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What is a Tag?

A tag is a keyword or a descriptive term associated with an item as a means of classification.

Tags are typically used in a dynamic, flexible and automatically generated internet related environment and do not follow any specific defined classification scheme.

Illustration

Let’s try to understand the concept of tags with an example. For instance, a blog server which supports tagging might have the tags Broadway, Tickets, Phil Colner and Premiers.

A reader will be able to tell the purpose of the page quickly by scanning the list of tags. The server would list the tags in a list on that page, with each tag being displayed as a web link. This link would lead to an index page listing all web pages which use that tag. This process, in turn allows a reader to quickly locate all pages which are associated with the term Broadway.

In case the server supports tag searching, a reader would be able to find all pages that use a specific set of tags, such as Broadway and Premiers. To further reclassify the page, all that will be required is to change the list of tags and all the connections will be automatically tracked and updated by the software.

Forms of Tagging

There are two types of tagging patterns for blogs. The form of tagging you decide to implement in your blog depends on your blog and its goals.

However, it should be noted that whatever form you opt for, do it carefully, because once implemented, to change the form of tags later involves a lot of complicated exercise.

Here we discuss the two main types of tagging for blogs to facilitate your decision-making:

• Internal Tagging - This form of tagging capitalizes on the content on the

site and provides internal linking which is basically good for both, search

engines and your readers.

Internal tagging fundamentally uses the flow of conversation approach. The approach highlights that the flow of conversation is not only linear, but is also multi-topical and interspersed with other aspects of conversation.

• External tagging: External tagging is implemented by outside services like Technorati, Flickr or del.icio.us and gives the process an edge of external exposure. Bloggers who use this form of tagging do so because they already have categories for internal use and meanwhile tagging allows them to feed the subjects to such external tagging services.

External tagging facilitates a lot of broad exposure on individual entries but carries the risk of being unable to tie similar conversations together internally.

How to Implement Tags?

Most of the blog platforms do not support out-of-the-box tagging services. However, most of them provide support for plugins or extensions. Here we list a few examples:

• Ultimate Tag Warrior (WordPress) – This plugin provides a wide set of options for internal and external tagging both. This service allows the blogger to display tags in a lot of ways and is thoroughly documented. External tags have the provision to get linked to Technorati, Flickr, del.icio.us, Wikipedia and the like.

• Jerome’s Keywords (WordPress) – This plugin is the easiest to reverse mid-way as it implements tags as keywords.

• Simple Tags, (WordPress) - This particular plugin carries the basic Technorati tagging capability on a per-post basis. However, it does not carry the internal tagging functionality.

• TechnoratiTags (Moveable Type) – Similar in nature to the above two, this plugin feeds keywords to technorati as tags.

Introduction

The world of blogging by its very nature demands dynamism and innovation in its output.

From the style to language, tone and the forms of posts; bloggers are expected to incorporate an element of variety in their posts on an ongoing basis. It then becomes the need of the hour to experiment with the various forms of genre.

Forms of posts

The famous ‘Bloggers Block’ haunts almost all bloggers at some point in their blogging course. Here we list the 10 best types of posts intended to tackle the concern of variety faced by the blogging community.

1. Informational – These are the blog posts that carry information on a topic. The knowledge provided in the post could range from a simple definition to a longer explanation of some aspect of the category you are addressing in your blog.

2. Instructional – The instructional posts are typically the ‘how to’ posts. These posts provide guidelines on how to do something. The ‘Tips’ posts are the most common form of instructional posts. Such posts are a huge attraction both for long term readers as well as first time visitors.

3. Lists – Lists such as ‘Top ten ways to….’ Or ‘5 most common mistakes by……’ might be quite difficult to put together, but are a sure hit with the readers. These also get some of the maximum links from other bloggers.

4. Reviews – The review posts cover feedbacks and opinions on almost every product searchable on the Internet. Reviews are one of the very few types of posts that can be very powerful in their impact and also have a great longevity.

