I’m excited to share some new information (new to me, that is), but I don’t really know where to start…

Do you know what tags are?

I guess I’ll start here. Tags are like keywords, but not just for web pages. They can be used for all kinds of items: songs, pictures, bookmarks, video clips, and (relevant to this discussion) blog posts. There are a way for people to say what the item is about. And then they’re used by computers and software (i.e search engines and indexing software like flickr) to categorize the items for search retrieval or other purposes.

If that doesn’t make it more clear then, for example this blog post will be tagged with tags like: blogging, tagging, etc. So that when it gets indexed by Google or (relevant to this discussion) Technorati these indexes will know what this post is about or what it relates to.

Tagging has been around for quite a while and this is not the new information – I just wanted to make sure you know what I’m talking about.

Here’s what I just learned…

Wait, first – do you know what Technorati is? Real quick, it’s an indexing engine specific for blogs. The cool thing about it is that it’s updated in real time. So if you want to see blog posts on web 2.0 blogging from as recent as 1 minute ago (depending on how recently people have made these posts) Technorati will have them indexed. Plus it uses a combination of factors like who’s linking to the posts, how many people are linking and how quickly the posts are gaining links to determine “what’s hot” right now. Pretty cool.

OK, finally to the exciting thing I just learned. Tagging your blog posts is a great way tell Technorati (and other engines) what your post is about, but you can actually increase the weight of these tagging Technorati inside the post itself. You may have noticed that web 2.0 blogging (above) was hyperlinked. I linked it to Technorati’s tag search for the term “web 2.0 blogging”. The link brings you to the same page that you would get to if you visited Technorati and typed in web 2.0 blogging into the search box.

Here’s the formatting you need to use in the link:

• http://technorati.com/tag/web+2.0+blogging
• “web+2.0+blogging” could be anything – whatever your tag is.
• You use /tag to indicate that you’re tagging and put the “+” in between words in the tag.

What’s the point?

Well, it’s one thing for an author to claim that their blog post is about a certain topic by including those tags in the meta-data of the post. But when you actually link on those tags from inside your article it *proves* that the post is about what you say it’s about (or at least contains the words). So this gives a lot more credability to your tags, and the result is that you rank higher in Technorati’s search results for the tags you tag Technorati with. Which means more traffic for you.

(If you don’t have a blog yet, don’t worry. We’ll be talking more about blogging, how to get started and what to do in the near future…)

Where did I learn this?

From my good friend Jack Humphrey. He is one of (if not THE) leading Web 2.0 experts around. I just downloaded his Authority Black Book 2008 and found this in one point on page 14 of the book. One tiny point on one page opened up a whole new set of ideas for me, so I strongly encourage you to download his free eBook right now. Remember this is just 1 of 4 points on 1 page. This book has over 60 pages filled with the best Web 2.0 marketing tactics you will find anywhere at any price, and it’s free!

Action Steps:

1. Download Authority Black Book 2008 – click here
2. Read it!