Is Utilizing Post Tags and Categories Beneficial to Page Ranking?
Make sure to set your blog post tags!
When you first start writing content, there are so many things to consider that you just might forget all about utilizing tags and categories. I believe that these tools are mostly either underutilized or completely ignored. This is a big mistake usually committed by a newbie or casual content writers.
Publishing platform communities like Hubpages, Squidoo, and blogging platforms like Blogger, Blogspot, and WordPress all have the option of utilizing tags and categories. Several others do as well. If this were unimportant, why would they all offer these tools?
The main benefit is to assist content writers in reaching the top spot as a search query with a search engine. If they help us do that, it gets them big revenues (which they often share with us as affiliate marketers or publishers). A publisher, according to Commission Junction is:
…also known as an affiliate or reseller, is an independent party that promotes products and services of an advertiser in exchange for a commission on leads or sales. A publisher displays an advertiser’s ads, text links, or product links on their Web site, in e-mail campaigns, or in search listings. The publisher is paid a commission by the respective advertiser when a visitor takes a specific action such as filling out a form, subscribing to a service (both lead examples) or making a purchase (a sale).
When writing your content, you must be aware of SEO or “search engine optimization.” We make our sites and content “search engine friendly” so we can rise to the top of the most influential search engines thereby increasing site traffic, readership, and hopefully — an increase in sales. (Please see the Google link in the next paragraph below). By carefully, systematically choosing your optimal tags or keywords for your content, title, and categories, you make your content or posts easy to find. You won’t get much traffic if your article ends up on page 10 in search engine results.
There are several benefits to taking the time to choose your tags and categories wisely. Google and Technorati pay very close attention to tags and categories. We all know Google is the most influential search engine and Technorati measures a blog’s influence and standing in the “blogosphere;” (the entire blogging universe as a community). Both are excellent traffic referral sources as well. So being popular with them is to be taken seriously.
In addition, many blog platforms show top categories and tags in various other places other than your blog. If you use proper tags and categories, you can get excellent referral traffic from the blog platform as well as from other websites that also index categories and tags of that blog platform. This is a WordPress.org blog; I am able to maximize the categories feature. I can add as many categories or tags as I like. Tags are like subcategories helping you further define your content or topic. Technorati uses WordPress categories as tags.
By utilizing categories and tags, you create an internal link structure to all of your posts. Each post you create in WordPress is entered under one or more categories. This will allow you to compile posts with related content together. You can assign each category to a parent category. Then, the categories are displayed alphabetically and within a hierarchy. Subcategories are displayed after the parent category. You can also add more details like a description. You will be able to see the number of posts that belong to a certain category. My current blog theme does not natively have a menu but I have a widget feature which allows me to display the categories I choose in my sidebar. If you click a certain category, you will see a display of all the posts that are related all in one place.
Don’t dismiss using categories and tags as descriptors or keywords attached to your content. This will help both Internet searchers and search engines easily find and understand what your content is about and to find other related content under the category/tag hierarchy on your blog or site. To further assist you with this task, why not try one of the free WordPress plugins that help you choose tags related to your content? I am currently using Head Space2 for SEO and tagging on this blog. It makes suggestions for tagging easy!
To your prosperity and online success,
Thanks for this detailed explanation. I wonder how the Alchemy Tagger differs from Wordtracker?
Cherrie Bautista
Wellness & Health recently posted..Why Positive Thinking Does NOT Work!
Deborah, for me this was an excellent lesson about using tags and categories. After this post my status will change from not utilizing to utilizing.
Perry A Davis Jr
Music City USA
Perry A Davis Jr recently posted..What is rare and virtually non-existent in the network marketing industry
Hey, Perry:
I’m so glad that I was able to help you implement some minor changes that can really help you increase your online presence. Let me know how it goes!
To your success,
Deborah
Those are some very good points about SEO and how to utilized tags and categories. I love to work with SEO on my blog, there are some very cool things you can do to make it shine in the eyes of Google and yes tags and categories are part of the puzzle.
Thanks for sharing this,
Kathy
Mobile Media Marketing The Wave of The Future
Kathy, I really enjoyed visiting your blog today. I think I can learn a lot from you ~ especially about creating videos. I need to get motivated and learn the simple but powerful techniques you teach! I look forward to positioning myself on Google!
Thank you for commenting and adding value!
Deborah
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