How should could I use Tags for SEO on my new site?

How should could I use Tags for SEO on my new site MandarinMnemonics.com?

How do I know what tags would be helpful for SEO?

 

use the title and description tags. for your body content, use H1 and H2 tags. there is no need to use any keyword tag as it is overlooked by search engines

 

When I say tags, I am talking about the tags that Wordpress lets you put in for your blog posts. Would those be helpful for my site?

 

It is strongly recommended to use meta and title tags.

Use h1 as your main title, h2 as your second title and h3 as your third title.

Often there will be no need for h3.

You can have as many h3's as you wish and try to avoid using too many h2's.

Generally its recommended to have your post title as h1 as this should include your main key word you wish the page to be found from.

(from looking at your website this seems to be just about right on all accounts

 

I am sorry, I wasn't talking about html tags.

I was talking about wordpress blog post tags.

 

Well, i hope i will have my answer closer to what you are looking for.

They are somewhat helpful, but don't assume a lot. You just have to tell what it is that blog post about. When your blog will grow bigger, tag pages will have their own indexed pages and will help your visitors to browse all articles in that topic. THey are good for navigation. And google thinks almost like a man, if they can find your article trough that tag page, more value added to it and the changes that your article to be found trough search engines is higher.

I think it is waste of time to do keyword research for every article, but if you got that way, put the keywords you want that article optimized for as tags, and then try some one keyword general tags.

For example if you write something about wordpress, make sure you have the tag wordpress even if you are not optimize for it.

You can find more info about plugins that you can use to make your wordpress life easier at http://www.flamescorpion.com

 

Tags are more for usability... They do nothing good from an SEO perspective. They create new pages where duplicate excerpts (or entire posts) appear that likely already appear on the category and post pages... similar to the way category pages typically contain duplicate content (or at least duplicate excerpts) from the post unless you use custom excerpts instead of the first 200 words w/ "read more" links.

It's ok to use tags IMO, but I would DEFINITELY nofollow all of the tag links.

 

thanks. that was more of what I was looking for.

 

There are number of specific html tags use for the Seo such like Meta, alt, title and H1 to H5 tags,bold,italic,<a> tags etc...

 

@Canonical - Can you expand a little? Why are you so emphatic on nofollowing tags? What's the effect, if they're followed?

 

The effect is that they have duplicate content. I would go more for no-index on tag pages. Unless you have 1000 posts in your blog, most tag pages will end up with duplicate content.

 

If you have a wordpress blog you better download/use the Platinum SEO Pack / Complete SEO solution.

You can download it here : http://techblissonline.com/platinum-seo-pack/

It's pretty easy to install it actually and customize it.

Al.

 

Ah! Understood. I hadn't thought of that. I've seen discussions elsewhere on blog tags, that has frankly left me a little in doubt on even using them. NOFOLLOW resolves those doubts. Thanks for the response.

 

Hello Doc,

Actually, I misspoke. What I meant to say was:

Think about how blog home pages, category pages, archive pages, tag pages are typically built...

Typically the home page, category pages, archive pages, and tag pages are a collection of either:

1) X number of post excerpts (typically the first 200 words of the post with a "read more" link) OR
2) X number of entire posts,

depending on the template used.

I prefer my post pages to rank for my targeted keyword phrases, so I avoid duplicating the content from the post in ANY fashion on ANY other pages of my site. This is one reason I prefer templates that use excerpts on the home, category, archive, and tag pages rather than displaying an entire copy of the post on each of those pages. And I also avoid templates that only support using the typical first 200 words from the post as an excerpt.

Having a complete copy of your entire post on the home (for a short period until it rolls off), category, archive, and tags page in addition to the post page itself means you can have the exact same post in 4-5 different places on your site. This is very bad IMO if all of those pages are allowed to be indexed. If someone wants to link to my post because it's good, I want to give them ONE place to link to - the post itself. So that is the only place that content appears on my site.

Similarly what advantage does duplicating excerpts in 3-4 places on the site have? No upside... only downside. I actually strive to make sure that even my excerpts only appear on one indexed page on my site once it rolls off the home page... the category page. For this reason I NOINDEX my archives... and if I used tags, I would NOINDEX the tag pages as well. There is NO content on the archives pages and tag pages that cannot be found on the post pages and category pages.

I even prevent using ANY part of my post as the excerpt so that the category pages aren't seen as using partial duplicates of the posts in that category. I ALWAYS use custom excerpts for my home, category, archive pages... and personally I avoid using tags all together. Why do I do this? Several reasons...

Once my post/excerpt rolls off the home page, it exists on only one indexed page... the category page. The archive pages are NOINDEXed. If I used tags, those pages would be NOINDEXed as well. The excerpt not only contains totally unique content, but I always include my own "read more" link at the end of the custom excerpt where I can control the link text and use a targeted keyword phrase for the post.

Also I'm a big believer in theme pyramids as a site architecture... and category pages with unique content for excerpts all about the same topic (the category) provide the opportunity to possibly rank for the targeted keyword phrase of the more general category... similar to theme pyramids.

Maybe I'm just anal, but it seems to work for me.

 

Great explanation, Canonical! I have been using a quoted excerpt for all my posts, and I can see your point on how that can be detrimental. I guess I need to rethink a few things. I like the NOINDEX idea for the tag pages, too. Thanks again!