I got the all-in-one seo plugin and i like it. my question is: do i have to fill in the tags in the WordPress template sidebar as well? If I do so, do both count or is one overridden?
The short answer is yes you should and no they are different.
Confusion about the difference between filling in your keywords in All In One SEO and adding tags is quite common from some of the questions I get.
When you add your keywords into All In One SEO it creates the appropriate keyword meta tag in the header of that post’s page.
There is a lot of debate as to how much weight the various search engines give to this meta tag anymore. I’ll leave that debate to the people who specialize in those types of things.
I will say it does not seem to hurt unless you are keyword stuffing there. That can be a detriment but no one but the search engines can say for sure whether it helps or hurts and they just don’t tell you.
Now tags are different. They actually create an archive page on your blog for each separate tag. The search engines will index this content if they can find them.
It adds additional content to your blog. It is important that your theme or your plugins will create links that the spiders can find and follow.
The new Twenty Ten theme adds them automatically for you but not all themes do. If they don’t you may want to add a plugin that will help with that or set up a tag cloud in your side bar.
I have seen posts get listed in Google with a double listing from tags. One for the post and one for the tag page.
Hope that helps you understand the difference between tags and keywords. Although very similar, they are different and help in different ways.
I am continuing the series of answers to questions that were asked in my pre-Christmas post. You can ask your questions to be added to the series by commenting on this or any other post.
Today’s question:
Would like even more clarity on Tags Vs. Keywords, a Categories vs. Keywords/tags. Which is going to get me traffic from the search engines?
A few questions here and it may be a bit confusing so I have to do one of the bad things – assume. Regular readers know how I hate having to use that word .
Your question is primarily about getting more traffic. Tags, keywords and the categories that you pick can all help you that way in getting traffic from the search engines. Often they may end up being very similar.
Keywords are normally added to your meta tags to help the search engines decide what your page is about but everything I have read of late shows that keywords in the meta tags have very little weight in how the search engines rank your page.
Tags on the other hand as used by WordPress create extra content pages and those tag pages make it very easy to get the spiders deeper into your site and make sure that all of your content is spidered.
Categories also create separate pages within your blog structure like the tags do. Both of these increase your interior linking within your site.
Both categories and tags can increase the chance of you getting a double listing in the search engines for your keyword. According to the tests that the guys at Stomper have done that will increase the click through rate.
Although using tags and categories that are keyword relevant will increase your chances of getting ranked better the real key is the quality of the content you have and the keywords that you have targeted.
To find out how to target traffic generating keywords that will draw you traffic check out EZ Keyword Research.
Using tags properly, adding keywords into your meta tags, and picking good categories of and by them selves will not make a huge difference on a specific post. However, the total weight of doing it regularly on all of your posts over time will make a huge difference.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed. Comment below.
About the author
Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy.
After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.
If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.
As the year and in deed the decade rapidly comes to a close I have been reviewing the plugins that I use here. I will be continuing to answer your questions too so feel free to ask them in the comments below.
Yesterday I discussed the plugins to help you protect your blog and today I will discuss improving the on page SEO of your blog and the plugins I use.
The one thing you can do that will help your search engine ranking more than any other thing is to be using custom title tags. The default script in WordPress does not allow for that and so the first thing you need to address is that.
All In SEO Pack will allow you to add custom title tags, descriptions and keywords to each of your posts and is a must have in my opinion.
Maxblog Press Ping Optimizer – This plugin will keep your blog from over pinging. If like me no matter how well you double check your work you always find a mistake when you edit the post it will ping again. This can cause you to be banned by the ping services and this will eliminate the problem.
Google XML Sitemap Generator – This will create, update and ping a sitemap to the various search engines and will make your blog easier for the spiders to index it. Creates a sitemap compliant with all of the major search engines automatically.
Simple Tags – Allows you to tweak the settings of your tags and to add related posts to each of your post to increase the internal interlinking structure of your blog.
WP Tags To Technorati – Will convert your standard tags into links to the tags on Technorati one of the largest blog directories.
