WordPress 48 runs 40.3% of all websites (W3Techs 13,241 , September 2026), so its habits matter. Each tag creates an archive page such as /tag/seo/ listing matching posts. Google has no WordPress-specific signal; tags help only when their archives are useful to readers. A tag used once produces a thin, near-duplicate page, and since WordPress 5.5 (2020) the built-in sitemap at /wp-sitemap.xml lists tag archives by default. Use a few well-chosen tags, or drop tag archives from the sitemap:
add_filter('wp_sitemaps_taxonomies', function ($taxonomies) {
unset($taxonomies['post_tag']);
return $taxonomies;
});WordPress Plugins compares SEO plugins that manage archives without code.