When we mention “tag” in blogging, it refers to a keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (blog posts). In short, it’s a post description in the form of keyboards. It’s just like categorizing or labeling your blog posts.
tag cloud
Why should we even bother?
- It gives a general idea of what the post is about to the readers.
- Indexing related posts which are labeled with the same tag(s).
- Optimizing search (by keyword/phrase).
Tag is also a very common phenomenon in social networking sites. It’s part of Web 2.0. When you submit a URL to your favorite bookmarking site like Technorati, Digg, Del.icio.us, etc… you are required to “tag” the URL. Meaning, giving meaningful related keywords to describe the URL that you are going to submit.
You can even tag your friends/contacts in MyBlogLog, helping others to know more about them or their blogs.
Another term that you may want to know is “Tag Cloud”. It’s a collection/grouping of tags (keywords), just like the image shown above, or you can see a live example on the right sidebar of this blog.
A tag cloud (or weighted list in visual design) is a visual depiction of user-generated tags used typically to describe the content of web sites. Tags are usually single words and are typically listed alphabetically, and the importance of a tag is shown with font size or color. Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. The tags are usually hyperlinks that lead to a collection of items that are associated with a tag. [Source]
It’s very easy to create a tag cloud.
In WordPress, all you have to do is go to Presentation > Widgets and drag the Tag Cloud widget to the location you want according to your blog theme. Save and you’re done. You may also want to read about the WordPress plugin – Ultimate Tag Warrior.
In Blogger.com / blogspot.com, a tag cloud has an alternative name called label cloud. Most of the time the tag cloud script needs javascript enabled in the browser in order for it to work. Click here to read the instruction to add a label cloud feature to your blogspot.com blog.
Side talk: If someone tells you that you’ve been tagged, it means he/she listed you in his/her blog post regarding a topic and you are required to post something similar in your blog. See example.
By Stephine Korando on Jul 16, 2011
Hello, i think that i saw you visited my site thus i came to “return the favor”.I am attempting to find things to improve my site!I suppose its ok to use some of your ideas!!
