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Apr
28
Having tags for each post on your blog is one of the best ways your readers can find the content they need. That translates directly into more loyal users, better referrals and ultimately, more quality traffic.
The Monthly Archives listing is almost useless for visitors. Put yourself in the shoes of a first-time visitor to your blog. What does he/she care about what you wrote in January 2007? But if your blog were about, say, Gardening, a user would definitely find posts tagged Rose or WateringTechniques useful. The visitor wants to primarily browse by content, not by timeline. My Archives page, for instance, lists my posts by tags first and by month later.
I recommend a three-level tagging technique that, in my opinion, will help visitors locate your content much better. While these tags may have a tech bias, it can be used, almost without any change, for blogs on most topics.
In essence, you describe your each post using three sorts of categories: Type, Technology and Product/Firm.
Each post can contain multiple tags from each sort. First, what type of post is it? Is it commentary on a recent development? You might want to tag it “News“. Or an opinion piece on something you feel strongly about? Tag it “Opinion“. Second, what aspect of the topic is it about? From the Gardening analogy, if you’re writing about how to better water your rose plants, you’re talking about “Watering” your plants. Or you might be talking about gardening “Equipment“. Third, have you made references to products or companies? “Trowels” or “Gloves“, or the name of a fungicide are what make it to this third sort of category.
Here are some of the tags I use for my posts (in no particular order):
- Type: HowTos, Editorials, Insights, Predictions, Trends, Off-topic
- Technology: RSS, Mobile, Internet Social, Blogs, Video WiFi, Affiliate, SEO, Policy, Email, Spam, Marketing, Telecom, VC, Broadband, OpenSource…
- Firms/Products: Linux, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Sun, Opera, Twitter, Apple, Firefox, Safari, Outlook, Thunderbird, Vista, Nokia, Facebook, iPhone, Gmail, IBM, Novell, SQL, Thinkpad…
Example 1: “The iPhone question - and why Arrington is wrong” was, briefly my opinion about why a certain Mr. Arrington was wrong about the impact that Apple’s iPhone would have on the future of mobile technology. Here’s how I tagged it: Type: Editorials, Insights. Technology: Mobile. Firms/Product: iPhone.
Example 2: “HOWTO: Google Reader Power User Guide” was about how to read your RSS feeds more effectively using Google Reader. Here’s the tagging: Type: HowTos. Technology: RSS, Social. Firms/Product: Google.
The three-category technique is based on my estimate that visitors searching for content will typically have one of these three intents - either they want to search for all HowTos, or all Trends. Or they are looking for articles about specific products: Firefox, Google. Or, finally, they’re looking for posts on the technology itself - RSS, Blogs, or the like.
From my experience blogging for four years, I’ve discovered that it’s worth investing time and effort to tag (or re-tag) your blog posts. Your readers will love you for it.