What are WordPress tags and how to use them correctly?

the labels of they are one of the tools you can use to group your posts by similar characteristics.

Tags are usually found below a post or in the sidebar. When a visitor clicks on a particular tag, it will open a tag page, displaying all posts and custom post types that have the same tag.

WordPress tags play a vital role in organizing content and have a direct impact on user experience and SEO.

In this complete guide you will learn everything you need to know about WordPress tags, with some for tag pages.

WordPress Categories vs Tags

Technically, both categories like tags are WordPress taxonomy. Simply put, they rank your posts.

However, we use tags and categories in a different way. Here are the main differences:

1. Broad vs. Specific

The main distinction between categories and tags is the size of the topic they cover. Categories group general topics of your posts, while tags describe a specific detail of your content.

Let’s see it with an example: let’s say you have a . The categories you have can be Culinary Journey, Recipes, Tips and Food News.

If you have an article titled “The most delicious Sirloin Wellington recipe”, this article will be listed in the Recipes category and you can use the Beef Recipes, Sirloin Recipes, Gordon Ramsay tags.

pro tip

Using something like “Gordon Ramsay” for the category is not recommended, as it doesn’t cover a broad topic of your blog posts. Unless you plan to create a lot of content about him, his name should remain a tag, not a category.

2. Necessary vs Optional

Another difference between these two taxonomies is how mandatory they are for your post. Categories are required while tags are optional.

If you don’t assign a category to a post, WordPress will automatically add it to the default category, which is ‘No Category’.

pro tip

The default category name can be changed by accessing Settings -> Writing from the administration panel.

3. Hierarchical relationship vs independent entity

Lastly, categories and tags have a different hierarchical relationship. Categories are hierarchical. This means that you can add child categories or subcategories to the parent category.

For example: Under the Recipes category, you can add more subcategories like Appetizer, Main Dish, Desserts, and Diet Meal Plan.

And in the Diet Food Plan, you can include other subcategories like Low Carb Foods, Low Sugar Foods, and Low Fat Foods.

Unlike categories, tags do not have a hierarchical relationship. Each tag you add is a separate element that has no level.

In addition to the three differences above, categories and tags also produce a different permalink. You need to be using a custom permalink structure to see the difference. Once this structure is enabled, the base prefix will look like this:

http://examplesite.com/category/recipes/

either

http://examplesite.com/label/recipes/

Although these two taxonomies are different in their practical uses, you can use both in your posts. A post can have one or two categories and many tags.

How to add tags in WordPress?

Adding tags to your post is quite easy. However, remember that only blog posts can have tags.

There are two ways to add tags in WordPress. First, you can add the tags for new blog posts. For this, follow the steps below.

1. From the administration panel, go to Tickets -> Add new
2. On the right side of the visual editor, locate the label box.
3. Type the tags you want to add. Each different tag must be separated by a comma.

Second, you can add tags to existing posts. This also helps you improve SEO because you can for your tags.

1. From the administration panel, go to Posts -> Tags
2. Add a new label in a name form
3. Add the slug for your tag.

How to display the tag cloud in WordPress?

Using tags in WordPress not only helps organize your posts, but also improves the usability and accessibility of your site. Therefore, the tags create a better user experience.

Also, creating a tag cloud widget will further enhance the user experience.

The tag cloud widget helps you display all the tags you have created. With just 1 click, visitors can see your tags and find their favorite topic.

Your website may be very common in your niche, but with a tag cloud, visitors can find interesting topics that they won’t find as quickly on your competitors’ sites.

In addition, you can also define a larger font size for the most popular tags.

Follow these easy steps to add the tag cloud widget:

1. From the administration panel, go to Appearance -> Widgets
2. Find the Tag Cloud widget and drag it to the area where you want to display it. It is usually located in the sidebar.
3. Give it a title and define the number of tags you want to include in the cloud. The maximum number is 75.

Adding a tag cloud involves a few different steps, as this version of WordPress uses a site-wide tag cloud:

1. go to Appearance -> Editor to open the site editor.
2. Hover over the area where you want to add the tag cloud and click the plus sign icon plus (+) to add a new block.
3. Look for the tag cloud and click the block to add it to the page.

4. The tag cloud will appear on the page.
5. To modify it, open the block settings by clicking the block in the tag cloud and pressing the icon Setting in the upper right corner of the screen.

Activate the option Show the number of tickets to display the tag count on the page and adjust the slider number of labels to set the maximum number of labels to display.

Sometimes you may want to exclude a tag from the tag cloud regardless of its popularity. To exclude a tag, follow these steps:

1. go to Posts->Tags. Choose the tag to exclude.
2. Now, look carefully at the browser’s address bar and find the Tag ID. It is the number that comes after tag_ID=.
3. Copy the tag ID and go back to Customize -> Widgets.
4. Click on the tag cloud widget settings and open its settings.
5. Paste the tag ID into the Exclude box
6. Click the button Save to finish the process.

WordPress and SEO tags

WordPress tags are also important for the . When you do it right, a well-managed taxonomy like the one for tags will improve your SEO ranking.

But keep in mind that, used incorrectly, tags can also be detrimental to your SEO.

WordPress is the best when it comes to SEO. Once again, you will notice that it has built-in SEO features to deal with search engines.

These default features direct all search engines to index your site’s posts, pages, categories, and tags, and store the information in their databases.

However, some flaws in the use of tags could damage this indexing process.

First, sometimes people create a similar name for a category and tag. This generates two identical category and tag pages. If you have “Recipes” as both a tag and a category, search engines could get confused on which of these pages to rank first.

A similar duplication problem can occur with singular or plural nouns that you use as labels. For example, “Recipes” and “Recipe” are similar, so you should pick one and use it consistently as your tag.

Also, tag pages don’t have unique content on their own. They only contain excerpts from the posts, while unique content is written in each individual post. This is why search engines prefer to crawl different post pages rather than tag pages.

Please note that WordPress automatically creates a tag page every time you define a new tag. In the next section, you’ll learn how to use tag pages to aid user navigation, without hurting SEO.

WordPress Tag Archive Pages “Noindex”

The best method to overcome issues with tag pages and SEO is to use the WordPress noindex tag. By doing this, you tell search engines to ignore your tag pages when they crawl your site’s data.

He is an excellent choice to do this. Follow the steps below to apply “noindex” to WordPress tag pages:

1. click on Appearance in the search engine
2. Select the tab taxonomies
3. Find the section tags
4. Under Show tags in search resultsChoose Nope.
5. Click the button Save to end.

conclusion

WordPress tags are a great way to manage your content. You can help your readers find their favorite topics quickly and easily. This improves the overall user experience.

However, some small flaws when using the tags could affect SEO. Use the tips provided to maximize the usability of tags without having a negative effect on SEO.

Gustavo is passionate about creating websites. He focuses on the application of SEO strategies at for Spain and Latin America, as well as the creation of high-level content. When he is not applying new WordPress tricks you can find him playing the guitar, traveling or taking an online course.