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 have tag clouds on some of my blogs, but honestly I’ve never liked the look of them. The only reason I started to add a few was because I was seeing a lot of sites ranked high in the search engines that had them so I figured there might be an SEO benefit associated with them.
Maybe those days are long gone now…
I think there are more organized ways to organize your tags than with a tag cloud. You are right. Good thing i don’t use them on my blog anymore.
Yes, you are right. But sometimes it seems that tag clouds are very important and useful.
And I thought I was the only one who dislikes tag clouds. Never used them and I probably never will. Too much word clutter. However, if I had to use one I’d probably put it in the Archives page instead of a widgetized area.
Hey Lisa, it’s funny I am just seeing this post now and I just place a tag cloud on my blog about a week now. LOL!
I hope it will be useful to my visitors, and I also like the way it looks 🙂
i have only once used that widget !
since i have large number of tags it makes ma site dirty !!
I realize I’m late to the game on this post, I just saw it sitting among a few unread threads in my feed reader and just had to give my “two cents”.
While looking at my analytics data, I find that the tag cloud — while not doing much for SEO (I purposely have the tags set to nofollow) — is used more on blogs geared towards young teens (16 and under), while tag cloud use decreases quite a bit on other blogs I run that are geared for 18+. At 25+, the tag cloud never gets used.
Perhaps younger readers have time to click through as many links as they want(?). Not sure what it means yet, but the observation is interesting nonetheless.
I’m with you on this one Lisa. Tag clouds just look too random and trival. That’s what categories are for, preferably drop down menu style 🙂
Oh, I followed your link to the widget plugin you suggest. Unfortunately it appears to only work up to 2.9x 🙁
Great post! I’m deciding this right now. I think they are ugly and useless, but something always stops me from deleting the widget. It is the fear of maybe losing some bit of SEO power to my blog. I think I will pull the plug and see what happens.
I once had tagclouds but I removed them after seeing my site look so distorted because of them. And so, may you suggest another widget for keywords?
Thanks for sharing!
-Romeo
Wow, I feel silly. Tag clouds removed 🙂 Although I sometimes click on tags in clouds on other sides, it is not very often, and you are right, they are *really* ugly 🙂
I have removed tag clouds since Googles most recent update because of the keyword stuffing fear.
People also say that about meta tags, I see sites ranking for very competitive terms that still use them.
I have used a tag cloud in one of my blogs. The blog wasn’t a particularly niche blog so it was useful for readers to quickly find relevant posts depending on what they were looking for. That was a long time ago though, so I don’t think I’d be using one again soon.
I’ve also removed tag clouds from my site
Hi, I never used a Tag clouds because it increase keyword stuffing and also more Links on the home page, so using tag clouds is a great disadvantage for our blog.
Hi Lisa, i dont like tag cloud because they cover most of space and second thing is that they look junky
Hi Lisa, I think tag clouds look dated, plus, I remember Brian Johnson saying that tags can harm a site that they create duplicate content on your site so I don’t bother with them.
Hey Lisa,
I think this is depending on the blog owner, some tag clouds are cool and some are not. I haven’t used any tag clouds on my site, and I guess I never will.
I never realised tag clouds had SEO benefits. I never use mine and don’t think I ever will in the future. They look very outdated to be honest.
Great Information and I am definitely agree with you. It does not help in our blog site.
I used to have Tag cloud on my blog some months ago but than people said that Google bots will deal this as keyword stuffing so i remove it.
Hi Lisa.. I am still grateful for you and your site for giving us such information that can help.. I hope it can really benefit me..
I don’t know really because sometimes if a Blog is big enough they do need Tag clouds and I have found them to be easier sometimes to click and be taken to a category I like. If the Blog is big that is!
You are right Lisa, That does not attract any visitor and most of the time search engine like google treat them as a keyword stuffing. Also increase total number of links on the home page thus have a lots of disadvantage.
~rakesh kumar
Hey Lisa, I totally agree, a few well chosen, related titles listed under ‘further reading’ or ‘similar articles’ or whatever have always proved much more useful to us.
I use a plugin which allows me to display or disable widgets on homepage, single page or a on particular post. Thanks for sharing..
First of all a blogger have to add attractive post so that visitor does not feel bore and they will come again and again . So update your blog regularly and build natural link for seo advantage. Thank you
Tag Clouds can be a great help especially to us bloggers.. But we have to make sure first if what benefits or other disadvantages it can have for our sites..
I had in the past installed the tags cloud widget but did not appreciate it. Maybe I used too much keywords or tags and it occupies a huge space on my sidebar. Thanks for this and maybe I would reconsider installing it again.
I do is disable the tags and categories widget on the homepage and show them on the other pages. Thanks for letting me join the conversation.
Hey Lisa, Kharim here again.
I recently used the tags and categories widget on my blog, but I use a plugin which allows me to display or disable widgets on homepage, single page or a on particular post.
So what I do is disable the tags and categories widget on the homepage and show them on the other pages.
I have seen some improvement in traffic, not sure if those are contributing factors.
i never use Tag Clouds, it takes my space
I was reading that there really wasn’t any SEO benefits to them. Thanks that you’ve shared.
I also removed my tag clouds a long time ago.
