Wordpress Question Regarding Tags

I just started learning about SEO. I have a blog with a couple hundred articles that i'm testing seo methods on. In it I have the simple tags plugin installed.

Because I didn't know much about SEO I had the simple tags plugin on "auto tags" (where it searches my post for tags) and automatically adds them if it finds that word in my post. Because of this I have articles that have like 100 tags each because almost every little word is a tag (I thought I was going to get traffic this way by adding lots of tags per post).

Now that I know that doesn't work I'm wondering..

1. Do people even use tags anymore? Do tags help with seo? The simple tags plugin?
2. What do you recommend I do? Should I just delete all the tags and the plugin? Should I re-read every post and add relevant tags for the target keywords?

Thanks everyone.

>1. Do people even use tags anymore?
You mean visitors? If you use them properly, yes. (Tag cloud, navigation area, etc.)

>Do tags help with seo? The simple tags plugin?
Yes to both if used properly.

>2. What do you recommend I do? Should I just delete all the tags and the plugin? Should I re-read every post and add relevant tags for the target keywords?

You probably want to get rid of the excessive tags. The plugin is useful if you learn how to use it. Reworking the tags on older posts is up to you, you have to decide if your time is worth the benefit. If nothing else, do it on all new posts going forward.

Thanks for the tips.

Tags generally don't help with SEO as much as they help file your posts for your readers. Here's my suggestion: Install all-in-one SEO, canonicalize your URLs, nofollow tags and category archives, setup a pinging service, and push good content.

Once you do this, start spamming links. Don't overthink it.

speakeasy, do you know of any guides about configuring all in one seo effectively? I wish there was a guide somewhere that tells you what to put in each field/what options to check to get the most out of it.

david wright said:

speakeasy, do you know of any guides about configuring all in one seo effectively? I wish there was a guide somewhere that tells you what to put in each field/what options to check to get the most out of it.

Click to expand...

It's pretty good straight out of the box, so to speak, but their website has all of the suggested settings. You can also click on each setting for recommendations. I would link directly to it, but whenever I post links, my comment gets denied.

The key is: try to avoid duplicate content, use canonicals, and noindex pointless pages (or any URL to content other than that of the original post). You may also want to try Platinum SEO, it's basically the same thing, but has a few extra settings.