building tag clouds in jekyll using only liquid

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Why Tag Clouds Still Matter

While tag clouds might seem like a relic of early blogging days, they’re still valuable for navigating content, improving internal linking, and helping search engines crawl related topics on your blog. In Jekyll, we can build a tag cloud using only Liquid templating, without any plugins or scripts, making it perfect for GitHub Pages or other static environments.

What We’ll Build

This guide walks you through creating a responsive tag cloud that:

  • Displays all tags used across your blog
  • Counts how often each tag appears
  • Adjusts font size based on tag frequency
  • Links to tag-based archives (e.g., /tag/seo)

Step 1: Enable Tag Indexing in Posts

Each post must define a tags array in the front matter:

---
layout: post
title: "Improve Your Blog SEO"
tags: [seo, jekyll, optimization]
---

Step 2: Create a Tag Archive Layout

Create a new layout file tag.html in your _layouts folder to handle tag-specific pages:

{% raw %}
---
layout: default
---
<h2>Posts tagged with "{{ page.tag }}"</h2>
<ul>
  {% assign tag = page.tag %}
  {% for post in site.posts %}
    {% if post.tags contains tag %}
      <li><a href="{{ post.url }}">{{ post.title }}</a></li>
    {% endif %}
  {% endfor %}
</ul>
{% endraw %}

Step 3: Generate Tag Pages Automatically

Create a script or manually generate a tag file per tag. Each file will use the tag.html layout and assign the tag name in its front matter. Example for tag seo:

/tag/seo.md

---
layout: tag
title: "Tag: seo"
tag: seo
permalink: /tag/seo/
---

Repeat this for each tag or automate it with a pre-deploy script (useful if you’re using a custom build pipeline).

Step 4: Build the Tag Cloud Component

Inside an _includes file (e.g., tag-cloud.html), add the following code to loop through all tags and count their usage:

{% raw %}
{% assign tags = "" | split: "" %}
{% for post in site.posts %}
  {% for tag in post.tags %}
    {% assign tags = tags | push: tag %}
  {% endfor %}
{% endfor %}

{% assign tag_counts = tags | group_by: "it" %}
<div class="tag-cloud">
  {% for t in tag_counts %}
    {% assign size = t.items.size | times: 2 %}
    <a href="/tag/{{ t.name | slugify }}/" style="font-size: {{ size | plus: 10 }}px;">{{ t.name }}</a>
  {% endfor %}
</div>
{% endraw %}

Styling with CSS

Add styles to enhance the tag cloud presentation:

.tag-cloud {
  line-height: 2em;
}
.tag-cloud a {
  margin: 0 8px;
  text-decoration: none;
  color: #007acc;
  font-weight: bold;
}

Benefits of This Approach

  • Zero dependencies — no plugins or JavaScript
  • SEO-friendly — all tags have clean, crawlable archive pages
  • Customizable font sizing for better UX
  • Fully compatible with GitHub Pages

Case Study: A Niche Developer Blog

A solo developer maintaining a coding tutorial blog wanted to improve content discovery. By adding a Liquid-powered tag cloud and individual tag archive pages, the bounce rate dropped by 15% and average time on site increased by 20%. Additionally, the internal link structure improved site authority in the eyes of search engines.

Tips for Managing Tags

  • Use lowercase, hyphenated tags for consistency
  • Avoid using too many overlapping or similar tags
  • Manually curate tag list to avoid duplication (e.g., seo vs SEO)

Conclusion

With just Liquid and a bit of CSS, you can create a clean, functional tag cloud that adds value to both readers and search engines. This no-plugin solution fits perfectly into a static Jekyll setup, especially when deployed on GitHub Pages or Netlify.