Tags for content may just be the best organizational breakthrough for content in a decade. Tags eliminate the need for complex database files to classify content and allow the blog author to use keywords as the “tags” to identify and classify content.

Blog Tags

Blogs have traditionally allowed authors to post or assign blog entries to one or multiple categories. The use of “tagging” gives you one additional dimension to add many keywords relative to your content. Each blog post with the same tag identifier can easily be found by your readers by simply clicking on the tags. If a reader is interested in finding all the posts about a certain keyword or phrase, they can easily search multiple entries tagged with the same blog tag.

Tags became very popular with Web 2.0 sites as it provided such a great method of both looking at the core keyword classification of a single content item, as well as the value it provides in aggregating all tags across sets of multiple items.  The “tag cloud” lists all tags used for a given site concept and the tag cloud adjusts the font size of tags based on frequency of use or other popularity method.

 Blog Tag Cloud

Photo and video sites benefit greatly from tags as there is no easy method of extracting text from these media elements.

Once you begin to use tags on your blog, you’ll see just how convenient the tags are in helping to identify your posts.