The Value of Tagging
75
How many?
If you have more tags than text in your Hub, something's off. But in general, the more, the better. At a bare minimum, you should shoot for 5-10. Shooting for about 10-20 for an informative Hub is not overkill.
More than 20 is probably too heavy-this is something called keyword-stuffing, and should be avoided because the search engines think it's an obvious attempt to cover all possible bases. However, if you write a longer Hub (more than 1000 words, for example) and you go really in-depth with something, then you can certainly put in more tags-maybe up to 30.
Entering tags for each of your Hubs, which you typically do as the first step of authoring a new Hub (but which you can do at any time, including to Hubs that you've already published) serves two purposes:
- It helps visitors-and search engines-find your Hub by following a popular top-level tag (usually one-word) tag, like technology, entertainment or finance. These are typically seen on HubPages's front page and on the Topics page, so it's easy to see the best and hottest Hubs published in these broad categories.
- The longer, more specific/niche tags help search engines understand what kinds of search queries could match up to your Hub. These are usually multiple words (maybe 3-6 words apiece, maybe even more) and they resemble what someone might type into Google if they wanted to read the kind of information you have in your Hub.
Both are very important to attracting visitors from the search engines (Google & Yahoo, primarily). The first one is relatively easy-just choose one of the popular tags in the drop-down menu when first tagging your Hub. The second is more time-consuming, but it's not hard and should not be neglected!
Say you wrote a Hub on the top 10 things you should do when hiring a wedding planner. It's chock-full of great advice. Now who would this kind of information be especially useful to? (Brides-to-be, probably) Think about what brides-to-be might type into Google if they wanted to read a page just like yours. There are literally hundreds of things they could type, some just slight variations of each other. Some are short ("wedding planner") but most are even longer and more complex:
- (from drop-down menu) love
- wedding planner
- weding planer
- wedding planer
- weding planner
- how to pick a good wedding planner
- wedding planner how check references
- wedding planner low cost good avoid bad budget
- reliable budget wedding planner
- get dependable wedding planner
- how tell wedding planner reliable or not
- how to choose a good wedding planner
- choosing a great wedding planner
- how to find a reliable wedding planner
- avoid getting a bad wedding planner
- really professional wedding planner
- wedding planner how much do they cost
- keeping wedding planner to budget
- what does a wedding planner exactly do
- how wedding planner helps
- hiring wedding planner contract
- checking former clients wedding planner
Notice that these tags are not always grammatically correct or spelled correctly, or even full sentences. That's okay. Most people don't type out complete sentences into Google, and some don't spell that well, either. Some follow a question format, some a string of words, some an abbreviated sentence format-try them all! Just try to imagine what people might type in, and enter it in. You should not just copy snippets from your Hub - these should be different phrases that you could imagine people typing into search engines, that your Hub would answer for them.
You might be surprised that a long list of relevant tags might make the difference between mediocre search engine traffic and really great stuff.
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Comments
So hubpages too has started a hubpage!
I really need to pay more attention to tagging. Usually I put in a few tags when first adding a new hubpage, with the intent to go back and add more when I've completed it, but most of the time I forget to do it!
I am just learning all kinds of new things. I will keep this in mind when I start making hubpages.
I think I need to go update my tags, thank you!
Im going to start updating now...
Good! This explains tagging very well. Thanks.
I could do a better job with tags. I've always just tried to choose a few words or short phrases that I would use to find my site. That goes for HubPages or anything else that uses tagging. Above all, though, I make sure that I use the key phrase that I've targeted to win the #1 spot in Google.
cool beans. I've been jsut adding any word that may have something to do with my hub. More to consider. Thanks
Thanks. That's clarifying the tagging issue a lot.
Great information. Thanks for sharing! =)
Great information. Thx for sharing. Appears I will be working on creating tags tonight!
Good detailed info about tagging. Thanks
Thanks for the hub, yes it looks like another learning opportunity!
I'm still learning about tagging. Thanks for the tips. Please read my hubs!
I don't get how to have the tags on my individual hubs show up on my profile page. I have way more tags that just aren't appearing on my profile! SIGH!
Informative, but I'm confused. You said most tags are single words, but you list whole sentences. Can you clarify?
Hi Robin, Most tags are either single words, or very, very short phrases (2-3 words max). But they should match what people type into Google, so even a longer one like "how to find a reliable wedding planner" can be worth adding.
Thank you very much for this useful information about tags. I'm always afraid of over-tagging so now I know how to balance my tags. :)
thanx .i also used 2-5 tags but now will add more but can i add now after publishing
thanks for the tips and examples
Wow! This advice turns on end what I've thought until now about using tags.
Questions:
1) Am I correct in understanding that it is best to use phrases that a visitor might use in a search engine search, even if those phrases are not used in the Hub AT ALL?
2) I have been using what I would consider the most descriptive and pertinent 1-2 word keywords as tags, but without really considering the many 2-6 word query-style phrases a visitor might use to find my Hub. Is my approach ineffective for purposes of SEO?
3) Per the advice in another Hub, I've been limiting my tags to 10, so as not to be penalized by the search engines for too many tags. Your Hub suggests that 15-20 tags for medium-length articles such as I write, typically of 600-800 words, might be more appropriate. Can you hazard an educated guess as to the reason there is such a wide discrepancy in the recommended number of tags suggested by Hubbers who write about SEO? For instance, do SEO strategies need to change frequently to keep up with Google and other search engines updating their algorithms?
Thank you for the benefit of your knowledge and experience in this area.
Staci
waynet says:
3 years ago
Cheers for that hubspages!!