Achieving a #1 ranking on search engines requires a diligent approach in all aspects of your online marketing. This includes your website, social media, and online communications.
Many of my clients use blogs to share information and educate customers and prospects, but the one key strategy they often miss is blog tags.
Blog tags are those words or phrases that are used to describe a blog post. They are usually about one to three words long, and are attached as labels to your blog.
One function of blog tags is to help the search engine crawlers get a quick idea of what your content is all about. When created with search intent in mind, blog tags can help propel your content to the top or search engine results.
Another great benefit of blog tags is that they help visitors navigate the content on your site, especially as you continue adding content. Many companies use WordPress to create and upload blog content to their web pages.
Part of the uploading process asks you to designate which categories and tags should be applied to your blog. Tags are more specific than the categories.
Even though they are not required, I still highly recommend you add tags to each and every blog right from the start. After you have a number of blogs, WordPress offers up a list of your most common tags that you can click on to add to your piece.
WordPress uses these tags to create topic archive pages. Visitors searching for specific content can use these pages to instantly retrieve the information they want. This might require you to plan some sort of themes for your blog posts.
For example, most of my blog tags focus around topics like email marketing, SEO, PPC, social media and website design. Tags are not made-up words; they are real words or phrases that potential customers might use to learn more about the products and services you offer.
Best Practices for Blog Tags
- Keep them concise.
- Avoid redundancy.
- Be consistent across blogs.
- Broad topics are better than narrow.
- Keep the number of tags to a realistic number — not too few, not too many. Usually between 5-10 tags is just fine, unless you have something really special to tag!
Automating the Blog Tag Process
One helpful tip for creating blog tags is to perform keyword research first. This helps to uncover the tags you might want focus on in your blog content.
If you are really on your content game, and create a number of blog posts every month, adding blog tags might be easy for you, but either way, the process of manually adding tags each and every time can get a little tedious.
Fortunately there are some options which can help automate the blog tag process:
- Auto Tag Creator: This plugin automatically converts keywords in a post/product title and category to tags upon saving. It includes a user-editable list of words you want the plugin to ignore. Activate the plugin through the WordPress Plugins menu.
- Smart Tag Insert: Once you have defined a tags list, this plugin adds a box in the post editing page which looks for relevant tags based on post content. The most relevant are automatically selected (although the selection can be changed). Selected tags can be added with a click.
- TagΒee Post Tagger: This is a simple plugin which proposes tags for your content.
This post is a great opportunity to tell you about the WORD ROBOT. This is a tool I created, and offer for free on my website.
WORD ROBOT automatically creates blog tags for your blog post by analyzing the keyword density. Simply paste in your article content and VOILA!
It also converts lower case and upper case letters, capitalize and uncapitalize, convert to mix case, and transform your text.
- Sentence Case: The sentence case converter allows you to paste any text you like, and it automatically transforms it to a fully formed sentence structure. It works by capitalizing the very first letter in each sentence, and then goes on to transform the rest of the text into lowercase, and also converts each single lowercase “i” into a capital. Every letter after a full stop gets converted into an upper case letter, but it will not capitalize names or places.
- Lower Case: If you are wondering how to uncapitalize text, this is exactly what the lower case text converter allows you to do. It transforms all the letters in your text into lowercase letters. Simply copy the text that you want to convert into a lowercase font, paste the text into the tool, and select the “lower case” tab option.
- Upper Case: Sometimes you do want your text to be in all capitals. The upper case transformer takes any text provided and transforms all the letters into upper case. It essentially makes all lower case letters into CAPITALS, but still manages to keep upper case letters as they are meant to be.
- Capitalized Case: There are times when you need the first letter of every word in a phrase capitalized. This might be for something like H1 and H2 content in your blog. The capitalized case converter automatically converts the starting letter of every word into upper case and leaves the remaining letters as lower case ones.
- Title Case: When writing titles, especially in a Word Doc format, you frequently get those annoying notifications that certain words in a title should not be capitalized. The title case converter is perfect for those who are a bit unsure on how to title an upcoming essay. It ensures the correct letters are capitalized within the context of a title. Words such “an” or “of” will be left all in lower case, and words that are important will be converted to capitalize the initial letter.
Writing blogs, keeping content fresh on your website and updating social media sites can sometimes be tedious work.
Fortunately today’s technology offers a wide variety of specialized tools that can help automate some of the most mundane parts of each process.
Check out these tools and let me know in the comment box below if they help your blogging efforts?
