A Tag is a Perspective by the People, Not the Search Engine Behemoths
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.
