How to Display Most Popular Tags in WordPress

Taxonomies like tags and categories help make your content easier to find, which makes them a valuable asset for any site. Displaying the popular tags in WordPress can take this a step forward by sharing content more easily to visitors.

This will make it easier for visitors to see the content they are most interested in and help direct newer visitors to content that the rest of your community also likes. Luckily, this is easy to do with the right plugin.

Today, I will demonstrate how to use the AI Autotagger plugin to show off popular tags in WordPress.

Why Display the Most Popular Tags to Visitors?

While many sites try to create different types of content for a multitude of topics, the truth is that most websites will figure out that one topic is more popular than the others, and if you know something is successful, showing it off can help.

Not only does this save time for established visitors, but new visitors will see what is most popular.

When it comes to tags specifically, they help users understand what kind of content they are looking at. If someone is interested in viewing a specific topic, then seeing the most popular content on that topic is a very handy thing.

Of course, it is worth mentioning that this can also make it harder for new content to get seen, thus you need to make sure you take measures to ensure new content is visible on your website.

Luckily, it is easy to manage your tags in WordPress with the right plugin.

How to Display Most Popular Tags in WordPress

The AI Autotagger plugin is a management tool for your tags in WordPress. It handles everything from displaying tags to generating them with AI. And most importantly, it is easy to use at any skill level.

In the case of displaying your most popular tags, it is important to point out that by “most popular,” the plugin will display the ones that are used the most. This does not have anything to do with the total number of views, it is by sheer quantity of usage.

While the plugin can do a lot, we are just focusing on its ability to showcase popular tags in WordPress.

Step 1: Install AI Autotagger

Let’s begin by clicking on Plugins and selecting the Add New option on the left-hand admin panel.

Search for AI Autotagger in the available search box. This will pull up additional plugins that you may find helpful.

Find the AI Autotagger plugin and click the “Install Now” button and activate the plugin for use.

Step 2: Enable Term Display

There are a lot of options in the AI Autotagger plugin, which is why the plugin has opted to leave most of them disabled upon installation. Thus, the first thing you need to do is enable the Term Display functionality.

This feature will allow you to display tags in a variety of ways. We can customize the settings to display the most popular tags in WordPress. And it should only take a few minutes to accomplish.

On the left-hand admin panel, click on TaxoPress and select the Dashboard option.

You can enable all of the options by clicking on the switch. In this case, locate the Terms Display option and turn the switch on.

Step 3: Configure the Terms Display Settings

With the Terms Display enabled, you will see a new option appear on the left panel of WordPress. Click on the Terms Display option.

By default, the plugin will generate a Terms Display that contains all of your tags. This is perfect for what we are going to do, but I want to mention you can create your own and choose specifically what tags to include.

This can help you zero in on a specific type of content, but it’s not necessary. Click on the Terms Display.

At the top is a title option. By default, the title is set to Terms Display, but feel free to change it to something else like Popular Tags. This title is only visible to you, so don’t worry about it too much.

By default, the Taxonomy should be set to Tags, but make sure it is before proceeding.

Next, click on the Choose Terms tab. Locate the “Method for choosing terms from the database” option and use the drop-down to select the Counter option.

Right below this option, you will find the Ordering for choosing term from the database option. Use the drop-down menu to select “Descending.”

The next option, Method for choosing terms for display, must now be set to Counter.

And finally, the next option, Ordering for choosing terms for display needs to be set to Descending.

The last thing you’ll want to do is adjust the title that will display on your site. To do this, click on Options and enter a title. You can choose something simple like “Popular Tags” or something to that effect.

Note: You can enter the text to appear before or after by entering it into the appropriate box.

Click on the “Save Terms Display” button to finish.

Step 4: Show the Most Popular Tags in WordPress

Now that you have set up the Terms Display function, you can display it on your site. A shortcode is generated by the plugin after you save the changes. Copy the shortcode.

Now, go to the post, page, or widget area you wish to add it to. Add a shortcode block and paste the shortcode. After that, save the changes and you can view them on your website.

And that’s it. You now know how to display the most popular tags in WordPress using the AI Autotagger plugin. Again, this plugin does a lot more than what we covered, so I recommend checking out some of the other features it provides.

Other Plugins to Manage the Tag Cloud

The AI Autotagger is probably the most robust plugin to choose when it comes to managing tags. However, it is not the only option. Other plugins exist that can help you manage your tags in different ways.

Let’s take a look at a few options you might find useful.

Categories to Tags Converter

The Categories to Tags converter is a simple tool that can help you convert all existing categories. Normally, the two should be separate, but there is actually a lot of overlap between categories and tags.

As such, this can save some websites a lot of time when it comes to bulk creation with their tags. Obviously, this is a niche tool, but with over 70,000 active installs, there are a lot of developers who find it useful.

Pages with Category and Tag

Normally, you cannot add categories and tags to the pages you create in WordPress. The Pages with Category and Tags plugin allows you to overcome this limitation by adding the appropriate fields to your site.

Some developers may want this to help organize page content. If you want more options for what content you can add tags to, this plugin is a great choice as it works upon activation.

Show Off Your Best Content in WordPress Today

While all creators try to make sure that every piece of content they produce is good, the truth is not everything is going to be a home run with your audience. As such, trying to put your best content first is always a great tactic.

That said, be sure to also have a section to show off your newest posts. Making sure new content gets exposure is even more important than helping established content get views. New content can struggle to gain traction without giving it a little help.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful in learning how to use AI Autotagger to display your most popular tags in WordPress.

How easy did you find the AI Autotagger plugin to use? Do you use any of its other functions?