Do Blog Tags affect SEO at all anymore?

[davidkaralisjr]

We're trying to standardize the use of tags on our site amongst writers/editors, and I'm trying to come up a list of tags they can choose from to tag posts with - and telling them to use no more than 10 (absolute maximum) per post. We are also in the process of migrating to a new CMS, and have 8 defined categories that will all have their own landing page within our "News" section.

TLDR:

Do blog tags have any impact on SEO anymore? Are they solely meant to help users find articles related on popular topics, or does creating a tag for a popular topic help to improve organic visibility?

Full Question:

With the tag standardization, I want to make sure we're creating the most useful and effective tags; and the UX/SEO sides of my brain are conflicted. To my understanding, creating a tag about a high volume topic in an industry helps establish the website's relevance to Google/other search engines about that topic and improves overall relevance; but the tag feed page (ex: http://freshome.com/tag/home-protection/) isn't really meant for organic search visibility. So my other question is, is it worth it to noindex the tag pages in the robots.txt? Will that affect any benefit to increased relevance for Google (if there is any)?

I'm interested to hear others' thoughts and suggestions.

Thanks in advance!

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

Well, one thing is for sure - do not block tags in robots.txt. That won't help anyhow for sure.

As for organic rankings - at the last company I worked for, I've seen some instances when tag page was ranking for a longer tail keyphrase. So, I would keep tags somewhat SEO friendly. But, as you said, main reason for tags nowadays is UX. Therefore I approach it this way - UX/navigational help first, but, if possible, also make tag SEO friendly. Also 10 tags is too many to my opinion. I believe that recommendations are 2-3 tags, maybe 4, but over that is a murder.

Hope this helps

[davebuts]

Hi David,

I have to disagree with Dmitrii a bit here.

I would say the answer to your question depends on the size of your site and how many articles and tags you are talking about - on bigger sites with more tags, they can become quite an issue.

On a big-ish news site that I own and run (14,000+ articles), I added "noindex" to all tag pages (2,000+) and then blocked them in robots.txt a few months later (once Google had crawled and removed them all from index).

The reason for removing and blocking them for search engines is that tag pages generally don't offer anything unique or of substantial value when compared to other pages on your site site, and they can also use up a lot of your "crawl budget".

For the site mentioned, I saw around a 30% organic traffic increase after implementing these changes.

The tags are still there for users, but they are not visible to search engines and means that search engines are now only crawling pages that we want indexed and ranking, instead of wasting their time crawling thousands of links to thousands of tag pages.

Basically, don't think of tags as a way to "help your SEO" because they probably won't and they have the potential to do the opposite.

If you think creating a particular tag will help you get long-tail traffic, write an article about that topic instead! I guarantee you it will perform a lot better than a tag page.

Cheers,

David

[JamesNorquay]

I would No Index TAG pages on your blog/website. The SEO benefit from these tags is limited the userbility benefit is evident.

Using tag pages is still not a bad idea as they can help with fine tuning your category level targeting.

Also the attached image is a great example to compare the two from this post - https://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success

categories-vs-tags(1).png

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Another vote for noindexing tags.

They serve very little (no real) benefit for SEO and cause more headaches than anything else. I never really want to see tags indexing and competing with primary internal pages that actually carry the information I want people to find.

Use them, but just don't index them.

-Andy

[netzkern_AG]

I'd have to disagree with David, strongly so.

But then it is probably a matter of what "tag page" means for you and what you do with your tag pages!

Is a tag just something you slap on articles and stuff to simply have all a page that merely displays them all? Well yeah, then I'd tend towards noindex. I'd also wonder how many people really use a tagging like that - and have a use for it.

Personally I favour the other approach where tag pages are made into a page that can stand alone, for example giving a general overview over a topic and then listing the tagged articles for more specialised content. (Yes, you need a certain minimum of articles for tags to be useful at all ... and too many of one tag is probably also a warning sign of over-specialisation.) Of course this is not possible with every website and organisation. I have found, though, that such "hub pages" work exceptionally well for more generic than long term searches.

TL;DR: The importance and treatment of tags and tag pages largely depends on how you define their role.

Nico

[DmitriiK]

After reading all the comments below, it somewhat all goes back to what I was trying to say - tags can help with SEO, but typically don't. Keeping them SEO unfriendly whatsoever might be not the best idea. Noindexing them might help with crawling resources and duplicate content, but not always.

[davebuts]

Hi Netzkern,

It actually sounds like you agree with me!

The way you are talking about 'tags' is how most people tend to use categories and sub-categories. I agree that categories and sub-categories are fine (if they have sufficient content, like you said).

Generally, with 'tags', you don't need to be overly strategic with how you use them - they are usually only there for users to find more closely related content on your site (more specific than what the categories or sub-categories offer).

My general advice is to "noindex" tags and never use them to try and grow your organic traffic.

Cheers,

David

[DmitriiK]

Crawl resources could be managed through priority use in sitemaps.

[davidkaralisjr]

Thanks for that visual! It breaks it down the differences pretty nicely.

[davidkaralisjr]

I agree, I think it needs to be a nice blend of UX/SEO in the tagging (like most things) - use the insights from search to inform what users are interested in, but also frame them to make for the best UX.

Also, I tend to agree with you on the 10 being too many - but the nature of a lot of our articles leads to the need for multiple tags (state, city, etc.) since we publish a lot on laws/policies/regulations that happen in an area, and it also relates to other tags we use across the board. It's all a balance

[davidkaralisjr]

I tend to use the subcategories/categories for the standalone "hub" pages on a topic, rather than the tag pages. And I agree that it's important to not have too many uses/not enough uses of a tag, which is really where the need for standardization comes into play.

[davidkaralisjr]

I think our news section is beginning to fall into the "is this too big to not run the risk of duplicate content with tags" category - so that makes sense to me. And that's great you saw the organic search traffic increase; my guess it that it lessens any "dilution" of targeting from having too many similar pages.