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Something I’ve been testing on You’re Supposed To Be At Home is WordPress’  internal tag function. Tags are largely unused on blogs nowadays, and with good reason – tag pages create duplicate content. Often people just block them from search engines, but instead of blocking them, you can turn your tag pages into marvellous search engine friendly pages with rich content.

To do this, you need to make a few changes to your template. Open up tag.php and begin editing!

Switch Posts To Exerpts

Double check your site & see if there is a line that looks like the following:-

Replace this with the following:-

Most templates do have the_excerpt() function, but double check it!

Add tag_description() above the Post Loop

Within the template, above the WordPress Loop, add the following:-

This will add on a paragraph or two onto the top of the post if there is anything located in the tag_description(). You add things via the “Post Tags” in WordPress’ Admin section.

Do I Have To Add A Tag Description for Every Tag?

No, only your most popular pages. They make great “sneeze pages”. Landing pages that get people looking at a selection of your posts. In the Tag Description, link to a range of your best posts related to that tag.

Thoughts?

Do you use tag descriptions? Say so in the comments!

 
 
 
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Polite Disclaimer: I am welcome, open and willing for corrections to be shared in the comments (with corrections being added to posts and credited), and the comments field should be used to promote discussion and make this post better. I do not know everything and if anybody finds a better way to do something, then by all means please share it below.

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  • linkmonkey

    Nice post, duplicate content issues made me remove these pages but I shall use this to recreate them. And have another go.

    March 27, 2011 at 7:34 pm

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