- Jan 17, 2015
- 5,263
- 4,956
Lately I've been thinking about Wordpress tags for SEO purposes. Some people found interesting to introduce dozens of tags while others prefer not to use tags at all (only categories, with a SILO structure for example)
From my point of view, I've found some caveats that I would like to share and also see your opinion:
1. Duplicate content: If you fill the tags system with random tags, you may end with non-canonical indexed URLs that point to the exact post, meaning that, to the eyes of Google, you have duplicate content (two URLs pointing to the exact same content). Even if you just use 5 or 6 tags, the risk is still there, because generally, no one used a structured tag system (that is why Categories are useful)
2. Keyword stuffing: This could be a pro and a con at the same time: If you have not been able to stuff your content with enough keywords this could be an opportunity to get some extra entries. The problem is that there is no semantic sense in a tag block, therefore I severely doubt that these extra keywords could be useful at all
But there could be some advantages:
I've seen that sometimes, some tags rank well for certain long-tail keywords. But at the same time, this "tag" pages can cannibalize other content.
An example of a friend site:
https://estoi.co/tag/oikeiosis
https://estoi.co/2017/hierocles-introduccion-oikeiosis/
In this case, the keyword: "oikeiosis" is ranking better for the article, but the tag is in the next place (Wikipedia article is ranking first, at least for es_ES locale).
This means that tags are a double edge sword for SEO purposes. My experience dictates that generally, they are not a bad idea, but I have never analyzed if they could be harming other places on a site.
So theoretically, Tags are completely worthless and even harmful but could be useful at the same time. I have not figured out a formula to make tags useful + harmless. This is my two cents about this topic. Open to see others opinions.
From my point of view, I've found some caveats that I would like to share and also see your opinion:
1. Duplicate content: If you fill the tags system with random tags, you may end with non-canonical indexed URLs that point to the exact post, meaning that, to the eyes of Google, you have duplicate content (two URLs pointing to the exact same content). Even if you just use 5 or 6 tags, the risk is still there, because generally, no one used a structured tag system (that is why Categories are useful)
2. Keyword stuffing: This could be a pro and a con at the same time: If you have not been able to stuff your content with enough keywords this could be an opportunity to get some extra entries. The problem is that there is no semantic sense in a tag block, therefore I severely doubt that these extra keywords could be useful at all
But there could be some advantages:
I've seen that sometimes, some tags rank well for certain long-tail keywords. But at the same time, this "tag" pages can cannibalize other content.
An example of a friend site:
https://estoi.co/tag/oikeiosis
https://estoi.co/2017/hierocles-introduccion-oikeiosis/
In this case, the keyword: "oikeiosis" is ranking better for the article, but the tag is in the next place (Wikipedia article is ranking first, at least for es_ES locale).
This means that tags are a double edge sword for SEO purposes. My experience dictates that generally, they are not a bad idea, but I have never analyzed if they could be harming other places on a site.
So theoretically, Tags are completely worthless and even harmful but could be useful at the same time. I have not figured out a formula to make tags useful + harmless. This is my two cents about this topic. Open to see others opinions.