5. Interviews and Profiles – To provide your readers with a whiff of fresh air, it is always a good idea to post an interview or a profile of someone famous, whom your readers will like to read about.

Alternatively, profile posts also talk about famous personalities, except for a single difference. While in a profile post the blogger writes on his own about the individual, in an interview post, the blogger actually publishes an interview with the person concerned.

6. Link Posts – One of the favorites of many bloggers, a link post is all about finding a quality post on another site or blog and linking up with it. The post explains why the link was setup and what was it that made the blogger do so.

7. Comparison Posts – These are the posts that present a comparison between two or more products or services. The post outlines the negative and positives of the concerned products and services in detail for the reader’s benefit.

8. Venting Out – These posts are highly subjective in nature and are used by bloggers to say just what is on their minds. The nature of such ranting posts can become quite volatile at times, with the bloggers blurting out quite intense emotions in the heat of the moment, leading on to a burning conversation.

9. Motivational – The inspirational or motivational posts normally tell a story of success or a series of good news. Readers are generally pleased with such pieces as these motivate them to persist in their respective pursuits.

10. Research – Authentic research oriented posts take a long time to write due to the amount of study and analysis it requires. Nevertheless, if done well, these posts can earn a lot of links for the bloggers’ posts.

The Basics

The underlying principle of the design of a weblog is utility and functionality, aimed to contrive for a specific purpose, through planned and systematic graphic representation.

Contrary to the common definition of design, blogosphere defines design as a method to make things work to their best ability, instead of merely enhancing the visual effect.

Design Guidelines

Here we list a set of key guidelines to follow and implement when designing a weblog:

1. Goals and Aims – It is of utmost importance to keep the basic purpose and goals of the weblog in mind. Every aspect of the design, ranging from the frames to colors, is influenced by the basic aim of the weblog.

Whether the purpose is creating awareness or rebuilding an existing weblog for better SEO results, the designer will have to decide on the key elements keeping these objectives in mind.

2. Target Audience – All the factors related to your planned targeted audience play a crucial role in deciding the basic ingredients of the blog design.

Factors such as ethnic background, educational levels, professional aspirations, financial abilities and geographical locations of your target audience should ideally be kept in perspective while finalizing the blog design.

3. Bloggers’ Needs – The blog designer needs to be aware whether the blogger in question has some specific needs such as flexibility to revamp the look for freshness or add some vital updates in future.

In such a scenario, the designer has to provide in-built features allowing scope for further amendments to the design, as per the need.

4. Rough Layouts – It is important for the designer to first draw out wireframes in order to experiment with element placement and layout.

Several programs and software can be used for drawing these wireframes or rough sketches, including the likes of OmniGraffle (mac only). Infact, most of the new weblog designers often commit the blunder of treating this step as redundant and hence skip it. This ultimately adversely affects the whole concept in turn.

5. Build a vision chart – Develop a collection of imagery and put it up all together on a board to see what the visual ideas look like.

Such a mood board should carry an amalgamation of images, colors, type etc. that seem to be in sync with the project in hand. An ideal mood board

should reflect the summary of the idea of the weblog’s design, according to the blogger as well as the designer.

6. Elementary Design – Having dealt with the entire above requirement, it is easy to put together the basic outline of the blog’s design as visualized.

An important requirement at this stage is to ensure that the designer leaves adequate ‘white space’, which refers to the empty space around the individual elements.

7. Take a print – Once you’ve put together an initial draft, take a print and see what the basic design looks like.

At this stage, it’s worthwhile to think how you are going to structure the html of the planned design.

8. HTML and CSS – This stage entails actually working out the HTML code and laying out the CSS guidelines of your design.

Once you’ve done this, you will have a clear estimate whether the original concept of the weblog’s design has a practical viability. Otherwise, a certain amount of tweaking and alteration can be brought in to achieve the desired results.

Introduction

Inbound Links are the most powerful and prominent off-site factors for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for blogs.

Off-site factors are those which primarily operate from outside the site and influence the blog’s ranking in search engines.

Link Generation

In this section, we discuss the ways and techniques a blogger can adopt in order to generate quality inbound links.