Now there are probably at least 3 or more plugins that will do each of these items available but one of the great things about WordPress is the open source nature and the variety of plugins available to tweak your blog. The biggest downfall is that too many plugins can cause conflicts with others.
The key is to find plugins that will do what you want them to without raising havoc with some of the other plugins you are using. These all play nice together on all of the themes that I have tried them on. (Another thing to worry about but that is a topic for another day.)
Leave your questions and comments below in the comments. Those questions help drive the content here so if you ask make sure to stop back as I try to address them all.
About the author
Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy.
After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.
If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.
Yesterday’s post caused a few questions about tagging and Simple Tags.
The first had to do with setting the no follow. One of the items in the general settings is to make tag links use the no follow attribute. It is easy to do you just check the box and click update under the general setting
The other setting I like to change from the default is in the related posts section. I set it to show 5 related posts under each post on both the blog and feed. Because most visitors arrive at your site on a specific post this gives them related topics you have covered on other posts. It also adds related interior linking of your posts.
The other question was about the tag clouds. Having a tag cloud displayed allows the spiders to find and index your various tag pages which I have found gets the blog indexed deeper and often creates a double listing for certain keywords in Google. Both the appropriate post and the tag page get listed.
Any extra listings I can get in my buddy Google are a good thing as I see it and why I always use a tag cloud. Can’t prove it but do know that before I started using the tag cloud I was not seeing the double listings and within a week of adding the tag cloud it became very common.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
You mention “I always want to add tags to my posts, I may want a custom title tag and description ” I just recently read a post saing that SEO All In One Plugin is not as usefull as it once was. Is that your opinion as well?
When you mention Title tag and description do you mean in the WordPress Custom field? Do you use the Excerp field and is it usefull.
I still like and use the All In One SEO plugin. I have seen people recommending Headspace2 as an alternative but it won’t work with this theme so I have not used it. It does look promising and may test it on a blog without the flexibility theme but at this point haven’t used it so impossible to say.
The custom title tag is added in the tile area under All In One SEO Pack when you are editing the post.
It is helpful but not necessary to add a custom description and keywords to this section also but the title is the really important item for how your post will rank.
The tags and having a tag cloud that will get indexed are also important but do use a plugin like Simple Tags and make them no follow through the settings.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Tags in WordPress play a huge role in great many aspects and directly influence your blog performance in such important areas as: Search Engine Optimization, Social Networks relevance and Reader Engagement.
And yet, many fail to realize full potential of WordPress tags and their proper implementation. In this article I would like to address that to some extent…
Tags for Search Engine Optimization
Perhaps the most important thing to understand about tags is – What Are They?Tags are keywords that describe your content, simple as that and yet in that description hides the importance of their proper usage. As keywords they become PART of your url and provide huge boost to Search Engine Relevance.
Using a tag cloud on the sidebar with Do Follow attributes sends search engines to links that include content that includes that tag (keyword) and gives them much needed content. Not only do you get better usage of the archived posts but also boost you rankings.
Interlinking of your posts for SEO using tags is extremely simple. As we all know internal links to relevant content counts by Search Engines not as highly as external links but still counts. Why not take advantage of it? After all – it is FREE SEO Boost!
I personally use “Simple Tags” plugin that uses tags to calculate relevance of the posts to each other and gives you options to display relevant posts under each article. Dynamically calculated SEO relevance that is completely HANDS OFF and on autopilot – Are You Using It?
Social Network Relevance
In this case I’m talking about the Technorati. I know… I know… you might say Technorati looses its power and influence but my personal results indicate that if you do it right – you get some traffic! Key here is getting it right!
First and most important step to this process is obviously to register and claim your blog on Technorati, which I will not cover. But second and yet JUST AS Important is to locate tags within Technorati networks that are most appropriate for YOUR blog. Create a list of those tags and make sure to use at least one of them in EACH post on your blog.
But in order for the Technorati to associate your blog post with one of the tags used – you have to tag that content in a specific format that they recognize. Quite time consuming if you ask me and since I love automating these types of tasks – I installed “Technorati Tags” plugin for WordPress. Just add one line of code to your theme and Voila! Your post is tagged for Technorati re-using your blogs internal tags!
