Better Tagging for Increased Traffic

Tags are great for getting more exposure and for finding interesting new blogs to follow.

April 21, 2014

Krista Stevens

What interests you? Cooking? Drawing? Photography? Fishing? Travel? No matter your hobby or passion, there is a community of people on WordPress.com who share your interests.

Exploring tags in the Reader is a great way for you to discover great new authors to read and blogs to follow. What’s more, tagging your posts is a great way for the like-minded to find your posts in the Reader and discover your blog.

Tag your posts to attract new readers

While many bloggers write purely for the love of it, it feels great when someone reads your post, clicks on the like button, and takes the time to comment thoughtfully. Tagging your posts helps people to find them in the Reader, increasing the chance that a new visitor stops by to check out your blog.

Tagging is one part art and one part science. Part-time historian Sarah runs A Dollop of History, a delightfully nerdy site dedicated to old recipes and medieval food. In her post, “Braised Tongue with Aspic Jelly, 1885,” she recounts her experience attempting a recipe that’s more than 135 years old!

Sarah’s done an excellent job tagging her post using 13* terms. Some tags are broad, such as “19th century,” “American History,” “Food,” “food history,” “Recipes,” “Sides,” and “Southern.” Others, including “aspic,” “beef tongue,” “gelatin,” “Creole,” “La Cuisine Creole,” and “Louisiana” are more specific. Including a strong range of tags will help attract a wider audience to her site. Here’s some more excellent advice on tagging your posts.

Hashtags work, too

Try tagging your posts using hashtags popular on social media, such as Twitter. For example, #nofilter is a popular hashtag photographers use when sharing photos on Twitter, which denotes a photograph that hasn’t been retouched.

The good news is that you can search hashtags in the WordPress.com Reader, too. Try out nofilter, or the ever-popular selfie.

And now, over to you

Tell us about your experiences in tagging posts: which have you found most effective in attracting new readers? Which tags helped you discover great new blogs? Under which tags are you finding an active community?

*Remember posts tagged with a combination of more than 15 tags and categories are removed from the Reader to ensure that tags contain relevant content. You can use any combination of tags and categories, as long as the total count doesn’t exceed the magic number 15.

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52 Comments

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  1. verbiageorwhat Apr 21st at 3:28 pm

    Would it seem too redundant to tag a post with synonyms? e.g., cinema, film, movies? To me it seems that ‘movies’ would be more sought-out by readers but that word has a distinctly different feel to the word ‘cinema’. Do any film review bloggers have any thoughts on this?

    Liked by 1 person

    • trailerseternity Apr 22nd at 2:17 am

      Hi,
      I’m not necessarily a film review blogger, but I do blog about movies in a different way. Yeah, I recommend using the ‘movies’ tag on your posts because that word registers with the general public more. However, adding ‘cinema’ and ‘film’ as tags isn’t bad either because you never know who might be searching those terms out. Remember that everyone’s different and if tagging different terms won’t hurt, it will only help! 🙂

      Liked by 3 people

  2. christrocks Apr 21st at 4:17 pm

    I didn’t realize that the fifteen tag limit included categories! Thanks for mentioning that, I’ve probably been exceeding the limit.

    Liked by 7 people

  3. Temporary Variable Apr 21st at 4:27 pm

    Well written! Is there any secret tag to get featured in “Freshly Pressed” ? 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Novembre Pleut Apr 21st at 5:23 pm

    Just a few comments:

    WordPress can show what tags are being written about most but is there anyway that it can show which tags are being read the most.

    I also find when I tag some of my work, it doesn’t come up in my reader and this is only with a couple of tags attached.

    Is there anyway to separate out normal tagging from generic section organising, it feels odd I have to use up tags just to sort out posts on my own blog, if you see what I mean?

    Liked by 1 person

    • Krista Apr 21st at 6:42 pm

      At the moment, there’s no way to find our which tags are being read most widely.

      Searching your posts via tags and the Reader can be tricky at times. If there are a lot of posts using the same tag, you may need to do some scrolling to find your posts.

      For general section organizing, I’d suggest using categories. Categories tend to be broader in scope, whereas tags are more specific to the topic at hand. For example, I use a category called Reading 2014 on one of my sites to organize all the books I’ve read so far this year. Tags you’ll find on my site alongside that category include book titles, book authors, as well as locations in some instances.

