Content Tagging: What Are Tags And Why They Are So Important For Web Publishers
Written by on April 1st, 2008 in Content Delivery And Distribution, SearchToolsand Technologies, Knowledge Management, Social Networking, ContentDeliveryAnd Distribution.
Don’t know what content tags are? Tagging content has become over the last few years an important component of the online publishing process as it allows editors to extend the reference labels, associations and search keywords by which any type of content can be found.
In the early days of the web, a similar content classification variable was available to all webmasters: The Keyword Meta Tag. This was a content information variable that was placed inside the Head code component of your HTML code, and inside which you could specify (for any one web page) a set of specific keywords that the web page was relevant for. Due to widespread misuse of this function, whereby webmasters and unscrupulous webmasters literally stuffed their meta tag keyword with popular keywords not relevant to their content in order to attract a greater number of visitors, this HTML variable was gradually dismissed until all major search engines stopped reading its contents (about 2000-2001).
But in 2005, with the advent of Technorati, the blog search engine, a new form of keyword classification was made available for all web publishers allowing them again to provide reference classification terms for any digital content they published online.
Articles, news stories, podcasts, audio recordings, photos, presentations, video clips can all be tagged easily no matter what type of blog or content management system you use. The benefit is a wider distribution of your content and more opportunities for those seeking it to find it.
Tags associated to content are usually referred to as rel=”tag”, and the hyperlinks they generate are intended to be visible links on pages and posts.
“This is in stark contrast to meta keywords which were invisible and typically never revealed to readers.
“As a matter of fact, “making tag hyperlinks visible has the additional benefit of making it more obvious to readers if a page is abusing tag links, and thus providing more peer pressure for better behavior. It also makes it more obvious to authors, who may not always be aware what invisible metadata is being generated on their behalf.”Source: (Microformats - Rel tag specification)
If you have never used or learned about content tagging before, I have recorded a very short video of myself explaining in very simple words what tags are and why they are very important to use in your online professional publishing workflow.
Here it is:
Tags and tagging: what is it all about? Robin Good explain why tags are so important for online publishers
My definition for tags: Tags are short keywords that define what your online digital content is all about.
Official definition: Tag definition:
“A tag is a relevant keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (a picture, a geographic map, a blog entry, a video clip etc.), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification and search of information.Tags are usually chosen informally and personally by item author/creator or by its consumer/ viewers/ community.
Tags are typically used for resources such as computer files, web pages, digital images, and internet bookmarks (both in social bookmarking services, and in the current generation of web browsers - see Flock). For this reason, “tagging” has become associated with the Web 2.0 buzz.
Typically, anyone digital content item will have one or more tags associated with it.
”(Source: Wikipedia)
“Tagging represents a new way to filter and categorize the web even further than we already can. But it also represents a new level of viral socialization. Technorati.com has implemented a new tagging service which makes use of Flickr and Del.icio.us…
Tags allow bloggers to increase the value of individual posts within a blog by driving greater value into a topic at at large. An example could be if I write a post about “rc cars” on my remote controlled toys blog and I tag that post specifically with “rc cars”. That post has just become much more searchable within my niche and adds another way for my content to be located and used by contributing to a specific information cluster about rc cars that is gathering beyond my blog discussion…
As the use of tags grows, new information clusters will form within the greater blogosphere via Technorati and tags will be a way of adding your content to these clusters. The idea of tags is to socialize and aggregate interests across blog posts and add a virtual layer (if you will) that kind of abstracts an additional layer of relevancy from the blogosphere that is searchable based on these named clusters of information called tags.”
Source: (How to Blog for Fun and Profit)
How To Tag Your Content?
Some of the popular blog and content management systems integrate a tag box in which to include your tag list. You can also add rel tags manually or by publishing your content via a social media sharing site as they all support tags (Flickr, Youtube, Scribd, etc.)
To use multiple tags/keywords a “separator” character must be used. A popular one is the space character although a comma is preferable as it enables the use of phrases or multiple words to describe a concept.
For more information on tagging, here is the original 2005 Technorati rel tag specification.
Same Video - YouTube version