Tagging - Why aren't you doing it?
 

Since I started my feed project, I've been amazed that webmasters who wouldn't dream of not putting alt text on an image, do not tag their posts.

Here's an article that I think explains why you should be tagging your posts.

Think of tags as keywords for your specific post. Most the blogging scripts have a tag plug-in but you can do it with html if you prefer...and it's just like a link (example of a technorati tag). So, if you've claimed your blog on technorati and you ping them, they will pick up the tags and your post will get added to their search engine.

Don't want the traffic leak to technorati but still want indexed? This tag will work equally as well. I have optimized XXX Blog Feeds for tags as well. So those participating could setup their tag and still get the benifits of being indexed by technorati when they ping and give a site your feeds are being displayed at the benefit of the linkage.

Oh, and everything I've said goes for Del.icio.us and all the other social bookmarking sites as well. If someone bookmarks your site, the tags on the post they are bookmarking are added and since this whole thing is a social bookmark type of thing, your tags are now shared across the service they've been bookmarked on. I think you can see where I'm going here.

Thanks for the info, I'm going to take a closer look at this.

very good call, and one that should be applied to all bloggers. Tags are simply the easiest, and yet non applied source for increased traffic to ones blog

I have been meaning to bug you about this exact subject. I dont add the tags but I do ping technorati and do get trraffic from them. Would I get more traffic or benefit from adding the tags?

ronnie

Wow that is a lot of reading…
The link to this video was a bit easier to watch.

What is the proper syntax for the tags? Is it always rel="" are there others? Does this have any affect on stuff besides blogs like galleries?

Excellent advice, thx

Technorati is picking up your categories as tags. If you don't mind having a whole bunch of categories, then the answer would be no. But what I'm trying to do is organize it a bit. So the category would be the main keyword and then the tag would be keywords off of the main. To use a mainstream example I might use food as the category and then if my post was about cherry pies, use cherry pie and it's ingredients as the key words.

As far as I been able to find out rel="tag" is the proper syntax with the keyword being at the end of the link and / or the anchor text.

I do use the example without anchor text and technorati seems to pick it up just as well as if I added the anchor.

Thats an interesting question and I don't know the answer. I don't see there would be a problem with say Del.icio.us because its purely a social bookmarking tool and not a blogging tool. But with Del.icio.us, I can't say that "tagging" my posts necessarily means a lot except it appears that they do check for tags and add them from the site when you bookmark. But you have the option of doing that manually when you post there anyway.

Walrus, I'm resurrecting this thread because I've finally decided to get off my bum and find out about tags.

My question is this: when you add tags using that html, what is the significance of the URL? Technoratic tags link to technorati... does Delicious have a tag system requiring their own URL in the tag link?

I'm still vague on the whole thing. I have a tag plugin but I don't know how to make it work.

The relevant part of the link code is the rel="tag" and then the keyword anchor text. What site that link is actually pointing to isn't important.

If your using a WP plugin, I recommend Ultimate Tag Warrior, although I admit that the documentation is a bit difficult to understand at times. It's well worth struggling through as there is a multitude of options available that can not only aid with technorati etal but with the SE's as well. I use it to interlink similar posts, add my tags as keywords in the head of the post (limited value, I know) and create a whole new / different (from categories) set of internal links called tags.

I've been putting off figuring out how to include tags in my own blog. Thanks for the nudge grandmascrotum, and the essential info Walrus. |thumb

Now I just have to figure out how to write the damn code. Silly me, and my foolish whim to own a non-standard blog. |banghead|

And the keyword at the end of the link:

Walrus, thanks so much for that plugin link! I've got it to work! My other two tag plugins had me all confused because they require the visual rich text thing to work and I write using the plain text one.

There's so many things about blogging that have me walking in circles looking confused. At least I feel like I got somewhere today.

virgohippy you are correct

grandmascrotum your welcome

I've been having some problems with my Tagging -- the last time Technorati said that my site was updated was like 30 days ago -- and a newer site that I have put up, it says 4 days ago -- and I post on the first one at least 2-3 times a day and the newer one once a day and automatically ping Technorati -- anyone have any ideas on why the pinging isn't working or have had this issue before?