      Liked by 3 people

  5. The Om Room Apr 21st at 5:34 pm

    Thank you for the reminder. I’ve re-checked my blogs and added a few. I’ve been using them for a while now but had no idea when I first started what they were. I love that you can go in and update them whenever you want to.

    Liked by 2 people

  6. Matthew Taylor Apr 21st at 5:46 pm

    I don’t think my tagging has been very effective so far, even though I’m using all the tips and tricks. I’ve browsed the popular tags in my Reader to find which tags I could tap into to draw more traffic. I see tags like “blog,” “people” and “top stories” which don’t seem very descriptive to me. And there’s the tag “Yolanda Adams” (1,495 recent posts). Maybe I should write more about Yolanda Adams, whoever that is.

    Liked by 7 people

  7. C.B. Dixon Apr 21st at 5:49 pm

    Thank you for your post.
    I am still learning about wordpress and don’t have my tagging down. I didn’t know about the ‘magic 15’, good to know. Do tags also help it show up on google?
    Cheers!

    Liked by 2 people

  8. suesconsideredtrifles Apr 21st at 5:52 pm

    I find blogging, Bible, humour, humor, parenting and words are fairly popular tags. I imagine people use search engines for more specific subject matter. Sue

    Liked by 1 person

  9. aborrowedbackpack Apr 21st at 5:52 pm

    Typo?
    “You can (???) any combination of tags and categories, as long as the total count doesn’t exceed the magic number 15.”

    Like

  10. Shane Francescut Apr 21st at 7:01 pm

    Thanks for the amazingly helpful post Krista!

    I’ve taken what I’ve read from you and other WordPress tipsters, and tried my best to incorporate that info into my blog as much as possible.

    Personally, I’ve found that deciding on just a few categories and tags has been greatly helpful in determining what my readers latch on to, and I see the results in my stats. I have also put some thought into my tag names early on, and limited them to just a few, but relevant words. For example – #toronto #streetphotography #nikon #monochrome, etc.

    I put thought into the tags I like to search by, and used those tags in my posts… where relevant.

    Thanks for the post, and thanks so much for using my work as an example… I’m supremely humbled 🙂

    Liked by 4 people

  11. Chelle Apr 21st at 7:19 pm

    I was wondering what the differences were between the categories and the tags?

    Liked by 1 person

  12. Lic. María Raiti Apr 21st at 10:38 pm

    When tagging I tend to form short sentences, such as “how to develop child authonomy”. Reading this I am now thinking my tags may be too long and by no way they will be appering in the Reader. Am I right?

    Like

    • Krista Apr 23rd at 12:44 pm

      Short sentences might be a little long. Consider that to find that your post in the Reader, another user would have to search the tag, “how to develop child autonomy,” which is unlikely. A more effective tag might be “child autonomy.”

      Liked by 1 person

  13. claudiajustsaying Apr 21st at 10:53 pm

    Magic 15, that I’ll remember. I change my tags and categories with every post depending on what I’m writing about, is that the way to go?

    Liked by 2 people

  14. Erin Kurnik Apr 22nd at 12:13 am

    Thank you so much for this! I am refining my tagging. At first, I misunderstood tagging and thought it was for the search engine and also used too many tags 😦 My question is, can a single tag contain more than one word, such as “going green” , “new habits”, etc. ?

    Like

    • Krista Apr 23rd at 12:40 pm

      Yes, tags can have two words or more. For example, one of the tags I follow in the Reader is “Internet Culture.” I also follow “Game of Thrones,” “Creative Nonfiction,” and others such as “Chinese New Year.”

      Like

  15. iyengar6459 Apr 22nd at 2:09 am

    Thanks Krista. I have never tried tagging to my posts. will have try it out that I have read your article.

    Like

  16. ywwp Apr 22nd at 3:17 am

    thanks for writing on tags. i will do audit for the tags i mentioned for my posts, and will update it. I hope this will help me get more audience.

    Like

  17. Little Miss Menopause Apr 22nd at 5:06 am

    I am confused. My “reader” only shows the blogs of people I follow? Is there another “reader” that is showing all of WordPress??

    Like

    • Krista Apr 23rd at 12:37 pm

      The post from Blogs You Follow are what you see as the default when you visit the Reader. You can also search any tag of interest. (There’s a search dialogue on the right-hand side you can use to search tags. Once you enter a tag, it remains in your sidebar (click on the “X” to remove it) and you can then click on that tag to see what’s new since you last checked it. Additionally, you can click on the “Explore” link next to the Tags list to see a tag cloud of what’s popular on WordPress.com.

