Apparently I've been called out. So I've got to keep up a bit.
I was recently asked by a few members about blog tagging. We've had some great posts on it, but I feel compelled to add my take to the conversation. I'm going to be very basic here. Jason Ungos and Bill French have already gone into a much more thorough descritption than I will.
A tag is a short description, usually one word, that describes one of the topics covered in a blog post. In the search engine world we'd call it a key word. If your blog post is covering more than one topic, you would want to have more than one tag to associated with it. Also if more than one topic is being covered you'd want to add more tags.
A tag helps ActiveRain to sort and feed topical information. That way when you're looking to read about blogging or tagging you can use key words to search for your topic of interest.
A tag should be general in nature and designed to help some one find the information in your blog post.
So this post is related to what exactly?
Well If someone is looking for information on tagging they might search for "tags," in a more general sense they' might be looking for information on "blogging." Those really are the only two relevant tags i can think of for this post.
Now if you want to see how tags work. Click on the tags below to be taken to other ActiveRain Real Estate Network blogs that include the tag you click on. You will be shown a list of blogs that other writers thought appropriately fit the topic of tags or blogging.
You'll learn a lot more information too.
Appropriate tagging will help your writing get found. In a sense it adds an extra address to any post you display.
For search engines it is most important to focus on the content of your posts first, tags second.
It is the content, freshness, original qualities of a blog that bring it out in search results.
Tags should be short and to the point.
excessive tagging will be seen as "stacking", a big no no in the Search Engines view finder. By just adding tags to words the Search Engines can view a site a spammer and be labled as an unrelevant webpage which is really bad for anyone trying to make blogging a serious part of their marketing strategy. Just my 2 cents :)