As for me, I am the kind of person who loves to share my thoughts on a particular something. Because of that, I love blogging my reviews about a specific website or a gadget that I have used.
I have been using tags on my blogs, but it is mainly for organization and accessibility purposes. I have never thought about how it also affects the way search engine identifies your content, since I only thought that putting the keywords strategically on a certain part of the blog matters the most.
However, I believe that we should be specific in what we put in our blog tags since readers might want to view another blog on the same topic. Thank you so much for the advice.
This information doesn’t just go for blogs! I frequently think of blog tags almost like hashtags on a social media post. I use tags to bring more people into my Twitch streams and increase my TikTok views. A tag can bring in a specific type of audience or help you climb up the ranks in search results. SEO is important in so many different industries including blogs. Understanding SEO can elevate your content from being just another voice on the internet to actually reaching and impressing your target demographic. I had no idea there were websites to help you with this type of SEO though. I’m going to have to use this for my gaming streams to see how this boosts my visibility.
I get confused between blog tags and the blog category that I can get the two mixed up. I think of tagging as SEO or description, similar to product tagging. I never considered that you could use too many blog tags; I thought that in order to tag effectively, you had to have as many descriptive words as possible. It took me many years to figure out SEO, and now that I finally have, there are so many other things I need to learn about. I am glad there are automated blog tagging plugins. I will be using these in the future.
As someone who writes a blog I definitely understand how important blog tags are in getting people to your site. I disagree with making blog tags broad as people may have to pass over your site if your content is not more specific to what they are looking for. Too, sometimes having many blog tags can help cover a wider range of content that is essential for attracting more readers to your site. I have never heard of these services that help create blog tags, but I think they would help me gain more traffic and hopefully a higher following.
Many years ago I put a lot of thought into blog tags. I will admit I do not think about them as often as I should The times I have found them to be most helpful is on a memoirist’s blog. I used a blog that helped identify the key phrases from the chapter. This tool created an entire subset of reading material. For example, if the writer wrote a chapter about Hollywood Boulevard, the website would scan the website for other articles about Hollywood Boulevard and group them together. I found this to be a great resource for categorizing the book by topic rather than only by chapter.
I do not have any blogs on my website but after reading these ideas I am thinking about adding some blogs to my website so I can have some blog tags added to my website. I need all the ideas I can get thanks for the information.
Hi Taylor,
Thanks for giving a guideline as to how many tags to have for each blog. I agree 5-10 is a good number, and to be more broad than narrow; although, I would probably add a few specific ones as necessary depending on the topic. I will need to remember to add tags that people potential customers might use to learn more about the topic versus what I think the blog is about.
Word Robot is a great tool! Thanks for the suggestion!
Since the Blogspot era of the 2000s, most bloggers have already been using Blog Tags. As you have mentioned in your article, it eases the readers to look for a particular post with the specific keywords. Blog Tags are indeed the predecessor of the hashtags being used in social media. Hashtags, on the other hand, are being used on social media, if I remember correctly, since the early 2010s, the pilot years of Twitter and Instagram.
You say that blog tags should be broad, not narrow words, but how does one define what is broad enough? I wonder if there is such a thing as too broad of tags or if broad is always the best when it comes to tags. I also wonder which of the many options listed for automating blog tags are best. There are many listed and ranking or comparison could be helpful. Finally, some specific examples of blog tags for other people’s websites could have helped as well. Though they were listed for this blog, even more specific examples could have been added to this post.
Thanks Taylor! Creating blog tags is one of my weaknesses at the end of a blog post. Though, much of my focus is on the SEO keywords while writing. Afterwards, I love that the guesswork can be done by a plugin. That extra time spent setting up blog tags can finally be expertly done with a keyword plugin. Blog tags are not just for SEO; they are also for website organization. These tags can be carried through to social media posts promoting a new blog post. That is double SEO all thanks to your blog tag plugin. Thanks again!
I recently joined a team of bloggers and content creators that had been very good at generating SEO content. As a new member of the pack, I have to work extra hard because I have to learn to build my own SEO content. I do not have any idea of how to create my own tags properly. Although I know the concept, I didn’t have the time to really focus on the handful of details on a depth understanding of its purpose—good job on sharing ways on ways on how to automate tags. I would definitely try using those for my future write-ups.
Hi Taylor,
Blog tags have often baffled me. I understand they are a large part of SEO.
