Continuing our discussion regarding the importance of smart tags and categories. Today's tip is brought to you by Kimberlee Morrison, author of VinylNotes and Associate Editor for Know More Media.
As a reader, there is nothing more frustrating than doing a search for a particular topic and getting a bunch of useless results. Unfortunately, when tags and categories are not consistent across similar topics, this is what happens. Part of the purpose if tags and categories is to link like subject together as well as make such subjects easier to search for.
Categories can be looked as as the table of contents and the tags are the index. In other words, the categories are the main subject and the tags are the keywords and subheadings. If used with careful consistency, these tags and categories will enable affective searchability and make it easy for readers to find similar subjects.
Here are some basic rules to keep in mind when applying tags and categories:
Think ahead. If you have not done so already, you should create about 30-40 categories for your blog. Not only will this help you envision various areas to cover on your column but it will also help to keep you concise. What do you want to focus on? What industry areas do you want to address? If you find that you have created well over the recommended number, you should examine which ones might be redundant and how you can pare your list down. Remember, the selected categories will be your table of contents and should help to provide you with a general focus for your blog topic.
Use keywords for tags. Tags should be keywords that describe what the post is about. While short sentences can be descriptive, they can also be cumbersome. Pick between 2-5 keywords or key phrases (preferably two words maximum) that tell the reader what the article is about. These tags will populate through Technorati and the network (or website) search engine and make your article easy to locate.
Be consistent. If you have two articles on similar subjects be sure to include at least one tag or category across posts across like topics. For example if you write an article on the recession and then later write an article about the economic stimulus plan, you will probably want these posts to have at least one tag/category in common. This is especially useful if a reader reading a particular article clicks a tag/category looking for similar articles. If tagged/categorized consistently, the link will lead to search results of articles with the same tag/category.
Be concise. You want to avoid what some people call “tag bombing.” When choosing your tags, really think about the most important keywords and limit your tags to those only. Too many tags will make your blog appear to be poorly organized. Try to make your tags as specific as possible and let your categories be the general over-arching term(s).
See what others are doing (this is especially good for authors writing for a network such as Know More Media). Of course categories will vary from blog to blog but there is no reason why tags cannot be consistent across blogs. It might take a bit more effort but it’s doable. If you notice that another author has written an article on the same subject as you, see which tags they’ve used for that article that might be applicable to yours. This will make the network search more useful by aligning similar articles across the network. Sometimes keywords in the title work but if keywords vary, the tags will help the search results include a wider range of perspectives on common issues. For example, I would suggest that anyone writing about the 2008 presidential election tag any articles on the topic “2008 election.”
Do you have any other suggestions and/recommendations for the effective use of tags and categories?
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