Adding Tags in the blog is good or bad?

[zco_seo]

Hi Friends,

In my blog I used to write unique content in between 300 to 450 words and add the related tags up to 15.

When I research about adding tags in the blog I come across this video from “Matt Cutts” says

Is it worth spending time on creating tags and categories?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A96yDPqa2rs

Key Points from Matt Cutts Video are given below:

• No Need Tags - In general, Google figure out what your post is about, so don't worry too much about it.

So my question is do I need to remove all tags from my blog or can I reduce the tag count to 5 alone?

Currently I am using 15 tags to each post, is there any dis-advantage by adding tags like this?

Let me know your suggestions?

Thanks

[Chris.Menke]

That's why tagging came into vogue but too often, it's overdone.

[Humanovation]

Many of my tags rank higher than my actual articles for particular keywords ... some even rank #1.  Not sure what to do about that ...

[DougRoberts]

As Chris and Houses have said, the focus should really be on what works for the readers of your blog.

In my experience, tags don't tend to work very well for people .As long as you've got good navigation, some well thought out categories and site search then this is enough.

The problems for search engines is that these tag pages can create lots of duplicate content if not implemented properly (just like categories). They'll also increase the number of links on a page.

If you want to surface related content, then in-line links to older content in proper context is better, and/or some related content listed at the bottom of the article can work.

It does depend on the goals for your blog pages through. Links to related content can decrease the number of comments that get left.

The question you need to ask is whether people using your tags? What does your analytics tell you? How many people are viewing tag pages and what are they doing next. How many people leave your site from a tag page, or a page following a tag page? Is this higher than normal?

If you're going to tag articles, don't just tag them because the article mentions you keyword. Try to think along the lines of "if I click on this tag, and look at this article, am I going to find what I expect". Try to think about topics of interest rather than keywords.

Fewer is better than lots. The more options you give people the more friction that causes - too many and people will just ignore it.

[Houses]

I would say tags are useful to readers to help them find more of your content on the same topic.

Unlike Chris, I have clicked on them but people use the web and websites in different ways.

If it's useful to readers then do it.

[Chris.Menke]

Tags should be used as a way to help your readers find your content more easily. You likely don't need to give your readers 15 ways to zero in on the content they might be interested in--5 is probably more than enough. Personally, I'm not sure I've ever clicked on any tags on a website's blog.