Why "tag" or "label" or "link" in blog posts
I have just read Fracas’ post below and had a little “scratch” around the blog world and found loads of entries to the competition, I just knew that loads of great free prizes would grab your attention!
However, it has also become very apparent that when we say “tag” or “label” or even “link” it is not totally clear what is meant by this. So here is a basic guide to tag, label and link, if you want to help with writing userguides on this blog/site, please contact us.
Tag or Label
When we ask you to “tag” or “label” a post, we do so to help us and others find it by using google or a carrying out a blog search. A tag or label is basically a word or set of words (keyword), relevant to your post. They are both the same but Wordpress call them “tags” and Blogger call them “labels”.
Using labels may also generate extra traffic for your blog because:-
• they help search engines, such as google and yahoo, to find your blog post
• they can help with page rank because search engines find your blog post easier
For example if you were writing about the drink Absinthe and its history (this is a hint regarding a future true test, to see if you qualify for true tests mail us here), you would probably label/tag the post “absinthe” along with other keywords that would lead people to your blog to read this post such as “alcohol” and “liquor” but also you might want to add other keywords relating directly to your blog post (assuming you wrote about him..) “van gogh” who supposedly “cut off his ear” note that I would also tag/label “cut off his ear”, people associate the fact he took a knife to his ear because of absinthe, whether true or not, it is relevant to Absinthe!
If you want to tag/label something with two keywords ie Absinthe and liquor, you will need to separate the two with a comma eg “absinthe, liquor” (capital letters make zero difference to the result) if you add the keywords “absinthe liquor” without a comma this tag/label will only be found by people looking for “absinthe liquor” not absinthe or liquor (which is helped by the comma).
So to recap, labels and tags are simply a way of ensuring your post is easier to find by both search engines and people looking for specific topics, key words should be separated with a comma.
Links
“Link to our sponsor” or “link to fuelmyblog” we ask this for various reasons, normally it is to help your readers see why you are showing, for example, “the view from your window“! By linking to our competition sponsors, it gives them better coverage in search engines and helps them justify giving away the prizes you want to win! There are stacks of search engine benefits and we’ll explore those in a separate post. A quick golden rule of thumb is never link to a site that has bad content or information that will turn your readers away from your blog. If this link causes you to spend a great deal of time worrying about it, don’t link.
Linking is now very easy to do thanks to the simplicity of blog platforms, the two most popular used by people on Fuelmyblog are Blogger and Wordpress. They both have great help guides which are linked below:-
Blogger
Wordpress
WHOAH!!!..ok how did I do that? Simple, type a word, highlight it (easiest way is to use your mouse but you can press shift and highlight) then, once highlighted, click on the link button (in blogger it looks like a globe with a chain on it, in Wordpress it looks like a chain link) then simply paste the URL (website address ie http://www.fuelmyblog.com) then click the OK button in blogger or the broken chain in wordpress.
I hope now you have a clearer understanding of the reasons we need tags/labels and links. I am sure this can be written with more authority and clarity, if you feel you can do a better job of this, please please email me, I would be thrilled to have you on board as a writer
So now we have this cleared up, I hope you’ll feel happier about joining our competitions! More at
http://blog.fuelmyblog.co.uk/2007/12/why-tag-or-label-or-link-in-blog-posts/
