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How to use tags properly on your blog

The purpose of tags is to easily allow readers to read blog posts of a similar nature or on the same topic. The use of tags in a blog is not meant to increase search engine ranking or provide a navigation menu (although they can serve these purposes) but to simply allow the blogger to more specifically categorize a post. After all, a blogger cannot create a separate category for every blog post that has a logical connection with another.

Say, for example, you blog about a speech Barack Obama gave at your school. You already have a blog post about Barack Obama’s state of the union speech that you wrote last year and you want potential readers to be aware of that. What do you do? Create a new category titled ‘Barack Obama’ or ‘Barack Obama Speeches’ in your sidebar categories? No, you simply create a tag titled ‘Barack Obama’ so readers can click on that tag at the end of your post and be taken to a list of other posts with that tag.

Choosing tags wisely

When choosing a tag for a post you should always make sure the choose something simple and easy to remember. If you want to create a tag for two blog posts, each involving a speech Barack Obama gave, you should use ‘Barack Obama’ not ‘Barack Obama Speeches’. Your tags must be arbitrary and broad because, otherwise, you will never use them again and end up having 1,000 tags (600 of which are only used by one post) on your blog. Remember that tags are all about grouping posts together. They are the same as categories except they are more specific.

If you use tags properly, your tag cloud (if you are using one) will fulfill its purpose properly. The tags with the most articles will appear in larger font and will display to your readers how important that particular topic is to you.

Here are some examples of bad tags:

• riding a bicycle at night
• making waffles
• doing push-ups
• riding the waves
• watching polar bears

Here are some examples of good tags (what the above bad tags should be instead):

• bicycle
• cooking
• exercise
• surfing
• zoo

Below is an example of what a tag cloud will look like if the tags are chosen correctly.

Can you guess what the blog is about for the above tag cloud? You should be able to realize that the blog is about web design. Notice how all of the tags are very broad terms.

Keep it simple and broad! And don’t worry about grouping too many posts in the same tag. It rarely happens and, if it does, that just means you have an extreme interest in a particular topic.

Tags: blog tags, link building

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