What are tags in WordPress? Benefits and How to Use It

What are WordPress tags? Tags are one of the WordPress features used to group your posts. Each post can consist of several tags. Visitors can click on the tag to find posts with the same tag.

Then, what is the difference between WordPress tags and categories? Categories are both used to group posts? So, to learn more details about what WordPress tags and categories are, let’s look at the explanation below.

Table of contents close

1 What are Tags and Categories in WordPress?

2 How to Create Tags in WordPress

2.1 Through the WordPress Content Editor

2.2 Through the Menu Tags on the Dashboard

3 Ways to Display Tags on Your Website

4 WordPress Tags and SEO

5 Ways to Make Activating Noindex WordPress Tag

6 Add WordPress Tags for a More User Friendly Website!

What are tags and categories in WordPress? 

Both tags and categories are actually features that function to classify blog content. But they are both applied in different ways. As this is the explanation.

Category is a mandatory part of every post, while tags are an optional part of every post. If the post does not contain the category you specify, it will be put in the “Unauthorized” category.

Another difference is the hierarchical nature of the categories. This means that in one category there can be several derivative categories or subcategories .

If the categories you create are very broad, you can make the groupings even smaller. For example: in the technology category, you can add several subcategories such as hardware, Apps & OS, Internet, and Gadgets.

In contrast to categories, tags are not hierarchical or independent. Each tag you add is self-contained and has no tiers.

Finally, categories are broad or general topics. Meanwhile, tags are usually a specific topic of content that you create.

For example, you wrote an article about the iPhone 11 Max Pro Review. The articles will be grouped under the Technology category and the Gadgets sub-category. For the tag, you can add the iPhone 11 Max Pro, Apple iPhone 11, triple camera, iPhone 11 Max Pro price tag.

How to Create Tags in WordPress

Adding tags in WordPress is actually very easy. There are two ways you can add tags. First, create a tag in the content editor. Second, through the Tag menu on the dashboard page. In full, let’s see the explanation below.

Through the WordPress Content Editor

The first way , adding tags in the WordPress content editor. To be precise, when you write a new post or edit an existing one. Here are the steps.

1. Click Post> Add Newon the dashboard menu.
2. Look for the tagscolumn on the right side of your screen.
3. Type in tags according to the topic of your content. Press enteror put a comma to separate each tag.

Through the Menu Tags on the Dashboard

The second way is to add tags via the tags menu on the dashboard page. Here are the steps.

1. Click Post> Tagsin the dashboard menu
2. Type the new tag in the name field
3. Add a tag slug
4. Click Add New Tag

After successfully adding a new tag, the tag will be displayed in the tag list on the right of the page.

How to Display Tags on Your Website

After understanding how to create tags, now your posts can be filled with several tags. Tags will usually appear at the end of the post.

Besides being able to appear at the end of each post, you can also display all the tags that you have created on your website page. The trick is to activate the Tag Cloud Widget .

Here are the steps for displaying the tag cloud widget:

1. Click Appearance> Widgetson your dashboard page.
2. Locate Tag Cloud Widgetand drag the widget to the area where you want the Tag Cloud to display.
3. Specify the title and check the option show the number of tags if you want to display the number of existing tags.

You are free to place the Tag Cloud on any side of the website. However, usually Tag Cloud is displayed on the right side of the website page. Often the more frequently used tags will be marked with a larger text size.

By displaying the tag cloud, visitors will be helped in finding interesting topics on your blog.

WordPress tags and SEO

Often people think that tags have the same function as keywords. It is for this reason that many people try to add as many tags as possible. Though tags are not keywords for your article.

Therefore, tags do not really have much effect on the ranking of search results . HOWEVER, this tag function can help your website visitors to find their preferred topic faster . That means, the more user-friendly your website is, the better Google will evaluate the SEO of your website.

So, if you understand how to use tags properly, tags can affect your website’s SEO ranking. Conversely, if you apply the wrong tags to your articles, the tags might have a bad impact on the SEO of your website.

So, so that tags don’t have a bad impact on your website’s SEO, you need to activate the WordPress Tag noindex feature first. This feature prevents archive pages from being indexed by search engines.

When you add categories and tags to articles, search engines will automatically create duplicate pages and save them on (archive page). So, on the archive page there are duplicates of your articles which are of lower quality than your original article.

As a result, search engines will be confused about indexing original articles or duplicate articles first. This is what will interfere with your website’s ranking and SEO system.

How to Make Activating Noindex WordPress Tag

As previously mentioned, the solution to prevent tag pages from interfering with SEO is to enable the WordPress noindex tag. Simply put, this feature is used to prevent the tag page from being crawled by Google. So that it doesn’t affect the page rank of your website.

To activate the WordPress noindex tag, you can use the Yoast SEO plugin . Here’s how to activate the WordPress noindex tag page using Yoast SEO.

First, you have to activate Yoast SEO advanced settings page, here’s how.

1. Click Yoast SEOon the dashboard menu
2. Open the Features tab
3. Enable Advanced setting pages 
4. Save changes

Next, after enabling the advanced features of Yoast SEO, do the following steps.

1. Click Yoast SEO> Search Appearance 
2. Click the Taxonomiestab
3. Search Tags 
4. In the Show Tags in search resultsoption , select No.
5. Finally click Save

Now, this tag page won’t interfere with your website’s SEO. Because, Google will not display the tag page. This tag will only help users find interesting content on your blog or website.

Add WordPress Tags for a More User Friendly Website!

So, what are tags? Tags are a great feature in WordPress for managing your blog content. Visitors can search for topics they like with just one click. Your website will be easier to navigate and more user-friendly.

However, excessive and careless use of tags will have a negative impact on the SEO of your website. You can apply the tips that we have provided to maximize the use of tags without harming you.