've taken this oppurtunity to revamp the guides section and I am considering using Media Wiki to turn the Wordpress posts in to a full Wiki Knowledge Base. However this raises some questions for me.. 1. Will doing this impact my sites SEO? 2. Does Media Wiki use internal nofollow links? 3. Are there dangers of duplicate content? 4. Do you have any experience using Media Wiki, and what are your thoughts? I'd appreciate your views on this problem. Thanks Joe
On-Page Optimization | | Fubra0