I promised you a Tuesday post on tags and this is it. One thing this successful blogger knows is that you don’t tell your readers that you’re going to do something and then not follow through with it. I’m following through with it.
When I started getting my notes together, I knew something about tags. I had put keywords deftly in my template just as Darren Rowse describes in his article, The Importance of Title Tags in Search Engine Optimization. In fact, I had done things so much like he had, I’d done the same things wrong.
This post explains the importance of title tags in how search engines look at our blogs. Darren added a two-word term to his. Then he graphed what happened. In just three days, his position on that term at Google changed from 65th to 10th. On MSN, his listing went from 40th to 1st. The comments that follow the article also add some new information, including how to respond gracefully when you mess up your host’s template.
Now for something completely different–a poem to Technorati Tags.
Oh Technorati
you fickle one
you really had me going
thinking if I chased enough
I might find solid ground.
But your faint mystery
was finally unraveled
when I found Improbulus
who carefully explained how the
premise is structurally unsound.
In other words, I found a post by a writer named Improbulus, Technorati tags: an introduction that provides everything you’d ever want to know about tags with a capital T and probably more.
I’m a saturation learner, so I found it fascinating to see exactly how the Technorati system might be used. Improbulus provides subheads to guide us through this well-organized analysis of the possibilities. Be sure to read the end where Improbulus gives an opinion of the downside of the system.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
I tag sometimes and it never seems to make a difference on how many visits or comments a post gets………..
Hi Marti,
Sounds like you’re talking about tagging your posts? Tags are just so confusing. At this point we’re talking about
tagging your blogtitle tags for search engines. Once your blog gets the attention, those post tags will have more power. Take a look at Darren’s article on how he changed his title tags in his template–it’s not hard or too dangerous–after all, I did it. 🙂Liz
Ok, this gets a little confusing. In the first half (referring to Darren’s post) you’re talking about HTML title tags (i.e. <title>).
The post on Improbulus talks only about Technorati tags (which are implemented with HTML anchor tags) for individual posts, not for blogs.
Sorry to be difficult, but which part of your post talks about tagging a whole blog using Technorati? Unless you’re referring to changing your page titles as “tagging” the blog, which I’m pretty sure would be a misuse of the term…
I think we’re talking about two different type of tags.
Technorati tags are well …keyword tags you tell Technorati about or is downloaded (pinged) automatically by your WordPress, so users who search Technorati would find you.
Title Tags are different. This is basically a SEO effect in that together with your post title (which should be in a H1 for best effect) you’d also have a title tag which would be the same so when you hover your cursor over the title it should appear but more importantly in should give you more keyword density.
And damn it! I’ve just checked my blog and I don’t have title tags going – guess what I’m going to do now 🙂
Jennifer,
Sorry you’re right, and you’re not all being difficult you’re trying to be clear. I know how that is.
I wrote that too quickly. I was talking about the HTML title tags. I’ve gotten so disgruntled with the Technorati tags from my research I’m a little biased against them at the moment. I’ll go back and edit that comment.
Thanks Jennifer for setting that straight.
That’s what these conversations are for.
Liz
Eeek! I’ve think I’ve misread this post. I’m in fact talking about title tags in a post title – as in the title attribute in a link.
Maybe we should scrap this post and start all over 🙂
Just to prove how tags are complex, I thought you were talking about HTML meta tags such as those for description, robots and keywords (do “view source” on any major site and you’ll see them in the HTML).
Thanks for the other links though.
Martin,
You can’t belive how relieved I am to hear someone say and do that. I’ve been going through that switch around for four days now and it’s what lead to the poem. There are too many things here all called by the same word–which gets back to what pcunix was talking about confusing titles and words that cause search engines to get confused.
We might know which ones are which, we just can’t use the same word to talk about all of them.
Hey Blogfather
We were talking about HTML title tags for Search Engine Optimization as in Darren’s article. At least I was. 🙂
Oh dear.
I’m feeling the urge to write poetry again. 🙂
Liz