How many tags should I use in an article?

[Monkeyman09]

I've been writing my articles and have been using what I believe is to be a good amount. I use a plugin for wordpress and normally use the Yahoo suggestion for tags. The thing is, I've heard to use around 15, when some say a few. So how many should I use, and why?

[stephen todd]

Originally Posted by Monkeyman09

I've been writing my articles and have been using what I believe is to be a good amount. I use a plugin for wordpress and normally use the Yahoo suggestion for tags. The thing is, I've heard to use around 15, when some say a few. So how many should I use, and why?

I also pull tags out of the content with yahoo or local tags

what I mostly do is only use tags that I also use for categories i.e. I look at what tags are pulled out of the post content and choose the most relevant for selecting 3 or 4 post categories - I will also use the same tags as post tags

I've tried added various numbers of tags to posts - 1, 2, 10 or more - not seen any difference in results

guess that's why nobody else has replied - can't tell what is best number of tags

[Nathan]

I don't think that there is any particularly optimum number of tags. It depends on the number of posts you have in each category.

For example, if you only have two categories and each category has 200 posts in it then the categories is just about worthless. You want to have enough categories so that each category has a relatively small number of posts in it.

Or so that each post can be accessed by clicking one or two of the posts.

Categories are designed to make it easier to browse your content so use them for that purpose. If you use too many, or too little it defeats the purpose, and makes navigation more difficult.

[stephen todd]

Re. Categories are designed to make it easier to browse your content so use them for that purpose. If you use too many, or too little it defeats the purpose, and makes navigation more difficult.


..........


although I don't use them myself the wordpress parent/child categories feature could be used

this would emulate the LSI principle of site building - where general content is grouped together - and the more focussed content is grouped below - in a sub-directory

it would be easy to create the parent/child categories based on keyword search volume

[jrbtech]

I personally use tags more as my categories. I write on tech news and howtos so I have two categories "HowTos" and "Tech News", and then I get specific with tags like "Visual Studio" or "Google Chrome" or "Linux". This way I dont have a gazillion categories.

[~kev~]

I usually us no more then 10, and no less then 1 or 2. My tags are targeted keywords that I am trying to target site wide, and also just for that article.

[npkimmey]

When I tag, I usually only use tags that I will use in later articles as well - such as, the name of a person/movie/game. That way, someone can click the tag and get all the information on a specific subject.

[Ferox]

You need to use some of your own judgement here. If it's a simply article about one specific thing, don't use more keywords than you need to. This is one of those 'how long is a piece of string' quesitons.

[stephen todd]

Originally Posted by kennethb

you can use two to three tags. Be sure that these tags are used on your article

as I use a plugin to pull tags out of the post content I've been adding every relevant tag - i.e. keywords

this means I've been adding a lot of tags to my posts - and traffic has gone up

there are so many variables to search engine rankings and traffic that its impossible to say for sure - but when I analyze my stats most of the traffic seems to be coming from the posts with lots of tags

[BGJ33]

what are some good plugins to help me figure what tags I should be using in my post?