Residual Victory Blog

What a Tag is, in its most basic form, is a word.  What is Tagging?  Entering words applicable to specific web content such as a blog, article, or image.  A tag is usually a descriptive word about the particular content you are viewing or tagging.  The Tag word can be a word that is meaningful to you and nobody else, or it can be a logical description of the content.  Some people use Tags to create wish lists (tagging it mywishlist) and others to share articles with friends (tagging it with names of friends).  Most people, however, do give logical descriptions to content.  But since you can add many tags, the ability is there to give both logical and personal descriptions to content.  A birthday cake could have a tag of mywishlist, Beth, Birthday, Cake.  (Except without the commas, because Tag words must be separated with spaces and not commas.)

The tag words become links.  In the above example, you would probably click on the “mywishlist” link, your friend Beth would click on the “Beth” link, someone having a party might click on “Birthday,” and a pastry chef might click on “Cake.”  One item of web content that was tagged is now shown through a kaleidoscope of perspectives. When clicking on these links, you will also see other links related to the specific tag word you clicked on.  For instance, when you click the link “birthday” you will see not only your link, but thousands of other links that other people have tagged “birthday.”  That’s where relevancy comes in.  Tagging is a benefit to social bookmarking sites.  If you have logical descriptive tags in your content, everyone benefits from finding related and unique information. 

Tags have a social value.  It provides people with information that they might not otherwise be able to access by search engines.  It also gives people the abilities to track tags, keep up with a favorite person’s tag, or tags about their profession.  There are also tags for trends, tags for social groups and social causes.  Using Tags as links, you can easily browse and find interesting cross-reference terms you might not have thought of before.  Most basic social bookmarking sites that use Tagging also allow users to subscribe to a RSS Feed for their tag, so updates are readily available.

Learning the Basics of Tagging is useful for web development. You can “Tag and Ping,” which means you create something with Tags, then forward it to popular websites to have your tags included with their tags.  When the tag is clicked on from anywhere, your content will show in the results.  Tagging is a very popular tool in promoting visibility through blogging and social bookmarking websites. You are free to apply more than one meaning to your content without being limited to one specific keyword or keyword phrase.  Learning what a Tag is and the Basics of Tagging is useful to reach the people without waiting for search engine algorithms to hand you over to them.  So tag and be tagged.  Let the people decide their perspective, and their perspective might just link to you.

Tagging and the Power of Technorati are recognized as one of the hottest blogging tools in the realm of professional blogging.  The Judges agree, and awarded Technorati and it’s Tagging properties with the Technical Achievement Award and Best of the Show Award in the 9th Annual Web Awards.  However, awards don’t necessarily bring Power, people do.  And the 75 million inbound links, almost 3 million monthly Compete visitors, and Technorati’s Alexa Ranking of 234 and their Google Ranking of 8 (as reported in July 2007 by eBizMBA), are indications that the people and the search engines agree that Technorati is the social bookmarking site of choice for bloggers.  It would be self-destructive for someone to ignore the Power of Technorati and it’s capabilities to promote their website.  The Technorati website claims they are “currently tracking 96.1 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.”  Those 250 million pieces of Tagged social media are labeled according to users, not Google.  You can focus your visibility campaign on what the people really want.

With Technorati, you can get daily RSS Feeds on any tag and even put them on your aggregator.  Technorati is useful to search blogs for ideas, see what others are saying, vote on blogs, see who’s voting on what, create a “watchlist” on any tag, add backlinks, and easily ping Technorati right from their website.  Many Technorati’s add Technorati to their desktop with a widget, plugin, or on their mobile phone to stay updated on trends.

Technorati (www.Technorati.com) is focused on the present, which gives you real-time interests of prospective visitors, so you can tailor your blog accordingly.  Technorati tracks links between blogs, and updates “tens of thousands” of links and blogs for indexing every hour.  According to Technorati data, there are over 175,000 new blogs every day and bloggers update about 1.6 million blogs per day, which end up being (according to Technorati) over 18 updates a second.  (Wouldn’t it be nice if you could update your blogs that fast?) That’s where the art of “Ping” comes in.

