Do WordPress Tags Still Matter for SEO in 2025? Best Practices and Automation Tips

Adding tags to a WordPress site can still be helpful, but their role has evolved due to advancements in search engine algorithms. Here’s a breakdown:

How Tags Help:

1. Improved User Navigation:
   Tags create an internal structure that helps users find related content easily. For instance, clicking a tag like “SEO tips” can display all posts with that tag, improving user experience and reducing bounce rates.

2. Internal Linking and Indexing:
   Tags help search engines crawl and understand your site’s structure. While they don’t carry the weight they once did for SEO, they can still support site indexing and content discovery.

3. Contextual Organization:
   Tags act as additional metadata that can provide context for your content, which might slightly assist search engines in understanding the topical relevance of posts.

Why Tags Are Less Important for SEO Today:

1. Smarter Search Engines:
   Search engines like Google now rely more on content relevance, context, and quality rather than tags, which can be manipulated. They analyze the entire page, including semantic relationships between terms.

2. Risk of Keyword Cannibalization:
   Overusing tags or creating too many similar ones can confuse search engines and dilute the focus of your site, leading to reduced rankings.

3. Deceptive Tags:
   Misleading or irrelevant tags might harm your credibility with users, increasing bounce rates, which can negatively affect SEO.

Best Practices for Using Tags:

• Focus on Relevance: Only use tags that truly describe the content. Avoid stuffing tags for SEO purposes.
• Limit the Number of Tags: Use 2–5 relevant tags per post to prevent over-cluttering.
• Avoid Duplicate Tags and Categories: Tags should complement categories, not duplicate them. For example, if a post is in the “SEO” category, use tags like “on-page SEO” or “keyword research.”
• Monitor Tag Pages: Ensure tag archive pages are well-optimized with unique titles and meta descriptions.

Yes, there are several WordPress plugins designed to automatically generate and assign tags to your existing posts. Here are some options you might consider:

TaxoPress
TaxoPress offers an ‘Auto Terms’ feature that scans your WordPress posts and automatically assigns relevant tags based on your content. It can process both new and existing posts, making it suitable for updating previously published content.

WP Auto Tagging
This plugin analyzes your post titles, extracts significant words, and adds them as tags to both existing and new posts. It’s a straightforward solution for automating tag creation, especially for sites with numerous posts lacking tags.

Automatic Post Tagger
Automatic Post Tagger searches your posts upon publishing, importing, or saving, and adds new taxonomy terms (tags by default) if term names or related keywords are found.

Simple Tags or AI Autotagger Simple Tags can analyze your posts and automatically create relevant tags and categories. It can use the Dandelion API and OpenCalais APIs for enhanced tagging capabilities.

Before implementing any of these plugins, it’s advisable to back up your website to prevent potential data loss. Additionally, after auto-tagging, review the assigned tags to ensure they accurately reflect your content and enhance user navigation.

For a visual guide on automating the tagging process in WordPress, you might find the following video helpful