Posts Tagged ‘blog tags’
WordPress Custom Post Taxonomies
Thursday, June 24th, 2010
Custom post taxonomies in WordPress are little different from post tags and categories. To borrow the words found in a reply to an inquiry email I sent to WordPress lead developer Mark Jaquith, “taxonomies are used to tie groups of posts (or any content type) together, and come with a URL structure to access them.”
Writing blog tags properly for search engines (SEO) and human visitors
Thursday, April 1st, 2010
Yesterday, I gave a very thorough definition of what blog tags are. Today, I’m going to tell you how to create blog tags for SEO as well as for human interaction purposes.
The practice of blog SEO can sometimes create a dilemma. Everyone wants their blog to be optimized for search engines but no one wants to make readability sacrifices. Blog posts written to target keywords can sometimes be less legible than blog posts written in ignorance of search engines. With tags however, the more efficient they are for people, the more efficient they are for search engine optimization. In other words, you get the best of both worlds! If you use tags properly of course.
What are blog tags and what purpose do they serve?
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
Picture yourself: a big time sports blogger at the top of your niche. The AdSense dollars are rolling in. You’ve got more subscribers than Curt Shilling. You’re sensational. Not a care in the world.
Then a problem arises like a pigeon from hell.
You would like to give your visitors the ability to view all posts on the topic of ‘Yankees baseball’ but your a little wary of creating a new category for just five posts. You’ve got about 600 posts categorized in sections like baseball, hockey, soccer, volleyball, tennis. What do you do? Create a new category just for ‘Yankees baseball’? Unfortunately you find a few problems with that approach.
How to use tags properly on your blog
Sunday, February 14th, 2010
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.
Author: Luca Cremonini
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.
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