Is Tagging Still Important for Blog Posts?

When tagging was first made popular for bloggers several years ago, it was pushed to the forefront by Technorati as a means of helping searchers find your content.

The idea was that searchers, instead of or in addition to using the regular text search, would prefer a tag search or that blog posts with appropriate tags would have a higher ranking. The reason being, keywords often show up in posts only partially related to the topic, but if a blogger intentionally tags a post, it is a much more clear indication of what the post is about.

But then some bloggers began to abuse tags. Some engaged in tag stuffing, inserting every single possibly related tag into the tag field. Others outright tried to game the system by adding popular tags that were unrelated to the actual post. As a result of this, tag search seems to have largely fallen out of favor. Doing a tag search on Technorati today involves specifically filtering your result.

However, at the same time, tagging has gained broader acceptance among bloggers. WordPress 2.3, released in fall of 2007, was the first to natively support tagging (prior to then WordPress users had to either handcode tags or use plugins) and more bloggers than ever tag their content.

But is it really worthwhile? It is a tough question to answer.

The Intended Use

One thing that has become obvious to me is that the the classical use of tagging, a user performing a tag search, has driven virtually no traffic to my site. Not only do I see very little traffic from blog search engines in general, but those who do find my sites through them typically do so through a regular blog text search.

I’m not sure if this experience is common, I do typically work with niche tags, but I also know that I haven’t use tag searches in at least two years and don’t know many others who actively use them in that capacity.

It seems that the original vision for tags, at least as presented by Technorati, is largely dead. Tag abuse combined with improvements in non-blog search engines made the idea of searching for tags obsolete for the most part.

However, this doesn’t mean that tagging itself is, just that its purpose has changed.

Modern-Day SEO and Tags

The question tags and tag clouds help or hurt SEO seems to be a somewhat divisive one. Some, such as Stephan Spencer of Search Engine Land feel that tag clouds have been overall a positive. He says that:

Tagging isn’t just a tool for usability (even though it’s typically mostly thought of in those terms), it’s also a powerful weapon for search engine optimization. That’s because tagging allows you to rejig your internal hierarchical linking structure, flowing the link juice more strategically throughout your site. And because those links are textual and keyword-rich, a tag cloud is far superior in terms of SEO to the traditional graphical navigation bar.

However, others worry about potential issues that can come with the use of tags such as duplicate content issues, which is why some have developed plugins to mitigate this problem, and link dilution.

Overall though, it seems that tags do have a positive effect on most blog’s ranking in the search engines. The problems that are associated with tagging can be largely prevented and some bloggers report that their tag pages are their most profitable, likely due to a combination of search traffic and well-targeted advertisements.

Despite this, the one group that doesn’t seem to be using tags so widely is human visitors. Though tag clouds are common and a high percentage of posts have tags with them, few people use those pages to navigate the site. Nearly all of my tag page visitors arrive from the search engines, not another page on my site and it seems that experience is at least fairly common.

Still, the end result is that tagging remains very important, but just not for the same reasons. Where once it was a way to get a few extra clicks out of blog search engines, its now become a way to rank higher for more terms in regular search engines.

Bottom Line

Tagging is important but it is important to do it well. Using smart, well-targeted and keyword-friendly tags alongside high-quality content can help search engine visitors find your site. Though it likely isn’t the most important thing you do to help your site in the search engines (that would be creating good content people enjoyed and linked to) it can help.

However, it is important to do tagging right and be careful of the pitfalls. But if it is done well, it can be a major asset to your site.

Still, it is something of a shame that the original vision of tagging has suffered such a sad fate. The idea of neatly organizing blog posts is a compelling one, but there were just too many people eager to break the system in order to cheat it.

Hopefully something better can be developed.

Written by Jonathan Bailey from Plagiarism Today
Posted on June 25th, 2009 and filed under Blogging
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