It’s becoming quite common for clients to ask me: “What are tags?” and “Why
should I tag my blog articles?”
Websites that include tags often display collections of them as tag clouds.
For each blog article that we post, we enter in different “tags” referring to what the story is about. The users on our site can then use those tags to narrow down the list of articles to only the ones that pertain to what they want to read about. The more a popular (or frequently used) word or phrase is tagged, the larger the font. Those keyword phrases are displayed larger within the cloud for any repetitive terms. So larger words mean they are more popular and are more often used as tags on the site.
Basically, it is a different way of classifying information. For example, your top-down category might be “politics,” yet the bottom-up tags could be Bill Clinton, democrats, congress, etc. In our Back40 Design Group Blog, some of our most common terms include: “Website design, Logo Design, and Content Management System.”
Let me be clear… you do not place these in your Meta information. A meta tag and a tag cloud are two different types of things. An extra benefit to a tag cloud is the fact that it adds more internal links through your pages. Internal links are always good for Search Engine Optimization!
To get started on your blog tag cloud, I suggest doing some Google searches for things like “Blogging for beginners.” I’m sure once
you start digging into it, you will find it fascinating. There are tons
of blogs that I follow on Twitter to learn
more on a daily basis. In fact, I’m always learning new stuff! I
challenge you to do the same.
