Do you guys use tags in your blog posts?

[notthatamanda]

It's an option on Wordpress but I am so clueless about this stuff. I just put up a recipe so I would use stuff like apple cake recipe, or would it be separate apple and cake and recipe? If it's there, it's probably worth the ten seconds to choose some obvious tags or am I missing something.

Thanks for the help.

[Wonder]

Tags are handy when you have a recurring topic on your blog. For your example, I might use the tag "recipes" for a post with a recipe in it. If you use that tag on all posts with recipes, your readers can click that tag and quickly find a list of all posts with recipes.
I probably wouldn't use "apple" as a tag unless you plan to have other apple-tagged posts that are relevant.

I only use tags when I want a blog post to be groupable with other blog posts. You'll also want to consider your WordPress theme. Some themes make tags prominent and clickable. Others don't even show tags, so it's not worth the effort to tag things. It's possible that tags might help with search engine optimization, but I'm not sure.

I hope this helps!

Wonder

[Jeff Tanyard]

If I've ever used tags, it was by accident.  It's just not something I think about when I blog.

[notthatamanda]

Thanks you guys.

[Vijaya]

After a few years of blogging, I discovered it became a useful resource for me, so I started tagging posts according to topic and it's been great to be able to find links easily.

[CoraBuhlert]

I always use tags and categories for my blogposts. They're very useful for easily finding or linking to blogposts about the same topic. For example, if you click on the tag "Star Trek", you can find all posts I've ever written about Star Trek. If you click on the tag "Star Trek Discovery", you'll only get my Star Trek Discovery reviews.

You separate tag phrases by comma, e.g. the tags for your apple cake recipe might look something like this: recipes, baking, apple cake, apples, cakes, food,

Of course, if you're not running a food blog, you might want to be less specific with your tags, e.g. I don't run recipes regularly, so I only tag them as "recipes" without any more detailed tags.

[notthatamanda]

Thanks. I wonder if tagging something "apple cake recipe" means someone searching on the internet would be directed to my page. Or is it just for my own use?

[Vijaya]

I think if enough people go to your recipe, your page might end up ranking pretty high in the searches.

[CoraBuhlert]

I think tags do influence search engine results, but post titles are more important.