THE ART OF TAGGING: HOW TO INCREASE READERSHIP OF YOUR ONLINE CONTENT

Do you get overwhelmed by all of the hashtags out there? Not sure how to tag a post? DEL Communications can help. We will
take a look at which tags help and which hinder when you are posting content on your website or any social media platform.

Why should you spend your time adding tags to your posts?

If you are looking to get your content indexed* by search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Ask, Baidu, and Bing, the first thing you will need to do is organize your privacy settings to allow your site to be visible to all search engines.

*Indexing: If you are just starting out with posting content online you may not be aware of this terminology. In this context, indexing refers to the location where the information the search engine has compiled is stored. It is the search engine index that produces the results for ‘search queries’ (when you search something with any search engine). Find more information on this topic here.

Once you have done this, the next task at hand it to make sure all of your content is tagged accurately. You want to make sure that you tags are:

Spelled correctly – Spelling is EXTREMELY important when it comes to adding tags to your posts. We live in a world where Microsoft Word does a lot of the menial spell-checking, but this is one place where you want to remember those grade school spelling bees. If you spell something incorrectly in a tag, not only will your post not be pulled up when someone is searching for the relevant tag, but some search engines will actually place posts with a high level of spelling errors below less relevant posts that do not include these errors.

Use keywords, not sentences – When a search engine looks for keywords, it searches through tags, and will only include your post if the ENTIRE tag matches what has been searched. So the best practice is to keep tags short.

Make sure your tags are relevant – old information and dates are not helpful when you are trying in increase readership

Include the topics you are writing about – never include tags that are not relevant to your work. It may initially increase readership, but eventually your audience will no longer trust that your information is accurate, and will only think of it as ‘filler’ content.

You will want to find the line between having so many tags that your post is being pulled up when someone is searching a different topic, but not so few tags that it is never pulled by a search engine.

The website below is a very useful guide for those who are new to posting content online. This article will walk you through some of the most important questions to ask when you are adding tags to your post, such as:

What is the difference between keywords and tags and how can you use this knowledge to increase traffic to your page/post/blog?

What are the best keywords and tags and how to keep up with the ever changing landscape of the “trending” tag? What are the some examples of the best keywords and tags over the past decade, and what were the major influences that caused these tags and keywords to change/evolve over time?

Still confused about tags? Not quite sure where to start? Let us help you! Get in touch with our digital editor to customize a plan perfect for your business. Feel free to email or call (information listed below). Or if this is a topic you would be interested in reading more about, leave a comment on our facebook page, here.

Digital Editor:
Taryn Rittberg
[email protected]
866.711.5282