In the early days of WordPress, tag clouds were a very innovative way of revealing the popular tags you used for your posts.
There were even some SEO benefits to using them. Anytime you could create anchor text to link to your content was always a good thing.
Today, the value of tag clouds seems virtually worthless from an SEO perspective.
I personally haven’t used the widget in years, and when I did, it was only on my blog for a short time.
First of all, it isn’t the most attractive looking widget. I grew tired of gazing at the messy block of words floating in my sidebar.
Second, most clouds end up containing very similar words (plurals, synonyms etc.) Or we stuff so many keywords into our posts, we force the cloud to display tags that are somewhat trivial.
If I want to show my most popular content, I’d rather use a widget that lists the actual titles instead of a hodgepodge of keywords.
I still run across blogs every now and then that use tag clouds, and I often wonder how much mileage they get from them.
Even Mashable used a tag cloud long after many blogs had ditched the widget, but I see they’ve retired it now. Perhaps they realized how to make better use of that space. Could it be that popular blogs get more use out of the cloud more than others?
What do you think? Do you ever use tag clouds? Do you have them on your blog? Why or why not?
Also, how do you ensure your audience reads your most important content?
i don’t use them anymore ,,, i just using the yoast plugin in wordpress and it recommend me to noindex them ,, and in my opinion its just useless to show them in our site… nice post anyway 🙂
I even dont like how tag cloud appears on my Posts/Tags page when I work on wordpress posting! And I don’t know the way how to get rid of it!
😉
To be honest, personally I never liked tagging option 😀 … Like some people, I hate the widget space it takes. I would rather use something valuable rather than using tag clouds.
After going through all of the comments, I am going to remove tag cloud from my blog. Its just a waste of space in the sade bar.
Hi Lisa,
Well, tag cloud is there only for internal linking and nothing more So, I never used it on my blog and would never use it on future. As there more than 100 methods to interlink your posts, pages.
Thanks for this information. I too dont use Tag cloud anymore.
I’m actually still using them, but mostly because, at this point, I have no idea what I’m doing yet. I blog about games I play, so I basically use them to navigate via categories (RPG, Strategy, Action, etc.) and to link articles about the same game or a game series (a tag for each game title and a tag for each game series).
Since I’m using blogger, could anyone recommend any alternative on the platform? Or do I simply need to switch to something more advanced than blogger?
WordPress is the most popular and it’s because of the plugins. You can do so much more than blogger. I have a video tutorial here.
http://www.2createawebsite.com/traffic/create-free-blog.html
Let’s be serious, the cloud’s time has passed a while ago. But still it was an unbeatable concept when it appeared.
I think tag clouds still help and they really do.This may be just my case but it has worked for my.I when associate a post with some tags,people will most likely find what they want in my blog.And this is efficient for SEO purposes too.Google creates a page in its index for each tag you make in your post.
Hello Dear
yes i am totally agree with your points tag clouds is very innovative way for all blogger i have already used the widget thanks for the sharing me
Thanks & Regards
Sarika
No, I am not use tag clouds because I think tag clouds is not essential to me. If it is essential to me then I use it. Thanks for your nice informative article.
Great post, thank you. I had read often that tag clouds add no value to SEO. As a new blogger and before I had started to read up on tag clouds I found myself spending far too much time trying to find the ultimate tag cloud plugin. I didn’t like the clutter and I found I very rarely even looked at the cloud if I was on another site. And so I dropped the tag cloud. Your post confirms my decision and I feel more comfortable with it. Many thanks.
You said: How to better use space
Awesome ..i am using tag cloud…
May be i remove it later but like it..
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tag clouds are useful in word press widget.but now a days they are worthless,not giving any hint.
I thing tag clouds are very imoprtant especially if they are animated there are many WP plugins that gives you the possibility to include them as a widget
Sometimes i feel that Tag Clouds are kinda annoying… And i always prefer not to use it on my blogs!!
