In our last post, we discussed the proper use of categories. Now we are going to delve into the world of tags. While categories in WordPress are like broader sections of a website, tags are like keywords. A great way to think about it is the categories are like the table of contents in a book. Tags are like the list of items in an index.

A category title should be descriptive and can be several words long. A tag is more specific and is usually only a word or two and reflects the keywords or points of your post

What Tags Should You Use?

The tags for an article are the few words that best describe what your article (or blog post) is about. Ideally, there are 5-10 keywords that specifically tie into your post. Please note: the keywords must be about your article, not just a random word you think will get you traffic.

Let’s say you had a post on your B2B business blog entitled “How to work with other businesses online!” Some keywords you might use include as tags are: B2b, online business, business collaboration, etc. See how those actually relate to the article we’re talking about? Your job is to find the ones that best reflect your article and get the most search traffic, but more on that coming up.

Select 3 to 5 tags and you should be in good shape.

Tag Pages

A lot of people don’t know this, but one of the (many) great things about WordPress is that for each tag you add to an article, WordPress creates a tag page. And that tag page will link to all articles tagged with that keyword. So all articles tagged with the keyword “dating” will be linked from the “dating” tag page on your blog.

Tag pages are important from an SEO perspective because they can rank really well in search engines. Tagging your posts well will help you climb the keyword mountain faster and you’ll get noticed in the search engines and gradually move your way up in search rankings for those keywords.

Tags are Picky

As far as Google is concerned, the following keyword tags are completely different: “blog” and “blog post” and “blogpost”.

You need to be aware that those are completely different keywords and be consistent in the way you tag your articles. There’s nothing wrong with amy of the above keywords, but choosing one form and using it that way consistently increases your chances of getting ranked for that form of the keyword. So pick one and stick with it. Either you always use “blogpost” as your tag or you use “blog post”. Don’t use both interchangeably or you’ll hurt your SEO.