Are You Using 'Tags' on Your Blog?

[Boston Condo Guy]

I've been looking into Wordpress tag plugins for a while now, and wanted to get some feedback from others on the topic.

- Are you using tags in your blog posts?
- What plugin are you using? (Ultimate Tag Warrior seems like it is the dominant force, but recent comments I have read lead me to shy away from it)
- How are you using the tags? (i.e. are you listing your tags after each post, linking to your unique tag urls from other sites, etc.)
- Aside from category titles, what do you find yourself getting the most bang for your buck out of in terms of a tag (i.e. are you using street name, property description, architect, etc.)

Before I dive in on updating existing posts with tags, I want to do as much up front research as possible so I don't head too far down the wrong road. Thanks for your input!

[Lydia]

I've never seen how tags could help the writer of a blog or the blog visitor. I never pay attention to tags or tag clouds when I visit a blog.

Maybe I'm wrong- hopefully some people have had success with them.

[jasoncrouch]

I got this response earlier on Active Rain when I was asking how much business people could directly attribute to being active there:

Jason...I get a lot of business from Activerain. Learn how to use meta tags on your blogs and write blogs occasionally discussing your craft.

I have used the basic tags there - are there others that I don't know about? I was wondering how valuable the tags could possibly be.

[Boston Condo Guy]

Thanks for the responses thus far. My inquiry is centered around tags and tagging blog posts (as opposed to the more classic meta tags) specifically - rather confusing terminology, my apologies.

[Smuck]

I've started using tags for one reason, and that's indexing. Tags provide one more vehicle to link to a blog that is buried in the site somewhere. A tag will provide a link from the home page of your blog site to the blog entry you wrote months, perhaps years ago!

If a visitor was reading your latest entry on 'widgets' and wanted to read more about widgets, then certainly the tag will be helpful to the visitor, however, IMHO, the greatest value of tagging are the linking benefits.

[webmaster]

I completely disagree with this approach - You should not be using TAGS or anything else for that matter "strictly" for SEO.

But tags are good! Why? Because (If used correctly and not for search engine reasons) they help users find more articles on your blogs on the same topic. It is kind of like a "related articles" button.

Even better on social networking blogs like REW Blogs or Active Rain, Tags allow you to be found on other people's blogs. If write a great article on real estate web design and tag it as such, and another person has already done so - when the reader of their blog sees the tags and wants to read more articles, they will click and be shown yours and everyone else's articles tagged in the same manner.

They do help for interlinking - but that should not be why you use them, think of it as a fringe benefit.

I've started using tags for one reason, and that's indexing. Tags provide one more vehicle to link to a blog that is buried in the site somewhere. A tag will provide a link from the home page of your blog site to the blog entry you wrote months, perhaps years ago!

If a visitor was reading your latest entry on 'widgets' and wanted to read more about widgets, then certainly the tag will be helpful to the visitor, however, IMHO, the greatest value of tagging are the linking benefits.

[webmaster]

quick correction, on Active Rain, your tags will only reflect YOUR blog posts with those tags - whereas on REW Blogs, it will reflect ALL blogs with those tags (Much better for interlinking

[Smuck]

I completely disagree with this approach - You should not be using TAGS or anything else for that matter "strictly" for SEO...

At the risk of being blasted by the forum faithful (take it easy on me folks), I respectfully disagree. At least partially.

I agree with the benefit of tagging as it relates to the visitor, and I mentioned this in my initial post, however, I am not convinced the general public is reading these things. Now hold on, I am fully aware of the leads that are generated through blogging, and especially the REW blogs, however, most folks reading our real estate blogs are other Realtors. This came home to me by reading the comments left in real estate blogs. You would be hard pressed to find non-Realtors commenting on the real estate blogs.

I agree that tagging needs to be done correctly for the occasional non-Realtor visitor, as these types of visitors are our bread-and-butter. However, I still think that tagging's greatest benefit is keeping a blog healthy in terms of SEO. Heck, the bread and butter visitor may never find the blog entry we want them to find if it is in supplemental results and not being ranked in the search engines.

Morgan, part of what's at play is your position. You are the Lance Armstrong of real estate. You have a team around you, and respect from the peloton. You simply need to draft and you win the race. Uh, the rest of us, welll, need some drugs (i.e., tagging to keep our entries indexed properly)!

Your latest Active Rain blog is a good example. It's perfect. Heck, you write a blog and everyone reads it, I write a blog and I hope that someone will find it!

[webmaster]

If what you said about who reads your blogs is true, then I might agree in part with what you are saying, but it isn't

It is not other realtors that read your blogs (At least not the majority) - take REW Blogs for example - Analytics shows that the majority of traffic to an REW Blog entry comes directly from search engines (And depending on the quality and SEO of the post) for very relevant search traffic. For isntance your Habitat for humanities article in tri cities has received 45 visitors from just Google, for just the one single phrase "habitat for humanity tri cities wa"
there are many other phrases that have brought that blog article traffic.

This is not other Realtors - That post has received a total of 473 unique views, so just one phrase accounts for 10% - adding up the other phrases, I bet you get close to 50%

Your readership is search engine traffic, not Realtors (Although likely many do read)

Now with regards to commenting - it is true a higher portion of readers that comment are web savvy Realtors - that is likely because the general public is not as familiar or comfortable with commenting (Or ever realize they can) - so I can see how this has misled you.

Now don't get me wrong - the SEO benefits are nice and definitely a plus - however the difference in philosophy here is that I believe great content written for your users begets great SEO and you "seem" to be saying great SEO gets you visitors. I think I just confused myself in writing that last sentence lol

[webmaster]

Incidentally, my highest trafficked post ever on REW Blogs has 9338 unique page views, looking at my Google analytics one single term ranking in Google has brought me 1,478 unique visitors - there is also 289 different keywords (Other than the biggest one) each with anywhere from a 1 to a few hundred visits with that phrase in it, that have brought traffic to that blog.