Update: Be sure to check out the follow up post on claiming your blogs on Technorati.
In my previous post I mentioned that tagging needs to be relevant. That’s one part of tagging effectiveness. But brevity is important too. Think of it like keywords or key phrases. Following are a few tips on getting the most out of your blog posts via tagging and a little explanation of why tags are good.
Appropriate Tagging
Let’s say, for example, your post is about Lewiston Idaho real estate. Appropriate tags could be:
- lewiston
- idaho
- lewiston idaho
- lewiston id
- real estate
- lewiston idaho real estate
- realestate
You don’t have to, or should, use them all. I’m just saying that these would be appropriate and correct uses of tags. Each is short and concisely defines at least one of the topics discussed in the post.
Inappropriate or poor tagging
These are examples of ineffective or inappropriate tagging:
- contact me about Lewiston Idaho and Clarkston Washington real estate
- mls market statistics lewiston Idaho
The first is more of a marketing ploy that doesn’t work. Does the post really talk about Clarkston? It might be a neighboring town and it might be an area that you work in, but the post is not about Clarkston. Also, it’s a sentence. It’s not a keyword or key phrase. Remember… short and sweet.
The second looks good and probably appropriate. However it’s definitely ineffective. This should be changed to multiple tags: “mls, market statistics, lewiston, Idaho, real estate”. As you read the “tag clouds” section you’ll see why.
Tip: Here on ActiveRain, use commas to separate your tags. Otherwise they will appear as one long, ineffective tag.
Tag Selection
So how do you know what tags to use? Well, it’s not really a science. Tags are freeform, so you can choose whatever you want. However, to be effective you want to choose words or phrases that actually get searched by people and provide relevance to your post.
WordTracker is a great place to learn about what terms are searched and their frequency. By using terms that people search, you have a greater opportunity for increased exposure. Oh, and keep them short.
Tag Clouds (aka topic clouds)
Another great place for tag selection is Technorati’s tag page. There you can see what people are writing about. Larger fonts mean more posts tagged with that keyword. Smaller fonts mean fewer posts.
The cool thing here is that search engines, such as Google, will index tag pages. The tag page on Technorati shows only the top 100 tags, but do a search in Google and you’ll see that there are much more to choose from. It indexes the same way with ActiveRain tags.
By the way, notice how most of the tags are short?
Who do you tag for…
You use tags for two reasons: People and search engines.
Tags for people
Tags help to categorize your posts. So if they look at your list of tags, they will be able to easily find your related posts. Here on ActiveRain, your visitors will also be able to find related posts by other posters (real estate, staging, listings, california).
Not coming up where you think you should? Check you tags!
Tags for search engines
Search engines like tags too. Tags help to cluster highly related content. So when a search engine finds this page, they’ll follow my links in the previous paragraph and notice that the “staging” page is all about… staging. Those posts will then get indexed and will probably get a little boost for that keyword. Cool, huh?
Anything else?
Absolutely! But I think this is a good overview of how to effectively tag your posts. Also, it’s a simple primer on how tags can benefit you and your blog. It works on ActiveRain as well as the major blogging systems out there.
If you have other ideas, or even disagree, feel free to comment and let me know!
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