They really made the sites look cluttered, and I was reading that there really wasn’t any seo benefits to them.
At one point I did see some nicely done clouds with good spacing and different colors for visual interest – but mine never looked so good.
I don’t use tag cloud as our posts can lose link juice to the useless pages. Matt Cutts also mentioned this issue 2 years ago on his video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYPX_ZmhLqg
I’m still using tags and at first I was using them instead of keywords (before getting an SEO plugin), but lately I use them in combination with my categories to (hopefully) improve search hits for particular subject. I do have a few hits through them, but I’ve been considering getting rid of both them and categories for a while.
What helps me keep them consistent is being disciplined from the beginning and sometimes even doing a spring cleaning to eliminate any duplicates, misspellings and plural/singular mismatches. When writing a new post, start entering a tag you believe is relevant and after a few letters WordPress will come up with all existing tags from your blog that match the first letters you typed, so you can pick and choose instead of guessing.
Regarding my most important content, I have a text widget where I just put a bunch of HTML links to my favorites and call them “Author’s Top Ten”, but I also have a widget that displays 15 most popular and then also most recent posts. I still haven’t figured out how to make the recent posts widget skip the posts that are still on the front page.
I quit using tags a couple of years ago after watching a video produced by Matt Cutts. He basically said they were unnecessary because Google determines what a webpage is about by the content on the page.
Hi Lisa,
I feel tags have a purpose. For me, its a one-look-tell-all view of what the website or blog is all about – at least I know what topics are trendy there.
However, as Brankica pointed out, people do not pick the tags wisely, which results in a mess.
I recently heard Joost of Yoast SEO spill out the importance of the structures and taxonomies of a website (we can understand them as categories and tags). If you care to hear, here’s the link: http://seobraintrust.com/wordpress-seo-with-joost-de-valk-2/.
Good that you brought up this topic, thanks.
Really? I should remove this widget as soon as possible then.
I use my tag cloud (on my wordpress blogs) because I think it helps Google bots to identify what topics I write about and emphasise the keywords on the blog. Does anyone know if this is so or am I wasting my time?
Keeping reasonable number of tags in the cloud is good for readers as well as search engines. Otherwise, it looks like keyword stuffed especially to the eyes of Google.
I removed tag cloud recently as i see no one is clicking on it (came to know from my Google Analytic stats).
Thanks
Hi Lisa,
I think it is honestly not worth it, not tags in general just the horrible cloud, and having the rotating jquery word cloud is even worse, so annoying. I have never used on my own blogs, have put for a customer once because he was persistent about it but i hate them to be honest, and they are worthless.
Thanks
David
Hi Lisa,
Typically people use way to many tags, to be able to have a useful tag cloud widget.
I find it better to use a category cloud widget, since that is relevant for navigation and also contains my main keywords.
I absolutely agree and every time I talk to people I tell them to remove it. Total link leak and I see no advantage to it, what so ever. Who is ever gonna click on it!?
Also, people don’t pick tags carefully, they use some plugins that suggest tags so on this post you would have tags like “tag, widget, WordPress” … how would you ever rank for those words.
OMG sounds like a rant, lol. But bottom line, I hate them, just in case it wasn’t clear, lol
I am still not clear how you feel! LOL
I really think what makes them so bad is the picking of the tags as you mentioned. People often pick such trivial keywords that they clog up the cloud, making it less useful.
Hey Lisa,
I got rid of my tag clouds a looong time ago.
When I first started I was told they were very useful but I was driving myself crazy because I had too many and like you said, I was even repeating content.
When I first found out about the Google Website Optimizer and saw NOBODY clicked on them, I knew they had to go, simple as that. 😉
Sergio
And that would be enough evidence for me to remove them! lol Great tip. A lot of people don’t know how to track that.
I have a blog that I think tag clouds are relevant, it is a Tax Accounting blog. Most of the topics are generally covered by a single word or an acronym.
I do have the tag cloud down the page a little, but I also feel it is a effective way of finding topics on my site.
I haven’t kept any data, strange for an accountant, on the clicks etc from the tag cloud… so its just my interpretation.
Thanks for the feedback, Geoff. I can see the tag cloud being more useful if you are consistent about the tags you use. Most tag clouds are just so busy, I think they lose the effectiveness. Appreciate you chiming in! 🙂
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.
Hey James, thanks for stopping by. Yeah I’ve found better use for that space.
I have used tag clouds to my blog and it is worth for me. I think most of people are using these type of widgets to their own blogs.
I don’t follow a lot of blogs that do so I guess it depends on whose blogs you read. 🙂
I do not know how much SEO cred I am getting out of mine, but i agree it is a worthless amount of space. My issue is the theme I use puts it in automatically. I had the widget but I ditched it also. great post.
Oh no, not the theme-forced cloud widget. Just say nooooo! LOL 😉
Engadget use lots of tags under their posts. Using Tags is good for SEO ?
Instead of showing all the labels, we can select the labels which we want.
That would be good
There are probably plugins that allow you to modify how they are displayed.
If you have some knowledge of CSS, HTML, PHP. You can customize tags with awesome style 😀
Hallo Ammar,
Could you be having some tutorials to guide me through that? I have been searching for them online but I haven’t found something that is clear and straight forward just yet.
Thanks,
Carl