“Ping” tells numerous websites that you have new information to be submitted.  Technorati’s hot spot is it’s “WTF” premise, which stands for “Where’s the Fire.”  New entries go to the top of WTF.  How long you stay there depends on how “hot” your blog is.  People skim the WTF site rapidly.  It’s up to the blog poster to write enticing material to engage the WTF readers, gain votes, encourage conversation and get recognized.  Adding links will add interest.

Technorati announced on their website in April 2007 that they acquired Personal Bee (www.personalbee.com), a news and publishing company.  This can only mean more power.  Anyone wanting to promote their website to gain visibility should implement daily operations to focus on Tagging and the Power of Technorati to reach their audience.  It’s free, and it’s powerful.  Tag what’s “hot” and fuel the Technorati WTF fire to promote your website.  If you don’t, your competition is going to stomp you out of the game.

Tagging and the Power of Social Bookmarking is evident to over 35 Million monthly visitors that visited the largest 30 Social Bookmarking Sites, statistics which can be found in the July 2007 report in eBizMBA’s “30 Largest Social Bookmarking Sites.”  eBizMBA also reported a couple hundred million inbound links within these sites, 25% of the largest social bookmarking sites had a page rank of an 8 or 9, and 20% had a page rank of 7.  There’s a lot of tags and a lot of power in those numbers. 

Digg.com came in as number one, and Technorati.com came in third, below Netscape.com.  Del.icio.us. followed Technorati and settled in at the fourth largest social bookmarking site.  Their rankings, according to eBizMBA.com included “a combination of inbound links, Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, and U.S. traffic data from Compete and Quantcast.”  Del.icio.us had the highest amount of inbound links, at 172,291,472, with Digg coming in second with 117,796,083 inbound links.  Digg was king of the monthly visits, topping the rest with 22,541,770 Compete Monthly Visitors.  How many visitors do you get in a month?

If you are not tagging, if you are not engrossed in a social bookmarking website, then you are simply not as powerful as you could be.  What are you missing besides perhaps a portion of the 35 million visitors?  For one thing, Google and other search engines also search social bookmarking sites for new contributions.  You’re missing out on new content being crawled by the Google tarantulas and the chance to escape the handcuffs of keyword phrases.  Break out and start building tags and unleashing the power.

Blogs are the most popular way to go according to several SEO experts.  “Tag and Ping” is the game.  Write a great blog about a hot topic, give it popular tags and branch out into subtopics that you couldn’t otherwise do with keyword restrictions - and (GASP) you can give it a tag without even using the word in the content!  (I hear Google fainting now…)  You have the opportunity to find niches you might never have been able to find if you were restricted to keywords.  Moreover, with a well-planned tag strategy, more visitors are likely to stumble on your site.

Send your nobel prize winning blog to social bookmarking sites using “Ping” software or online program at www.pingomatic.com.  Pinging is fast and easy and worth it.  Social bookmarking sites also give you the power to easily view what visitors are actually linking to and you can get RSS feeds keep current.  Social communities share links, and your link can get passed around.

The only people who are worried about Tagging and the Power of Social Networking are the librarians debating taxonomy versus folksonomies.  (Ask your local librarian for further information.) Tagging and the Power of Social Networking have already demonstrated a rise in visibility for millions of websites.  Don’t sit back waiting for the search engines to find you - get out there and tag your community.  The Power is there - just Tag it and use it!  Your personalized communities are waiting for you!

It is Important to get Ideas for Maximizing Del.icio.us with Tag and Ping to keep your website in the mainstream.  Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) is one of the largest social bookmarking sites on the web.  eBizMBA reports in their July 2007 report “30 Largest Social Bookmarking Sites” that Del.icio.us has over 172,291,472 inbound links and a Page Rank of 8.  To not maximize Del.icio.us with Tag and Ping would be to let your website fizzle out under your competition that takes advantage of maximizing Del.icio.us.  Not only does your traffic increase when you maximize Del.icio.us with Tag and Ping, but there’s opportunity for publicity with trackbacks, comments, social book marks,
link sharing and RSS directories.