I tend to differ because I find Tag Clouds impressive. I have been using them on my blog for a long time now.
I tend to differ because I find Tag Clouds impressive. I have been using them on my blog for a long time now.
I dont have this widget on my website.. I dont think its necessary, so havent enabled it ..
what it comes to blogging and creating unique content, I really don’t care too much about entering tags related to the content published. As long as the content that’s published and shared in search engines and on social networks, that’s all I’m pretty much concerned about. It’s a good thing that WordPress did include the options enter tags for blog posts, but really, as long as unique content bloggers focus on creating and publishing meaningful blog content for the web audience, that’s all they pretty much need to worry about. Just adding my humble two cents 🙂
I use this, and I’ve noticed that I get a lot of SEO-benefits coming from this 🙂 At least I think that’s why I get it..
I still have a tag cloud on our blog and find it worthwhile for users that visit it
Hello Lisa, nice blog and post. The nice thing about a tag clouds are that they give visitors a clean way to very quickly visualize the focus of a website and/or blog. To have one or not seems to be more a factor of personal style and the ability for your platform to support. Thanks for sharing.
I use a tag cloud at the very bottom of my site, because for some reason I still like them.
I’m not sure if anyone still use tag clouds to search for posts anymore these days. I think it probably time to move on.
Hi Lisa,
The great article again.In real the value of tag clouds seems deteriorated from an SEO perspective.
If I want to show my most popular content, I’d rather use a widget that lists the actual titles instead of a hodgepodge of keywords.
Thanks for the great information about tags. I was going to add them to my blog but have decided against it.
Tags have a useful part in SEO but i have heard that alhough they bring in traffic short-term, they dont long term
Hello lisa, i have also always wondered the importance of using tags in my blog but if truly its of no seo benefit then its worthless.
I’ve always thought cloud tags took away from the design and aesthetics of a blog. Too many words cluttering the side of the post to be of any real use.
Hi,
Started learning about tag clouds only a few days ago but heard mixed views as expressed above from my friends who already started using them. I need to know myself what it is like to use them.Good one.
Amit from ItechCode
They look pretty I guess… They did (as far as I know) used to have some sort of seo benefit. Although I’m guessing that’s tantamount to keyword stuffing now or something.
It is all A/B testing. If your users use it, keep it, if they don’t, take it out!
I hate tag clouds and think they make your site look ugly. To people who don’t know much about SEO etc it’s just a bunch of ‘useless’ words jumbled together.
I have never really given it a serious thought, If i get good ones I use them If i dont get good ones I write them down!
Not a big deal!!
I agree with the post! even I have never really used the Tag clouds, I have always had my own tags.. and using them shows even better results!
I always thought it was a worthless amount of space too, but being a novice in SEO, I guess I need to give everything a try! I need to do all I can to get better Google visibility.
I suppose tags can be a useful part of SEO, I use tags for SEO and do believe they help somewhat in getting a better visibility to Google as far as keywords are concerned.
There is a big debate about Tags, many blogging claim its help in increasing traffic ,but some claims tags is not useful in long terms.
I’m not going to lie.
Tag clouds were the business like 5 years ago.
But now what exactly does it offer?
I believe it served its purpose (looking cool?)
But in the year 2012 I would not be caught dead displaying it.
*Don’t hurt me*
Ha ha! I absolutely agree.
I’ve used them a couple of times in my blog. I didn’t really know exactly what it does to my site aside from tagging. I also see some bloggers use this often.
I do use tag cloud. It’s good to show the topic we cover on our site.
never gave much attention to these and hoping not to ..
I’ll be pinning it to my friends, looking forward to spot some more from you…
I have had one on my blog and kind of like the look of having key concepts clearly outlined in visual form. It would be interesting for me to do some research regarding what my readers think about them to see if there is really any added value. I mean… It is for them, not for me.
always thought they were useless LIsa never have had one on my blogs but I see them all the time, and just shake my head when I do.