I am a big fan of small plugins that run quietly in the background of my websites and make them better. And today’s plugin, Fewer Tags, fits perfectly into this category.
The plugin, developed by former Yoast SEO CEO Joost de Valk, ensures that tags only get their own archive page if they are in use for a minimum number of posts, which you can configure. Joost explains why this is a good idea in a blog post. According to his analysis, only about a third of WordPress websites use tags correctly. I feel seen and plan to dive deeper into this topic over the next few weeks.
For now, though, I’ve installed Fewer Tags. The plugin’s minimal settings live under Settings > Reading. Here, you can define the threshold for the number of posts a tag must be associated with before it gets its own archive page. By default, this threshold is set to 10.
In the tags overview under Posts > Tags, the plugin adds an extra column showing whether a tag is displayed on the website.
Looking at the numbers on my site, I feel like I’m part of the problem, but I’m also glad that this is an aspect of SEO I can tackle.
In addition to the free version available on WordPress.org, Fewer Tags also offers a very affordable paid version. Thisincludes additional features like merging tags, other enhancements, and a small video course.
Also: if your name is Joost and you know a thing or two about SEO: let’s have a chat 🙂