or “why the Blogmistress does not apply every possible tag to blog posts”, or if I was to get all “awesome” I’d title this “The Skinny on WordPress Tags” perhaps – but I digress already.

After being gently admonished recently for not using tags prolifically for SEO purposes, I thought it time to outline just what to do with Tags.

It can be confusing to know just what to do with Tags in your WordPress blog posts. We have Categories so why do we need Tags?

And of course there are dozens of differing points of view on this – some “experts” insisting that tags are vital for SEO, and some, more sensibly (in my opinion), considering the wider strategy and user experience (which is what they are there for).

WordPress included the option of tagging your blog posts to offer another level of categorisation, sub-categories if you like, for your blog posts. Posts with similar tags can then be linked together, displayed together much in the same way as categories are, but more specific.

Before anything else, consider how using tags can be helpful for your visitors – never mind the search engines, focus on people. From their point of view Tags may be helpful in finding blog posts around a particular topic, within a Category. And of course by including that tag, it does offer a route that the search engines can follow in order to offer relevant results for their searchers.

Be careful not to overdo it. I suggest keeping tags to a minimum – too many and you not only dilute your blog post some, but you also add to the work your blog has to do to keep up with it all – and that can slow your website/blog down, something you do not want. Any SEO benefit could be wiped out by such, I suggest; it makes a difference.

So – make use of your Tags but keep them useful, focused and relevant.

Just looking at the snapshot of ours I can see a few that really are not going to be helpful for anyone, so will pop in and edit those. That can be a useful thing to do now and again, when you have a few dozen posts under your belt – take a look at your tag cloud and see if it is likely to help or hinder your visitors. I’ll be adding the tag cloud again when it is more relevant!