Content is the secret to any good recipe for success, and even more with Tag and Ping.  Google is keyword restricted and penalizes you during the algorithm battles for placement if your content focuses on more than one keyword phrase.  With Tag and Ping, your content counts, and every ingredient of your content can be listed to users that might not have otherwise seen you on a search engine results page.  You can use Tags to promote different ideas, perspectives, products or services to reach a wider audience.  To use Tag and Ping to maximize yourself with Del.icio.us, make what’s relevant to the community relevant to your website.  Post frequently and request comments.  Make your content interesting.  Review Tags from other users, evaluate where their interests are and create and tag accordingly.  People will subscribe to an RSS feed tag and you’ll be at their desktops.

Include resourceful links and updated sources so people will be encouraged to link to your blog.  Some SEO evaluations have found that over 40% of top Del.icio.us blogs included lists, and many recommend creating “How to” articles to gain interest.  Make sure your blog is easy to link to.  Gaining links is important because Del.icio.us offers “Tagrolls” which allows you to display your Del.icio.us content on your website.  Using your blogging and tagging strategy wisely you can develop reputable lists of links within your content that increases your rankings in search engines.

Make sure you blend your search engine keyword strategy with your tagging and Del.icio.us strategies.  “Tag and Ping” refers to tagging content and letting popular websites know that you have new content to be posted.  This new content gets crawled by spiders because it is “new.”  Don’t be overzealous.  The search engines and the social bookmarking sites both discourage spamming, and you’ll end up starting from scratch.

It’s Important to get Ideas for Maximizing Del.icio.us with Tag and Ping so your potential visitors can greet you, and your website isn’t subjected to the process of elimination that the major search engines use.  Without Tag and Ping, you’re left to fend for yourself in the eliminating rounds of Google algorithms.
Using Tag and Ping in Del.icio.us and other social bookmarking websites will maximize your website visibility.  Maximize Del.icio.us.  Introduce yourself to the Del.icio.us community with Tag and Ping, and they might just welcome you with open arms.

An Introduction to Tag and Ping is like an introduction to free speech in an oppressed society.  Although Google claims to use democratic methods, the search engine results pages are still authoritarian in nature.  SEOs have to follow Google’s keyword logic or risk being ostracized.  The search engine results pages provided to the user are based on Google’s weighted analysis of keywords.  Only by manipulating our websites according to Google, or paying our way up the ranks, can we reach our customers. But with one small introduction to Tag and Ping, the people have started a social bookmarking revolution, armed with the techniques of tagging.

Tagging has brought free speech to web results for webmasters and users alike.  Content is no longer left to one or two primary keywords as determined by Google.  The people writing and reading the content being tagged have the ability to define the content meaning.  And free speech is the ability to use your own words for your own meaning, and that’s what tagging does.  Ping is the tool that gets the free speech out to blogs and social bookmarking sites so everyone can search for personalized relevancy rather than authoritative weighted decisions.

Tagging is a very simple concept and is the basis for social bookmarking sites.  Tagging simply means your label, your content, with words of your choice.  You can list words that are obvious, such as “Tag” for this article, or not obvious, such as “SEO.”  Google might display this article in a search result for “Tag” but not “Ping.”  With Tags, people viewing the article could see “Tag,” “Ping,” and “SEO.”  You can have many Tag words, but each word is a separate entry, separated by a space.  In Tag Clouds, Tag words are separated for clicking, but are condensed, with the more popular words larger, and the less popular words smaller, so you can easily identify popular Tag words.

Once the Tag is created, you can usually make it private or public.  If it is made public, which is preferred so your content can benefit others, anyone looking at your content can click on a link (Tag Word) and get related content from other links with similar Tags.  So just by listing Tags common to users, your website will be linked with several Tag words, reaching millions of social bookmarking site users.  You can cross-reference Tags, look for popular Tags, and subscribe to RSS feeds on tags. As an added benefit, the search engines will be searching the social bookmarking websites and you’ll get more exposure.

Ping gets the word out.  When you “ping” content, such as a blog, a Ping program will send your content to interested websites, such as social bookmarking sites.  There are several software programs available, but the free service at  www.pingomatic.com is a good place to start pinging while researching Ping software.

Create a Tag and Ping strategy.  Listen to the tagging community and their preferences for Tag words.  Use your freedom of speech and become unlimited in defining your content.  Introduce yourself to the art of Tag and Ping and revolutionize your website.