What the heck is a tag? Since I began, I've been using keywords as tags. Apparently, I was wrong, kind of. For Search Engine Optimization (SEO) you must choose your tag wisely.
Tags categorize your posts. Hmmmm. So tags are "labels" on Blogger. Tags are determined by me (the poster) and not the search engine. Tags can be any word or simple phrase to describe your work.
From what I've been learning about the tag phenomenon, search engines crawl sites that have been pinged (yet another funny term, pinging occurs when your site or blog has a new entry). Certain tags are more popular and will rank higher in search engines, especially if your content has a certian percentage of keywords related to the tag. The higher your stuff is ranked, the more hits you will get, thus your popularity will increase. This is the basis of SEO.
To get an idea of popular tags visit sites like Delicious, Digg, and Technorati (there are lots of social bookmarking sites to choose from). They have a list of the most popular tags for their site. If you join the site you can get even more information and peruse the stuff that has been bookmarked.
When you hit the right tag, you are bound to gain rank. When you rank high, you will be read. When you are read, you will become popular. When you are popular, you...Well everybody knows about popularity.
Now I'm getting it. I need to write about topics that can be umbrellaed under the popular tags. Doing that should make my work at Associated Content produce higher payouts and gain popularity. Easier said than done, this tagging thing should be inspiring, I'll let you know how it goes.
Some sites I've been learning this SEO stuff from:
Posts
Oh my goodness--I had heard that the title of a blog entry was important for the same reason, but your explanation of why tags are so important was so clear--and I never knew that my tags mattered that way--off to check out Delicious and tags!
ReplyDeleteHello Conda! I never understood any of this stuff. I use keywords mainly, which is okay too, but doesn't give the post a "category". This whole thing has been such a learning experience, I'm just studying up before I go any further. The title is important too--there is so much to it.
ReplyDeleteI hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving!