Blog tags planning comes before you actually build the blog

Everything that is under the form of a link should serve a purpose. You don’t just place a link for the sake of it. You use it for SEO purposes or to improve user experience or to improve the indexing of your pages. Blog tags, together with blog categories are mainly used to group the content – to make it easier to access by users.

Things to consider when you think about blog tags:

-          If you plan the list of tags before you start writing content the result will be: better organized content. If you don’t plan a list of tags you’ll end up with different tags that basically mean the same thing

-          Good planning will lead to better understanding of your content by users

-          See if you can incorporate keywords in your tag list

-          Think about link architecture: the tag list can help your indexing process

-          The tag list should be an extension to your category list: particularities, common points for different categories, additional information, etc

-          Build it with responsibility: think about what the user will get by clicking a tag. What is the value? Why to click it?

-          When using a widget to display your tag cloud you have two options: different text sizes, depending on how much a tag is used, or equal text sizes. Think about what you need. If you want people to know that your content is more about a certain topic then go with different text size.

Let me know if you think about other uses of blog tags. Do you think it’s worth the time to plan a list of tags? Do you go with the flow or you already have a list of blog tags?