1. Create quality content- The first principle to generate quality content is

to create content which the readers will genuinely want to read and follow-up. Ofcourse, as a blogger you can adopt a lot of methods, such as solicit links with others, sign up for different link building programs or buy text links on other sites.

Nevertheless, producing a fine output remains the safest and most economical as you will end up creating a host of inbound links as others link to your quality content.

2. Get enrolled in directories – One of the most result-oriented methods is to submit your links to the blog directories. Reports reveal that the first thing webmasters do when starting a new site is to search the directories and submit links to key pages with appropriate keywords in the links.

3. Inform fellow-bloggers – It is not advisable to badger the other bloggers and ask for links. However, if you have written a quality post on a topic that might be of interest to fellow-bloggers, it’s beneficial to write them a short and polite email informing them of your post.

If they link up, you end up enhancing the direct traffic that link generates as well as building your own page rank in the search engines.

4. Testimonials – Another upcoming trend is to trade a testimonial in return of an inbound link to your site. Forward a testimonial to the site owner about the good experience you’ve had with the site’s offers/content or purchases. If it does get published, you’ll end up getting your site linked in return.

5. Multiple linkings – A lot of contemporary bloggers are participating or establishing blog networks to experience the advantages of multiple sites and writers working in tandem. Such inter-linking of blogs will give you more control over how your sites get linked amongst multiple domains.

6. Free offers – You can also offer a vast range of free offers in return of a link. The items you can offer free include a free e-book, articles, an article directory, tools, tips and resources.

7. Buy links – Buying text links is an approach many professional web masters are adopting. Infact, they have a special budget to purchase links from other highly ranked and relevant sites.

8. Swap Links – Sometimes done by default, swapping of links is another effective method to obtain inbound links. In other cases, the links are strategic ones and formally arranged between site owners.

Getting noticed

The blogging industry thrives on the success of individual bloggers which in turn depends on the traffic the bloggers receive.

In order to maximize the impact of blogs, there is a certain set of guidelines the blogger needs to observe. Here we discuss the few major techniques a blogger can implement towards this end.

What to do

1. Posting schedules – The foremost thing you need to do is to ensure that you plan and create a posting schedule ahead of time. It is advisable to do this in a structured manner. Here are a few pointers in this regard:

• Numerical goals – Establish a daily/weekly or a monthly pattern of posting you plan to achieve.

• Topic-related goals – You need to plan in advance how many posts per topic in a given category you wish to attempt in a particular span of time.

• Post Style Goals – Decide on the type of post you will attempt to write on each day of the week and follow the schedule.

2.Working hours – Apart from setting posting schedules, it is important to maintain the momentum of your blogging exercise by setting aside specific writing hours in your work time.

Blogging as an activity has so many features to involve you that you can actually skip the most important part – writing posts. You can designate a specific time of the day or even a specific weekday dedicated to penning down your material.

3. Go public – It often helps in posting your schedules, telling readers what they can anticipate in the next post. This also helps the blogger by setting a goal to achieve across posts and working schedules.

4. Add a title – Ensure that every post has a title. Readers get attracted better and search engines are able to spot you easily.

5. Comment – It helps to add comments on other’s blogs. It gets you known and makes you a familiar figure for other bloggers.

6. Time your posts – The gap at which you post your blogs also plays a crucial role. Besides, try and time your posts with relevant events, if any. For instance, if there is a national level sports event in offing, it helps to post a blog on the latest trends and famous players in that very sport.

7. Optimize the page count – Search engines rank sites with lots of pages as having more authority than sites with a lesser number and hence the benefit.

8. Tag your posts – Tagging has surely become one of the most result-oriented tools of the bloggers. You can even modify your template to make it more tag-friendly.

Introduction

A weblog is one of the most preferred virtual destinations, providing knowledge without any complications of web design and the other related components.

This said, it is yet so common for the blogging community to fall into some of the most common pitfalls and mistakes while operating in the blogosphere.

Common Mistakes

Here we list some of the common mistakes bloggers worldwide generally commit:

1. Launching a blog based on inadequate knowledge

The biggest mistake most of the beginners do is to launch a blog without trying to understand the blog culture or the blogging world. This further has a negative impact; both on the quality and relevance of the blog content, as well as on the netiquette norms the bloggers follow.

2. Depriving original blogger of the credit

Since many bloggers subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds and get quite a few of their ideas from there, it is absolutely unacceptable for them to post a distinctively similar entry to the original one. Sadly enough, many bloggers end up doing so, hence defying the basic blogging discipline.

3. Dictating definitions

The blogging community strongly spurns new bloggers who go around throwing definitions about what is and what is not of blogging. Existing bloggers react sharply to anyone voicing such unjustified knowledge and hence the negative publicity.

4. Irregular schedule

Most of the bloggers start with a bang, only to come down with a thud. It is important that you treat the blog launch like the launch of a publication. Not releasing regular updates to your blogs is considered strongly against the blogging norms.

Ideally, readers should be able to anticipate the frequency of updates on your blog. Whether you’ve run put of material or time, this is one flaw that will put you well behind in the bloggers’ queue.

5. Inconsistent appearance

One of the biggest mistakes is not maintaining consistency in the design of all the blogs. Owing to this, all of the blogs can’t be integrated together into one.

It’s ideal to pick a specific design and use it for all the domains. It’s also advisable to create multiple blogs for each vertical content area and tie them together.

6. Quality of titles

The content and presentation of titles should reflect good quality. Humorous headlines often fall out of context and should be avoided. Try using descriptive headlines or titles for the representation of your blog in search engines and newsfeed.

The use of ALL CAPS should be avoided as the reading speed is reduced by 10%. Besides, the appearance of shouting is quite an undesirable sight.

7. Improper categorization

Bloggers often make the mistake of tagging a post with almost all of their categories. It is extremely important to be selective and decide on a few categories where a posting most belongs.

It’s advisable to limit the number of categories in the range of 10-20 and also add parent categories for listing.

8. Ill-written content

Avoid the pitfall of using excessive technical jargon or complex sentences. Keep the sentences short, crisp and simple. Also, don’t jam too much thought content into one post. Instead, add another post later.

9. Excessive self promotion

It is a prominent mistake to add an extensive paragraph about your services at the bottom of every post, especially if it is lined with links. This acts as a major put-off for most of the readers.

10. Posting your listings

Akin to no.9, it is highly undesirable to treat your blog as an advertisement; instead your blog should appear as a community resource and not a promotional tool.

11. Using generic themes

Most bloggers don’t realize the value of adding a personalized touch to the theme of their blogs. It’s advisable to lend a individualistic feel using your own photo, editing the header graphic or altering the colors.

12. Baseless questions

Too many bloggers post questions on their blogs that are not substantial or thought-provoking enough. The quality thus appears conspicuously low and hence the loss of reputation.

Missing Components

Apart from the above mistakes, quite a few of the bloggers don’t add some essential components to their blogs. Here we’ve listed a few:

• About section

The reader has a right to know what subject or content they are dealing

with. Absence of the ‘about’ section renders the reader rather aimless.

• Author photo

A personal impression of the author is a must as it provides the valuable link between the physical and virtual worlds. Human nature is such that an individual responds better to you if he/she has atleast seen how you look.

• Links to old posts

Your existing readers might have read your old posts, but many of the bloggers forget to add a link leading to their old posts for the benefit of the new bloggers.

• Search bar

The search feature is a fundamental requirement in any weblog. A homepage without a search bar is sure to leave the reader at a loose end.

• Links to other blogs and source

Most bloggers do not provide links to the primary material, such as a news story, an essay a speech or even another blogger’s entry. This is a clear non-compliance of basic blogging norms and should be avoided altogether.

• Personal domain name

A domain name comes at quite a reasonable cost, yet most of the bloggers don’t realize the importance of having one of their own. Similarly, letting somebody else own your domain name is same as letting someone else decide your destiny on the Internet.