How important is the use of tags in getting upvote on steemit?

Being brutally honest, tags don’t do much at all. The situation that steemit is in is quite unfortunate with people hardly ever giving a free upvote due to quality (Musing and a few others apart 😉). Most people would rather get paid for the upvote which makes sense, but completely ruins the purpose of it. That being said, hardly anyone even is active on steemit to just read apart from a select few that they have followed. This makes it so nobody really browses a specific tag to indulge in.
Some cases where tags are cool include the busy tag. As a busy user, ith’s a great way for me to get a big boost in my post payouts by simply putting the tag. There is busy.org as well as busy.pay, which award people for using their platform. Busy.org is for small users with a small following, whereas once your followers hit 1mil vests, then you are eligible for busy.pay. These upvotes tend to be around $1 but recently dropped to a $.5 (still solid for not requiring any work).
So overall, if you are trying to increase viewership and get upvoted, tags don’t mean a fig. But if you want to try out the busy tag, I definitely recommend you to do so.