WordPress tags can sometimes be a real mystery, but they are very important.

User Navigation

1. WordPress tags help your readers navigate your content.

I like to compare them to the Index in the back of a book.  These are all the specific, individual words that you as a reader are seeking, that may not be as obvious in the Table of Contents (categories).

If readers find one post interesting, they’re likely to find other posts that share a similar tag interesting as well.

Search Engine Traffic

2. WordPress tags can drive significant traffic to your website.  When you use a tag in a post, WordPress creates an addition page.  For example, this post has the tag “wordpress tags”, so WordPress automatically creates a page for … WordPress Tags.

Since the new page has your exact keywords in the URL, search engines have a better chance of understanding what that new page is about.  Thus, they get indexed well and drive traffic when people search for that phrase on Google, etc.

Here’s a great example.

I recently wrote a blog post about Google Plus Pages and used the tag “google-plus-multiple-admins” because I knew that the lack of multiple administrator support was an issue and people would be searching for some clarification.

As you can see from the chart below, this drove a handful of new visitors to my site over the past few days.

Yes, there was traffic to that post from other channels, but the tags did contribute in their own, unique way.

I hope this helps.  Do you use tags?  Why or why not?