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The tags in wordpress They were very fashionable a few years ago since they allowed you to categorize or group posts or entries efficiently.
Nowadays they are increasingly in disuse, but that does not mean they are not effective for some projects.
We cannot confuse the labels and the categories since they are not the same, and although both serve to order the content, you will see that they fulfill different functions.
In this article you will see what WordPress tags are, what they are for, how to create them and much more.
What are tags in WordPress
The labels are part of the WordPress “taxonomies” section along with the categoriesand both serve to categorize.
used to define or summarize in one or more compound words (better to avoid compound words), the content of the post or entry.
They help highlight words in the text that serve to clearly group posts or entries on the same topic (these can perfectly belong to different categories).
Before continuing I want you to see what I mean.
As you can see, you can create several per post and these can be assigned to several categories. That is, we can create the label “cases” and assign it to the categories “Mobile” and “Samsung” for example.
I know that it is difficult to understand and that they can be confused with the categories, but we are going to continue so that you can see it more clearly.
What are tags in WordPress for?
The main function of tags is organize by similar themes WordPress posts or entries.
The idea is to facilitate usability so that the user finds different posts on the topic about which you want information.
The use of tags can facilitate navigation and make the reader access to very related content.
In terms of web positioningthe use of labels it has to be very controlledsince it can give duplicate content to be able to have similarity with the categories.
A good practice if you want to use labels is to do not index themin this way you can continue to offer the reader good navigability without having to worry about duplication.
If you index the tags and fill the index of your Google site with tags, you will be downplaying other determining urls that search engines must crawl to position your site.
If you think your blog requires or can improve the user experience, go ahead, I’ll teach you how to create them.
How to create tags in WordPress
To create a tag in WordPress is very simple, you just have to access Dashboard> Posts> Tags.
Once you access this section, the fields to fill in.
Assign a name to the tag. The slug is created by default and the description is not usually displayed as a general rule.
Once the label is created, it will appear on the right as created.
Now when you edit a specific post on the right you can assign that created tag if it is consistent with the theme, even within each post you also have the option to create new tags without having to go to the option you just saw.
I show you the example:
In this field you can create a tag name and when you enter, you will automatically have that tag created.
Likewise, when you write in that field, it shows you suggestions so that you can choose an already created label so that you do not duplicate it.
Note: If you do not see the following option, it is because you do not have the tags tab (on the right) of the Gutenberg options (or the theme you use) checked. You only have to check “labels” if this field does not appear.
How to add tags in WordPress (tag cloud)
Now that you know how to create the tags, it’s time to assign them to each post.
To do this, it is extremely simple. Simply once you are editing a new article, on the right side (as I just explained) you have the labels field.
In this field you can fill in the labels that you think go well with the post.
Once assigned you can click save and if you have configured in your template to show the labels you will see something similar to this.
*The design varies depending on the template you have in your WordPress and sometimes you need an additional plugin.
How to modify labels
If at any time you want to modify a label, it is as simple as going back to Posts>Labels and clicking on Edit.
In that option you can assign another name, slug or description.
NOTE You have to be careful if you change the slug, since by doing so you will be changing the url causing a .
In order not to harm the positioning of your website and give a bad experience to the user who may find a page that no longer exists, you will have to make a 301 redirect.
How to remove tags
If you see the previous image you can see that next to “edit”, you also have the option to “delete” in red.
In the same way that it causes a 404 error if you modify the url, when you delete a tag in WordPress, you are also generating that error and you have to remedy it through a .
How to optimize tags
You already know how to create, assign, modify and delete labels.
Now is the time to optimize them.
Why do you want labels if you don’t have them properly configured? Let’s see how to get the most out of them.
As I already told you at the beginning of the article, my suggestion, unless you have a document accounting for what tags you are using and in what articles and/or categories they are using them, is don’t index them.
If you index the tags and do not have good control, you will be falling into duplicity of content And I’ll give you a couple of examples for you to understand:
Imagine that your website is about sports: www.sport2.com
– Categories that we will include: Soccer, Basketball, Tennis…
Now you decide to write an entry about the best tennis players of 2020. You would add this post within the Tennis category.
You could put labels on the post such as: “rackets”, “balls” and “Roland Garros”….
Well, imagine that you assign a category that is “tennis”
- for categories: http://sport2.com/category/tennis/
- for labels: http://sport2.com/tag/tennis/
A priori you can think that they are not equal to 100%, but this is duplicate content.
If we also add to this problem, which if we put many labels we can have more tag pages with little content than pages with relevant articles who is interested in positioning.
You may think that the solution is to use fewer tags and this may be another problem because by doing this you will be repeating the same categories in each article.
For these reasons, the best and recommended is do not index the tagswhich can be done in two ways.
- Using the Yoast SEO plugin.
- Editing the robots.txt.
We can even simplify it by using only Yoast, since the plugin includes the option “edit robots.txt.” integrated.
Even if you want to dig deeper, you can learn how.
Do not index tags in Google
Do not index the tags through Yoast SEO
To not index the tags with Yoast you have to install and activate your plugin from the WordPress repository.
Once you have it, you have to access the left sidebar of WordPress within the SEO field. There you will see an option that is “search appearance”
Once inside, go to “Taxonymies” and select the “Tags (post tag)” option.
Just check the tab Do we show Tags in search results? What NO.
This way your post tags will not be indexed in Google results, but yes they will be visible by the user.
If you already had the tags indexed and you no longer want to have them, with this measure little by little should be disappearing from Google results.
When generating 404 errors you have to take care of removing them in Search Console.
Sometimes the process takes time to complete because there are urls pointing to the tags.
The solution is in remove those links and wait or somehow force Google to see that you don’t want it to display or track those tags, via robots.txt.
Block tags in Robots.txt
To tell Google not to definitively access the tags of your website and in this way that it understands that it has to remove them from its index is marking a rule in the robots.txt.
You can do this by editing the file by ftp or in the file manager of your hosting.
In any case it consists of add a line and send the modified robots back through the Search console to be taken into account.
The easiest thing is to go back to using Yoast SEO.
To do this, go to the Tools> File Editor option.
There you can add the following line:
Knowing what name they have, you must access the Robots.txt file and add the following line of code:
You save the changes and that same code send it to Google Search console.
If in a few minutes you access your website.com/robots.txt from the browser, you will see that the order is given and if you had tags, if everything goes well, they should disappear from Google results.
conclusion
As you have seen, tags may be out of use on many websites, but on others they can help navigate your page.
If you have them implemented, take advantage of them to make the user navigate from one site to another on the web.
What I do recommend if you don’t know how to work them is do not index them in Google.
The non-indexing will keep that correct navigability on the web, but you will make Google waste less time accessing URLs that are not relevant.
Besides wasting time Google can see duplicate content and harm the growth of your project.
I leave you this summary video so you can see exactly everything mentioned above with an example.
Were you using the labels properly? Do you plan to include them in your articles? I hope this post has helped you make the right decision.
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Web designer, SEO and Digital Marketing consultant | I work as a freelancer making websites for clients who want to grow their business through the internet | In addition, I teach in my Blog how to create a web project absolutely from scratch | You can find me on social media.
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