Once your content is ready to ship you need to find the best way to communicate your potential audience what it is about. That is where tags come in handy. In this article you will learn the best way to tag blog posts to give them more visibility.
How many tags do you use for each blog post? That is what I asked for my Monday´s weekly discussion on the International Bloggers Association blog a couple of weeks ago.
The question arised from the chance I got to start from scratch with my new blog. When I started my old blog in 2005 there were no tags, so most of my really old content is uncategorized and unsearchable.
I tend to go from one decoration style to another. When I am on the minimalist phase I declutter every space, nook and cranny. When I am on the Victorian phase I´m a collector of everything. That shows on my blogging style as well. From short, to the point posts with broad categories to very long, detailed posts full of descriptions that need a gazillion tags.
Many interesting points were raised in the answers. For example Sarah Martin from Meplus3today told me that as a reader she doesn´t search by tags. And Lauren from The Military Wife and Mom considered people reading from mobile devices who don´t see the cloud tags in the side bars.
Wonder how many tags to use for each blog post and how many are too many? According to the official WordPress Support 15 is the limit number:
In most cases, there’s no need to assign more than a handful of tags per post. If you use more than 15 tags and categories (total), your posts will not appear on tag pages (because you don’t want to see irrelevant content showing up there, and neither do we).
The post that will give you a clear path to follow was by Megan Kubasch who said:
I prefer to have a 3 Tag Maximum on my posts, just because I feel like if I can’t describe it in 3 Tags or less, than it is too scattered. The way I create or use tags is I ask myself, What is it about? What sort of post is it? Does it have any special specifications? For example, my latest post was a sponsored post from Vollie Austin Toffee about a toffee sample they sent to me for review, and they wanted me to create a giveaway for the post as well. So What is the post about? Toffee. What Sort of post is it? A Review. Any specifications? A Giveaway is involved. So there were my 3 tags for the post: Toffee. Review. Giveaway.
As a best practices guide:
+Consider if your tagged post will bring valuable information to readers searching for that tag or it has just a tiny reference to the subject.
+Avoid unhelpful or too broad tags, use categories instead.
+Revise your tags on a regular basis to merge similar ones and delete those underused.
What is your tagging style? Do you use only one or two very clear themes or do you tag up to the tiniest mention of anything so your readers can find everything? On average: how many tags do you use on each post?
57 thoughts on “How many tags to use for each blog post”
At first, i did write as many tags as i could, but in time i realized it’s not really helpful.
3 seems perfect.. I’ll try to practice that. =)
Interesting post Paula.
Toni xx