Clusters, tags and crawl budget

A reader recently asked some good questions about clusters, tags and crawl budget. --------------------------------------------------------------- -PAID AD- Caution! 25% off. Haunting on domains starts. ​ We’re having a Monster of a Treat that starts now! Not even the witches can blend up sales arrangements this great. But our ODYS witches have put a magic spell on a selected range of domains that come at no less than -25%. Only between today and November 3rd at midnight. Forget the drinks, beware of missing this Halloween Sale! We wish you a happy witching on ODYS's behalf. ​[Grab your Treat!]()​ -END PAID AD- --------------------------------------------------------------- Question1: Does an article cluster need a cornerstone? No, it doesn't. I don't think it hurts to have a cornerstone tying the cluster of articles together but it's not necessary. Instead, you could tie a cluster together with a Tag taxonomy and/or solid interlinking. I do this quite a bit and it works. I index most Tag archive pages. I believe it's good practice to index archive pages. I heard an in-house SEO for a major site suggest this at a conference. It made sense to me. My MO with SEO is typically if it makes sense to do it, I do it. What if there's a custom cornerstone that's very similar to the tag archive? This can happen. What I typically do is make the cornerstone the canonical URL. This way the tag archive continues to display as a page but for SEO purposes, the cornerstone is the page to rank. How do you make a URL the canonical? Most SEO plugins offer this feature. Yoast does. SEO Framework does as well. Just go to the "edit archive" page and scroll down the SEO section. It's a "visibility" setting. I use SEO Framework plugin. It looks like this: ​ Question 2: Do tags use up Google crawl budget, hence being bad for a site? Before I directly answer that, let me explain my approach to tagging because it's relevant to the answer. There's smart tagging and sloppy tagging. I do smart tagging. I suggest you do the same. Sloppy tagging is when writers or anyone working on a post just add tags with no rhyme or reason. What happens is you end up with hundreds of tags, many of which are very similar and that have only one article assigned to it. You do not want to do this. You do not want writers or anyone doing this. You end up with a pile of think content URLs that serve no purpose. They're confusing and only make navigation and crawling more difficult. Smart tagging is only creating tags when you have 4 or more articles that fit the tag. Moreover, you only use that exact tag instead of variations. Be consistent with tagging. The problem with WordPress is that it's very easy to create new tags in the editors. It's easy to misspell tags or create them in error so I recommend you explain this to anyone working on your site and tell them that they are never to create a new tag. If it doesn't autopopulate after typing in the first three or four letters, no tag should be applied. ​ Review your tags periodically I recommend you check out your list of tags on your sites periodically just to ensure no accidental tags were created. It happens. If it does, I assign the post to the correct tag and delete the tag created in error. I will 301 redirect the URL of the deleted tag. Does indexing tag archives use up or impact Google crawl budget? If you're not familiar with Google crawl budget, [read this searchenginejournal.com article](). That article answers the crawl budget question which is "no, indexing tag archives on most sites will not impact Google crawl budget" If you create thousands of sloppy tags it could which is why I suggest you use tags properly as set out above. I think the bigger problem with sloppy tagging is ending up with thin content (archive pages with one post excerpt). Moreover, Google crawl budget is not an issue for most sites, especially most content publishers. Crawl budget comes into play for sites with hundreds of thousands or millions of URLs/pages. Think ecommerce sites with faceted filtering and search where millions of URLs are generated from all the filtering options. That's when Google crawl budget needs to be considered. For content sites, even large content sites that have a normal number of categories and tags (even hundreds of tags), it's not relevant and is nothing you need worry about. Create and use a changelog Since I wrote about some technical aspects of this business above, I'll wrap this up with something all website publishers should do and that is to create and manage a changelog for your publishing business. A changelog is a fancy way of tracking changes you make, usually by date. I have one changelog for all my sites. It's in chronological order by date. Any time I make a change or do something somewhat significant, I note it down. I err on adding too much info. You never know what changes you make impact a site or your business. For example, if I add infinite scroll to a site, I note down the date I did that. Same with new plugins added, themes changed, domains registered, sites purchased... anything really. Why use a changelog? I find it's most helpful for SEO. If traffic goes down or up, I can refer to the changelog to see what I did around that time that may have caused the traffic change. What kind of document platform do I use for my changelog? I use Apple Notes app. I run my entire business with Apple Notes and Google Sheets. I like Apple Notes because it's fast, autosaves and I can access it from all my Apple devices (desktop, laptop and phone). But anything will do the job. There's no need to get fancy or spend money. I find project manager software complicates workflows and sucks up time. I've tried many and it's a big hassle. I certainly don't like spending money on it. I prefer to invest money into things that will directly generate money and/or save me plenty of time. Jon Fatstacksblog.com ​ Get my bundle of blogging courses: => [Click here for EVERYTHING I know and do growing niche sites to $50K/mo.]() (the FAT STACKS Bundle) =>[My favorite blogging tools and software](​ ADVERTISE YOUR BUSINESS: Do you want to advertise in this "high engagement" email newsletter? [See the Media Kit here](). Great for promoting blogging services, software, websites for sale... anything to do with blogging. ​[YouTube]() | [Blog]() | [Facebook]() | [Twitter](​ ​Podcast:​ ​[iTunes]() | [Stitcher]() | [Spotify](=)​ ​ PAID ADS: Please note that this newsletter contains a PAID AD in it. It's a sponsored ad. It is marked with PAID AD above and END PAID AD at the bottom. It is NOT an endorsement by me or Fat Stacks. 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