How many tags can you add to your Hub?

1. 76

   Nancy Owensposted 13 years ago

   On a Hub of around 600 words, how many tags are appropriate? Also, if you use multiple text capsules, does the word count in all capsules count as the total word count for that Hub?

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   1. 64

      prettydarkhorseposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      you can read this hub about tags -- http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/The_Value_of_Tagging
      
      yes, the summation - the total no. of words in the capsules is = to the total number of words in that hub
      
      you can also check the total number of words if you go to the upper corner of your hub click stats then metrics it will show number of total words in that hub

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      1. 76

         Nancy Owensposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks, prettydarkhorse. I read that learning center page, but I guess I need to read it again. Maybe I am just getting confused. Anyway, you cleared it up about the word count, and I'll take your advice and review the recommended hub again.

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         1. 64

            prettydarkhorseposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            Welcome to HubPages BTW
            
            in that hub it is written :
            
            How Many Tags per Hub?
            
            If you have more tags than text in your Hub, something's off. At a bare minimum, you should shoot for 3-5 tags. About 5-10 tags for an informative Hub is a good number to shoot for.
            
            More than 10 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.

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2. 60

   TMMasonposted 13 years ago

   Not enough.

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3. 78

   Max Daltonposted 13 years ago

   I think you get dinged by Hubpages and Google if you use more than 20.

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   1. 76

      Nancy Owensposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you for the warning. I am trying to learn enough that I don't commit any violations!

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4. 69

   Michael Willisposted 13 years ago

   From my experience and what I can remember from a forum thread about a year ago...it is like 20-25 for shorter hubs (don't know what makes a "shorter hub word wise" per hubpage rules exactly), but NO more than 40 on any longer hubs. But when you have crossed the limit, your Hub will receive a notice on the hub that will let you know you have too many!

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5. 73

   SmartAndFunposted 13 years ago

   I would love some help on this subject! have a hard time editing down my tags. I am probably adding too many, but I try to think of different ways someone might search for my subject, and I can usually think of multiple options. For example:
   black-eyed pea recipes
   blackeyed pea recipes
   black eye pea recipes
   black-eye pea recipes
   black-eyed peas
   black eyed peas
   blackeye peas
   blackeyed peas
   cooking black-eyed peas
   black-eyed pea dishes
   southern cooking
   southern recipes
   soul food
   new years cooking
   new years recipes
   new years dishes
   new year's cooking
   new year's dishes
   new year's recipes
   
   So I'm already at 19 and could keep going. Some people call black-eyed peas "cow peas" or "field peas," and I haven't even begun to mention those. Then there's the adjectives such as yummy, delicious, etc. Is being so specific with punctuation and spelling overkill? In the back of my mind I'm thinking if someone googles "black eye peas" and I have tagged my recipe "black-eyed peas" then google won't show them my hub. I would love to find out about this from someone who knows, because these are all just assumptions on my part.
   
   It's also confusing because some recommend no more than 10-15 tags, and some say up to 40 is OK.

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   1. 76

      rmcrayneposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Definitely overkill.  Check out Google Adwords.  I typed in "new years cooking" which showed 720 global searches a month, and "new year's cooking" which showed 0 searches a month.  So these would be a waste of time as keywords.  No one is searching these terms!  Most people are not typing in hyphens and apostrophes for searches.  Ditch Yummy, etc too.

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      1. 73

         SmartAndFunposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Thank you so much for your reply. I never use the google keywords tool because I found it so confusing. But your answer inspired me to listen to the google keywords podcast. Afterward, I tried using it again, and it is really easy. I don't know what was so confusing about it before... Also, I forget that while I'm a writer and love my apostrophes and hyphens, pretty much no one else does, As hard as it is for me to enter words that are technically incorrect, I vow to do it anyway, LOL. I'm gonna go through my hubs and fix the tags now. Thanks again.

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   2. 88

      Marisa Wrightposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Unlike tags on a blog. HubPages tags are not for search engines, I'm pretty sure Google doesn't notice them.  They're for internal use within HubPages.  They determine which Hubs are shown in the "related Hubs" section, for one thing.
      
      If you use mispelt (misspelled?) words, you will get unpublished for deceptive tags, so don't! 
      
      I've been told that Google doesn't really take spaces or hyphens into account, so black eyed peas and black-eyed peas are the same (can anyone confirm that??).
      Anyway, I just tried searching on HubPages for black eyed peas and got results mixing black-eyed peas and black eyed peas, so it looks like HubPages regards them as the same word.

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