Simple? I would say so and if used consistently it will bring you traffic from Technorati, I guarantee it as long as you picked the right tags and used them!
Reader Engagement
Dynamic and dated format of the blog content is its greatest benefit and at the same time its biggest failure! The older your content becomes – less relevant it becomes in the eyes of the Search Engines but what perhaps is even worse – is in the eyes of The Reader!
You are writing for the people. And while we would like to think that people come and see our blog from it’s front page – my stats shows that over 65% of new visitors land on one of the internal pages! Posts that you might have written in a hurry all of a sudden became the face of your blog and reader finds it irrelevant to his needs – he is looking for a way to click away and never come back!
You have only few options to engage them and hope to retain them by providing MORE relevant and recent content!
Option One: using the “Simple Tags” you present them with a list of tags relevant to the current post articles on your blog. In many cases this will draw them deeper into content.
Option Two: Using Most Recent (latest) articles on your blog’s sidebar. This might help you to present your latest content and engage the reader – provide a clickable link they are looking for and yet, retain them!
Option Three: Tag Cloud. Yep, this one is good not only for Search Engine Optimization but also for reader Engagement. People are getting used to the tags on blogs and realize that Tags are keywords! Clicking on keyword relevant to their search will provide them with access to more content they need! Mission Accomplished.
I hope this quick post helps you see some of the usage of the tools built into your blog and available elsewhere. 2 simple plugins you can install can help you greatly enhance your blog!
Alex Sysoef, is a blogger who shares his knowledge and experience on the pages of his WordPress Web 2.0 Guide blog, wrote this guest post. Visit for even more tips and strategies.
A thank you to Alex for supplying some great tips especially the two plugins that are now part of this blog for testing.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed both here and at Aiex’s blog.
Hey Mike, I installed the Bunny’s Technorati tags plugin, but it doesn’t seem to be working. I have no tag cloud below my posts. When I write a post, I add tags into the “add new tags” field, but I none ever show up on my posts!
Now I have not used Bunny’s Technorati Tags plugin for well over a year and have not even looked at the latest version.
When WordPress went to version 2.5 they put the tagging directly into the script so I don’t personally use a tagging plugin any more.
They also added the ability to create a tag cloud on your sidebar with widgets by just clicking the add link. Whether they show on your actual post will depend on your theme and whether it has a call to display them. Mine don’t.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Now we have discussed how to find your niche and do keyword research, how to set up your blog it is time to start posting.
Above is a look at the writing area of WordPress. Now lets talk about creating your post. You want each post to be targeting one of your keywords you developed in the first step.
Blog posts don’t have to be as long as an article so if you want to talk about 3 topics create 3 posts not one long post with three sub topics.
The more tightly targeted the posts the easier it will be to rank high for the specific keyword you are targeting. This is the first step in generating traffic.
Next at the bottom of the writing area is a section for your tags. Tag the specific topics you are posting about.
Below that you will find the category section. Create categories for you top level keywords. For example if you have a blog about dogs you can have a category about labrador’s, poodles, etc.
Then when you do a post about training your lab it would go in the labrador category.
Now to using the All In One SEO Pack. The biggest piece is to use your title tags properly. Here is an example -
I write a post about Askimet the spam plugin. That is the keyword I am looking to rank for in the search engines. My tile of the blog post is “Why you should use Askimet”.
This is a good title to get someone to read but as the search engine gives a higher weighting to the words in the beginning of the title tag for the title tag I would use – “Askimet – Why you should use it”.
This isn’t a comfortable title for the reader but it does tell the spiders the primary topic of this post is Askimet.
Having a search engine friendly title tag is the biggest thing you can do to help your ranking in the serps.
This plugin will also allow you to add a description meta tag and your keywords and these will help you but no where near as much as the title tag.
These steps when posting will help you to create a profitable blog.
As always your comments and questions are welcomed.
Mike Paetzold
Saturday at 2pm edt I will have a free teleseminar on Step One that will expand what has been offered here. You can call in or listen on the web. Details are available at Profitable Blogging – Step One.
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