Do wordpress tags have any SEO benefits?

[rossdoherty]

Hello,

I have setup my keywords as a tags on my wordpress blog

All tags are pointing to my blog articles. I would ask, this is the right way to get ranking on my keywords?

Best regards,
Rossdoherty

 

[SEOPub]

Tags make every other link on your page weaker. Unless you are using them very strategically with a plan in mind (like creating dual silos), they are a total waste and will only hurt your chances of ranking.

 

[JOSourcing]

I've seen tag links show up in a Google search, so there's that.

 

[webpundits]

Hi,

I rather not doing that. Bur putting relevant tags will help it. Google definately picks up your TAG URL but too many tags will not help getting more traffic to your website.

Regards

 

[elcidofaguy]

I'm not sure why the big issue of using tags... After all they are only internal links and are helpful to organizing your content in a coherent manner similar to categories and sub categories all which contributes to forming silos... You can also add those pages to your menu too and they can indeed rank on the SERPs as it helps with linking content semantically... Lets not forget Google hummingbird which makes use of that as part of better understanding your content...

If tags are bad then in the same way so are categories and sub categories which clearly cannot be the case? Maybe I am missing something but user navigation is hugely important... as well as helping search engines better understanding your website....

I suspect from a deeper SEO analysis point of view the feeling is that too many links on a given page will dilute the link juice equity flowing/funneling to pages/posts that you want to rank... But that applies to all links on a given page... If you keep that in mind with controlling tags with only showing related/relevant ones on nested pages then it can help with funneling link juice or you could use nofollow attribute mixed with dofollow as means to funnel.... Also keep in mind positioning of links matter too... Links contained in the main body of an article will get much more attribution than compared to side bar, footer links etc...

That aside adding categories, tags etc is only a small factor wrt onpage/off page SEO i.e. backlinks, your content (bounce rates on the serps would evaluate that) etc play a much bigger part...

 

[SEOPub]

Diluting link juice is exactly the problem. If you have good site structure setup already, tags are just extra, unneeded links.

Plus when people start using tags they usually do things like

best smartphones, smartphones, iphones, android phones, buy iphones, cheap iphones, cheap android phones, best android phones

Instead of a couple of tags that make sense, they do something like that where they add their top 8-10 keywords. That is a whole bunch of useless links.

The ONLY time I consider tags useful is if you are creating dual silos, but that is a much more complex site structure than most people think about.

 

[1SEO]

Tags can also cause issues with Duplicate Content through your blog or author pages. You need to be real careful when dealing with the tags on WordPress. Best advice is to setup a NoIndex on the tag pages.

 

[amitncode]

Agreed with 1SEO and SEOPub. Meaningless tags can make your website/blog structure looks ridiculous. If you are using them it can generate duplicate content issue to.

If you want to add tags on posts, be cautious. Use the tags wisely. Also add Noindex to Tag pages, so they can not create duplicate content issue too.