Blog tags are too often left undiscussed in the information about how to improve SEO rankings. You have some interesting points in your post. You point out that blog tags should be something people might actually use to search for the information available in the post. Such good advice with so many people trying to game the system regarding SEO rankings.
Automating the blog tag process is a real game changer for me. I will be checking out some of the links you provided.
Thanks for this great information, Elizabeth
When I was new to blogging and only considered it as a hobby, I didn’t make the best use of blog tags. After a while, I realized that they were a great way to improve navigation and further customize and personalize my blog. And then I learned the benefits they have marketing-wise, so I now make sure that the tags I use are relevant to my content.
I never thought to automate them, but definitely considering them now. I’m hoping that it streamlines the post creation process and improve my content categories. Will check out the tools you suggested to see which suits my needs best. Thanks!
Just when I started thinking that blogging wasn’t meant for me, and then I saw this super descriptive post from a blogger I respect. I love how you emphasized the best practices for blog tags, as it’s so clear that I haven’t been doing it the right way. My best buddy recommended your site, and I’m happy that I clicked the link instead of airing him over past disappointments. It is a great piece, and I think that bloggers worldwide should get a glimpse of what you have to say. Oh, and if they don’t, then I’m going to reap the fruits of reading it myself!
Hey Taylor.
Thank you for your insight on blog tags. When I got into blogging myself, I came into it with very little idea of how it works. Finding articles like yours has helped educate me on how to make it a success.
I especially liked your point about keeping the blogs broad and consistent. It’s tempting to want to switch up your writing style and try new things, but there’s a lot to be gained from consistency.
Looking forward to reading other articles.
I’ve been a blogger for a while, and I’ve been looking for ways to draw more traffic to my well-curated blog; I’m so glad that I read this post. Some of my blogger friends have been telling me about the beauty of blog tags. Now I know why they kept going on and on. It’s great to see it from your perspective, and I look forward to curating a couple of tags that would take my blog to the next level. Thank you for this fantastic and intricate piece.
I’ve been writing a blog for a few years now, mainly for fun. But now I want to get more serious about it, and I came across your article about blog tags which I never even knew existed! There are some great insights on how to benefit from using these tags.
It may take me a while to figure out how to use them correctly, but the info here will definitely help. I need to take the search engine crawlers more seriously and make them work for me instead of just ignoring them. I look forward to reading some of your other posts!
A descriptive piece that has changed my approach to how I blog; I’m glad that I went through this piece before opening my third blog. I love how you explained some of the most complex terms in a way that even a blogging rookie would understand with ease. I’m a massive fan of your blog, and I think you’re doing a great thing for bloggers like myself looking to get where you are.
Blog tags are necessary when trying to reach certain audiences! I have had to go through trial and error to understand how important they were. At first, I thought they were annoying and I had no idea on what words to even put as tags on my blogs so I would just leave them blank or I would put what I thought would reach customers. I was so wrong!
I agree that it is best to do research on your topic and what blog tags are already out there bringing in customers. The last thing you want is for your blog to not reach anyone and to not perform as it should. Consistency is key and using your advice, I have been able to increase traffic by 20% already!
Blog tags are very important for blog success. As someone who has a fitness blog, I struggled to find ideas on what to tag my blog with. When I first started blogging, my posts only had three tags, and I struggled to get traffic and clicks. I”m glad you highlighted blogs should have 5-10 tags and that they should be clear and concise. I found Word Robot to definitely help and saved me a ton of time and I didn’t have to think too hard about blog tags. I’m not familiar with the other blog tags you mentioned, but I’ll be sure to check them out because they seem useful.
Hello Taylor,
I knew about how important SEO was to a website. I did not know that tags would help get you higher on a SE list. I always thought that they were just an annoying way to get you more attention.
I know that is why you said not to over-do-it with them. I will have to do some research on the auto tag creator now and see if it will help me.
I really found your Word Robot to be something that would be useful and will be giving it a try in the near future.
Thanks for the information
Very informative article about the value of tags and how to apply them to relevant topics. This is a fantastic article! This is necessary if not, a vital post for all of us — content writers, SEO specialists, and developers alike.
Very interesting post! I’ve heard some web developers say that blog tags may not be needed anymore, but I think the key is to do them right and not over do them. Looking at your own blog tags with a critical eye and asking yourself if they really add value for your visitors and if they will be helpful for readers in finding out more about the topics they came to your blog learn. Thanks for all the recommendations on tag automation as well, tips for saving time and making a processes less complex are always appreciated!