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Organize Posts with Tags

Tags provide a useful way to group related posts together, quickly tell readers what a post is about, and help new readers discover your content. This guide will show you how to optimize your blog with tags.

About Tags

Tagging brings traffic to your blog via the WordPress.com Reader. It connects you to people who are passionate about the same topics as you and might belong to online communities you want to tap into.

Tags are similar to categories, but they are generally used to assign more specific keywords to your post. The use of tags is completely optional.

You can assign multiple tags to each post. Depending on the theme and widgets you have activated, tags can be displayed at the top or bottom of posts, on the individual post view, and/or in the sidebar. Some themes use tags to create featured content on home pages.

Screenshot of tags as displayed on a post in the Editor theme.
An example of how a site may display categories and tags on the blog page.

Add Tags to a Post

To tag a post, take the following steps:

  1. In your dashboard, click on Posts.
  2. Click on the post you want to tag.
  3. Open the post settings sidebar (marked with a 1 in the adjacent image.)
  4. Find the Tags section (marked with a 2 in the adjacent image.)
  5. Using your keyboard, type your tag followed by a comma or the Enter key.
    • If the tag has already been created for a previous post, the Tags box will begin to auto-populate with matching tags as shown below.
  6. When finished, click Update or Publish to apply the changes to that post.

You can remove a tag by clicking the X next to the tag name.

You can add as many tags as you like for a single post. However, posts with more than 15 combined categories and tags will not appear in the WordPress.com Reader.

Tags - Adding tags
Adding tags
Add tags through the Post settings in your Post Editor.

Display Tags on Your Site

After tagging your posts as described in the previous section, you may wish to display those tags on your site to make it easier for your visitors to find specific content.

There are several ways to do this:

Default Tag Pages

WordPress automatically generates a tag page for every tag on your site. This page displays all of the posts with that tag and automatically updates with every new post you publish with that tag. The tag page will have a link in the following format:

https://yourgroovysite.com/tag/tag-name/

To visit any tag page on your site, use the above URL and:

You can also visit a tag page by viewing a blog post on your site as a member of the public and clicking on the tag name, typically displayed at the top or bottom of the post.

The design of these tag pages is controlled by your site’s theme. If your theme supports the Site Editor (Appearance → Editor), you can customize the tag page design by editing the Archive template.

If a tag page displays a message such as “not found” or “nothing found”, no published posts are assigned to that tag yet. After you assign at least one public post to a tag, it will appear on the tag page.

Edit and Delete Tags

You can view a list of all tags created on your site:

  1. Go to your dashboard.
  2. Navigate to Posts → Tags.

The number next to each tag represents how many posts the tag is used on.

Screenshot of the Posts menu in the left sidebar.
Click on Tags underneath Posts
Tags List

You can add a new tag by clicking the Add New Tag button in the upper right corner. Fill out fields for the tag name and an (optional) description, then click Add to save.

Screenshot of the Add New Tag screen with information for the "cappuccino" tag.
Add New Tag screen

To edit a tag, click the ellipsis (three dots) to the right of the tag name and select Edit from the menu.

Screenshot of Tags screen showing the menu for the "cappuccino" tag with Edit highlighted.
Selecting Edit from the Tags screen

This will bring up the Edit Tag screen, where you can modify the tag name and description, then click Update to save your changes.

Screenshot of the Edit Tag screen with information for the "cappuccino" tag.
Edit Tag screen
Bulk Delete Tags

If you have a lot of tags that you want to delete, you can use the bulk actions option.

These instructions are referring to the WP Admin interface. To view this interface, click the View tab in the upper right corner and select Classic view.

Under Posts → Tags, tick the checkbox next to all the tags you wish to delete. In the Bulk Actions drop-down above the list, select Delete, then click the Apply button.

Use Tags to Get Discovered

In the WordPress.com Reader, your posts will appear in the topic listings of any tags you use. Therefore, assigning tags to your post increases the chance that other WordPress.com users will see your content.

However, you don’t want irrelevant content showing up on the topic listings or search, and neither do we. That’s why we limit the number of tags and categories that can be used on a public tag listing. We recommend adding a maximum of 5 to 15 combined categories + tags to each of your posts

The more tags and/or categories you use, the less likely it is that your post will be selected for inclusion in the topic listings. You can read more about tags for topics in the Reader here.

Tagging Tips

When tagging your posts, keep in mind the following tips:

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