I really appreciate any help on this -- thank you very much!!

Will it update if you ping it directly from technorati, ie a manual ping from your technorati account?

Technorati is sometimes erratic and it could that your pinging multiple times before technorati has had the chance to actually visit your blog and see whats going on.

no -- tried that -- I went on a claimed it and Updated Ping and such still nada -- I'm wondering if they don't like invisible tags anymore? I just would like to try and find out what's going and I'm out of ideas and would appreciate any help and thoughts

I quit using invisible tags a long time ago (when I found ultimate tag warrior) but at the time they were saying they weren't happy about them.

Try doing a normal tag for a couple of days and see if the traffic is worth it...or install a plugin like UTW (link is in this thread).

yeah that's what I'm doing -- in fact I found out that this site http://www.hotlifesex.com/ had been jacking my content and such because he didn't have the CSS in his style sheet the tags were showing up on Technorati

walrus -- I noticed that you don't to the technorati tags, but your own site search tags, why's that? and do you using the tag pile at all?

Technorati doesn't actually require that the link in the tag point to them so I ping, get Technorati traffic and also have a great method of interlinking similar posts for the SE's.

Actually once you get off my index page, I have a tag cloud. I figure those who came to my index can either look through the categories or use the tags in the post for navigation. Once your off the index, you've got the tag cloud for drilling down deeper for your perversion.

I sort of switched in mid-stream how I was doing things so I actually have more categories than I want / need. Now I use the categories as sort of the "main keyword / s for the post and use technorati tags for the minor keywords.

Thanks for the suggestions, checking out a Wordpress plugin now. :)

Thanks for all this great info in this post. After a couple months of getting no love from technorati, I'm now getting some good traffic and my blog rankings are climbing. I just recently started a new blog and linked it up with my other blogs, and technorati picked it up right away. So just a word of encouragement to everybody who can't seem to get technorati to list their blogs: stay at it, keep tagging, exchange links with other blogs that are listed on technorati, and be patient!
http://www.technorati.com/profile/webpimp

Technorati is as much a mistery to me as google
I tried registering my aggregater that stopped them crawling my site.
updated my profile now I see my picture is up as a featured blogger http://www.technorati.com/
Today I claimed another blog it was crawled and updated instantly
Yet if I ping them that I've updated my aggregater nothing changes
http://www.technorati.com/search/rssxxxfeed.com
and I'm trying to be patient

All extra traffic is nice to have, but Technorati isn't a big "natural" source for porn customers. So when I tag adult sites my main interest is using them to provide internal tagging as an extra way for search engines to find their way deeper into my sites.

That translates into a tag cloud on the first page and then I get around to Technorati, which means tags on every post. However, no way do I want to introduce all those leaks, so the links are normal, but in no-display divs.

As of now, T seems to deal with that just fine, but otherwise it is the most cockeyed directory. For example, yesterday when I looked at the profile I use for my resource site, recent posts (and they were not that recent) were listed as having been scanned a few hours earlier. Today (much) older posts scanned 3 days ago are showing as the latest. That just seems to be the way T is...

I'm not sure I understand the big "natural" source comment. No they are not your typical TGP surfer...and they may not surf link lists but since they are finding my sites looking for keywords like "sex", "fuck", "dildo", "threesome", etc. I consider them a pretty good source for a porn customer. Because they tag rather than bookmark, because they don't come from a SE, but from a tagging resource they aren't interested in the same thing that someone who types the same search terms in google?

Maybe I've been smoking to much dope, but I think the technorati traffic is much more valuable than any other traffic I get. They do tag, which creates natural backlinks, which then in return brings in more SE traffic. How does someone who only bookmark your site in their browser help you? They do buy...although I will admit I think they are less likely to buy on impulse. They are simply the new wave of customers and tapping into their mode of using the internet is keying into the future.