      You can also follow any blog in the Reader (the blog doesn’t have to be on WordPress.com). Here’s how:

      https://wordpress.com/support/following/#follow-a-blog-not-on-wordpress-com

      Liked by 1 person

  18. John Vanormelingen Apr 22nd at 7:09 am

    Browsing through the replies to this post, it appears that many WordPress users were unaware of that 15-tag/category limit – me included.

    Hmmm… if there is a limitation of more than 15 tags and categories combined, shouldn’t the WordPress software warn/notify me *proactively* automatically that my post will be removed from the Reader when exceeding that limit (rather than finding out months later by accidentally stumbling upon this blogpost)? Cheers, John

    Like

  19. kishanpro2014 Apr 22nd at 7:22 am

    Great info, not aware of the point that tags should not exceed 15. Thank you.

    Like

  20. alexandrairina Apr 22nd at 11:27 am

    I am new to WP. This is helpful, thank you 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  21. Wordscroll Apr 22nd at 11:45 am

    Thank you for stressing the fifteen rule! My blog was pretty much invisible for a year until a few weeks ago when I read that rule. I made an immediate change and within an hour had four new followers. Wow, who knew?!

    Like

  22. jpeggytaylor Apr 22nd at 5:54 pm

    I’m a fan of tags and categories on my blog … though I was under the misapprehension that the magic “15” referred to tags alone – I hadn’t understood that it included categories too. I think I’d better go and do some counting …. 🙂

    Like

  23. freidasuniula Apr 23rd at 6:14 am

    Hi Krista! Thanks for the info. I’m new to WordPress so am looking forward to writing and connecting. The tagging sounds handy for that. Thanks xo

    Liked by 1 person

  24. Niejan Apr 23rd at 10:04 am

    A good way to attract new readers is to connect your WordPress to Tumblr, and then let the tags work their magic.

    Liked by 3 people

  25. Shelley Apr 24th at 12:09 am

    Well let me see, I’ve tried humour, funny, comedy, family, writing, added Rv’ing and travel, and most recently, photography. Not to mention where I’ve travelled, and the activities. Too much??? 🙂

    Like

  26. kyleeorriss Apr 24th at 9:08 pm

    I love this post about sharing interests. WordPress is a great communication channel for different people to connect over what interests them. You’d be surprised how many people you have common interests with, no matter how bizarre!

    Like

  27. chikadestiny Apr 25th at 2:11 am

    I just started blogging and I don’t really know the rules but reading this article was very helpful ( I know not to exceed 15 tags). Thanks

    Like

  28. Joan T Warren Apr 27th at 12:17 am

    I never knew categories were included in the total, either. I wondered why I had so little show in the reader! If I go back and delete tags and categories, will older posts show up in the reader now?

    Like

    • Ben Huberman Apr 29th at 7:06 pm

      Yes — if you bring the total of your tags and categories to under 15, these posts would no longer be invisible in the Reader.

      Like

      • Joan T Warren Apr 30th at 2:35 am

        Okay, thanks. Done. Although they are pretty old so it’s not like anyone reads that far back in the reader. It explains, though, why I have had such a slow start this year–at least in part. 🙂

        Like

  29. MartinAus Apr 27th at 5:36 am

    I’m enjoying blogging, I’m a big wordpress fan, and I’m still learning about tags and how to use wordpress better. I’m working really hard on making my blog worthwhile and well researched so I really appreciate reading others comments as well as posts like this. Thanks for posting!

    Like

  30. ridwan sunaryo Apr 27th at 7:27 am

    Thanks very much for the reminder, very helpfull. and of course, i’ll refine some of mine 🙂

    Like

  31. chris39robinson Apr 27th at 9:43 pm

    I’m new to WordPress and blogging! Great to know the importance of tags from this article, and from readers comments. Thank you!

    Like

  32. d1zzlefoshiz Apr 28th at 8:31 am

    Thanks for the info. 🙂

    Like

  33. lucysmilesaway Apr 29th at 7:09 am

    Excellent post! Awesome info, cheers.
    Seems like nobody knew about the magic fifteen (myself included), perhaps this is something WordPress should make clearer?

    Like

  34. Claris Kapi Apr 29th at 4:52 pm

    Love it, very helpfull!!

    Like

  35. SmokeMasterAllenD May 2nd at 4:18 pm

    Thanks a ton for this post. I need all of the tagging advice that I can get! It’s so nice that it is provided professionally and for free! Thanks again!

    Like

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