When you start setting up a blog, you’ll notice that you are given the option to add “tags” to your blog post.

What is a tag you ask? A tag is simply a keyword you use to label your posts as well as make it easier to find your entry. For example, you have a blog about your coffee shop that specialized in organic, fair trade coffee. You like to blog about when new flavors of coffee come in, free tastings, etc. It would be good to use tags like “free-trade”, “organic coffee”, after each blog post.

Here’s why tags are important and powerful

1) Using the same tags over and over again. Why? So you can come up in searches when users are looking for the same keyword. It’s critical not to vary the tags too much, but instead reuse them, like in the example above: “organic coffee”, “free-trade coffee” ,“independent”.

2) Use tag clouds in your blog – tag clouds are commonly seen on the sidebar of blogs, are easy to scan. A list of tags can be easily read if it’s in a cloud. It squeezes a ton of information into a small space.

3) You can always include terms in your tags that aren’t necessarily in your blog. If you are located in Portland, Oregon, but it’s not mentioned in your blog post, you can tag “Puddletown”,  “Stumptown”,  “PDX”, or “Rose City”. These tags can alert search engines to which terms are most important and help lead the right people who really want to read your content.

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