How To Add Nofollow To WordPress Tags and Tag Cloud 
WordPress tag links and tag clouds. To use or not to use. The debate continues. Most SEO guys are of the opinion that the probability of being penalized by Google increases when wordpress tag clouds are added to a blog/site.
Here’s what Google’s Matt Cutts has to say about the use of tags and tag clouds.
Personally I need my tags as I don’t have time to set keywords for each and every blog post so I rely on All In One SEO to turn my tags into keywords.
In other to keep the Big G happy, I decided to look for a way of adding the nofollow attribute to ALL my tag links including those within a cloud and I stumbled on Kaf Oseo’s Nofollow Tag Cloud.
By default, this little plug-in inserts rel=’nofollow’ in links generated by wp_tag_cloud() ONLY! If you’d like to apply the nofollow attribute to tags appearing within your posts too, you’d have to edit the plug-in as shown below.
Remove // from line 22 circled in red above so that it looks like this:
Save the plug-in, upload it to your wordpress plug-in folder and activate it via your wordpress dashboard and you’re done.
Here’s a direct download link to the plug-in: Nofollow Tag Cloud.
NOTE: In the event that your browser downloads the file with a .htm extension, you’ll have to rename that to .php
HOW TO ADD THE NOFOLLOW ATTRIBUTE TO WORDPRESS’ READ MORE LINK
The Read More link that appears on the front page of a wordpress blog or its’ archives page has no SEO benefit at all and as such should be nofollowed. It’s kinda crazy to rank for "Read the rest of this entry" 
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Using the Custom More Link plug-in by Michael Weingaertner, you can add the nofollow attribute to the read more link while @ the same time removing the #-number anchor that is added to the read more link by default.
Below is the simple plug-in setup.
Here’s the code : <a href="%permalink%" rel="nofollow">%linktext%</a>
With nofollow in place on my tags and tag cloud, I can now use tags freely without stressing myself about the chances of getting penalized by Google 
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This post was made possible by Malanciault’s Adding the nofollow attribute in WordPress Tag Cloud and tag links and HellBoundBlogger’s Avoid Using Tag Clouds On Your Blog – Matt Cutts.
What are your opinions about the use of tag clouds? Do you use them on your blogs? Do please feel free to leave a comment below and share with us.
Please don’t hesitate to share the knowledge on Twitter, Facebook etc or even email this post to your friends using the icons below.
Cheers and have a great week ahead .
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Hmm, I was thinking before of using tag clouds, but I chosen not to, to decrease the keyword density on my homepage. But I think it would be great if there’s a tag cloud plugin that can include “tag descriptions”, since I’m seeing the future of search engine algorithms will focus more on “keyword definitions and synonyms” to really scale what’s relevant and what’s not. Well, that’s just a crazy prediction
Regards,
Jason
I recently saw a mention of tag descriptions somewhere on the net. Unfortunately I can’t remember where exactly as I wasn’t really interested @ that moment
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Google already focuses on keyword synonyms ever since their Keyword External Tool was launched.
I’m leaving my tags alone, and since my blog has already been penalized by Google I could care less. What I’m finding is that people are clicking on the tags and looking at other articles, and I’m getting Google Alerts, of all things, telling me they’re doing it.
Hmmm! What kind of penalty did Google place on your site? Your site still appears in the SERPS. How did you setup Google Alerts to notify about tag links clicks? I thought that was only possible with Google Analytics?
What I have set up is an alert on my blog address. Any activity that happens on that blog sends me an alert.
I have it setup for my blog’s address but I really don’t see it can help me keep tag on my tag links click. Anyway I’ll probably hack into Google analytics to set that up
Any time anyone clicks on a link, I’m notified. Are you putting those link tags into your content like I am, or just leaving it on the side as, well, a category of sorts?
Well, this is news to me, thanks for posting this great article and the video from Cutts, I have tag clouds on all my sites, I think I will remove most of them and make some nofollow. Thanks for the great write up.
The plug-in doesn’t really offer any methods of making some tags nofollow and others dofollow. Do please let me know if you find such a plug-in. Thanks for dropping by
tag clouds can help a site a lot. i also like your idea to make them nofollow. this is a good thing to do it keeps bad things from getting indexed. good post.
Please stick to the commenting policy. Thanks for your comment.
Good post. I understood use of tags cloud. Does it help in case of Google’s indexing speed?
I ain’t so sure about that Matt.
Just installed wordpress on my site and now surfing the net to see how to make it better. Although i don’t have tag cloud plug installed for now, this post really showed me what to do without any penalty from Google when i want to add it.
Thanks a lot.
You’re welcome and best of luck with your new blog
Well, I have installed tag cloud on my blog and I followed the steps mentioned by you for not getting penalized from Google.
Thanks for sharing it!
Cheers mate!
Adding “nofollow” tag in at tag cloud is obvious if you want to make your blog SEO friendly. You can also deal with this issue without any plugin. Just edit /wp-include/category-template.php and add the nofollow attribute at wp_generate_tag_cloud function.
We all love using less plug-in in wordpress but the truth is editing the core files would mean editing the core files each time there’s an update and that can be tasking unless of course you don’t intend upgrading your wordpress installation ever again.
I am just hearing about custom more link plug-in for the first time. I have download it now and I am going to activate it on my blogs. Thanks for sharing this article.
Hi Thanks for sharing this plugin. I am exactly searching for a similar kinda plugin to implement in my new blog. U saved my day. Thanks a lot
What I love most about this post is the “custom more link”,I was frustrated seeing myself ranked for “read more and post” more than anything else in my blog. thanks Doc.
I still have a challenge now though,to implement this on my forum.
Hmm. Wish I could help you in implementing that feature on a forum but my knowledge never reach that level.
Very nice tutorial, i am using Nofollow tag plugin for my blog..
Still experts are not sure about no follow is really not considered by search engines. It is said that more visitors are attracted towards our blog if has do follow blog commenting.
“Dofollow” is an incentive for your readers to comment often and come back regularly.
Thnaks a lot for this plugin… I have a blog on daily news… usually i put 10-15 tags with one post…is it help me from being penalized by Google SERPS.
I think after installing this plugin no need to make more than 2-3 tags is it ?
The use of tags on my blog is just my way of increasing my on-page keyword density a little
yap i know…BUT if keyword density is over limit its bad
Nice article….
I know that thus I try to go easy on it so as not to piss off Google
Hi Udegbunam thanks for sharing helpful for me.
thanx for sharing this plugin.I was finding that kind of plugin.
May I thank you for the information that I got from your post, especially Matt Cutt’s video clip. While I made my own discovery about tags and tag clouds, I realized upon researching further that tag clouds could be abused and be overstuffed with keywords. I would choose retain using the tag cloud and observe what happens with my site, which is just about ten months. Will it gain a PR or not…let’s wait and see.
Hi Udegbunam. thanks for sharing this amazing tutorial.
Thanks for these wonderful tips i am implementing it straight away.