tag cloud

Why should we even bother?

• It gives a general idea of what the post is about to the readers.
• Indexing related posts which are labeled with the same tag(s).
• Optimizing search (by keyword/phrase).

Tag is also a very common phenomenon in social networking sites. It’s part of Web 2.0. When you submit a URL to your favorite bookmarking site like Technorati, Digg, Del.icio.us, etc… you are required to “tag” the URL. Meaning, giving meaningful related keywords to describe the URL that you are going to submit.

You can even tag your friends/contacts in MyBlogLog, helping others to know more about them or their blogs.

Another term that you may want to know is “Tag Cloud”. It’s a collection/grouping of tags (keywords), just like the image shown above, or you can see a live example on the right sidebar of this blog.

A tag cloud (or weighted list in visual design) is a visual depiction of user-generated tags used typically to describe the content of web sites. Tags are usually single words and are typically listed alphabetically, and the importance of a tag is shown with font size or color. Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. The tags are usually hyperlinks that lead to a collection of items that are associated with a tag. [Source]

It’s very easy to create a tag cloud.

In Wordpress, all you have to do is go to Presentation > Widgets and drag the Tag Cloud widget to the location you want according to your blog theme. Save and you’re done. You may also want to read about the Wordpress plugin – Ultimate Tag Warrior.

In Blogger.com / blogspot.com, a tag cloud has an alternative name called label cloud. Most of the time the tag cloud script needs javascript enabled in the browser in order for it to work. Click here to read the instruction to add a label cloud feature to your blogspot.com blog.

Side talk: If someone tells you that you’ve been tagged, it means he/she listed you in his/her blog post regarding a topic and you are required to post something similar in your blog. See example.

Blogs! Yes, blogs are also one of the Web 2.0 technologies. That is why I mention Web 2.0 here. Why should you even care? If you are going to become a blogger yourself, this is some basic background knowledge that you have to know. It has its impact in the blogging world which involves issue like SEO.

Examples of blog related Web 2.0 bookmarking sites are: Technorati, Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Reddit and many more to name.

Here is a list of examples of the evolution of Web 1.0 to Web 2.0:

Web 2.0
Google AdSense
Flickr
BitTorrent
Napster
Wikipedia
blogging
upcoming.org and EVDB
search engine optimization
cost per click
web services
participation
wikis
tagging (”folksonomy”)
syndication

Web 1.0
DoubleClick –>
Ofoto –>
Akamai –>
mp3.com –>
Britannica Online –>
personal websites –>
evite –>
domain name speculation –>
page views –>
screen scraping –>
publishing –>
content management systems –>
directories (taxonomy) –>
stickiness –>

Web 2.0 introduces communication among content contributors and readers. Readers can give their opinions or ask a question regarding to the topic easily.

Most Web 2.0 sites have a sleek design. Although this is not a compulsory design (there’s no limitation in web design), it has become a trend, a symbol of Web 2.0. You can even see badges like this:

Image linked from www.jay-han.com

My friend, Jayhan, has created some very simple yet attractive vector badges for download. Click on the image above to go to his blog to find out more.

[via Jayhan Loves Design & Japan]

There is an algorithm behind this ranking system, defining how a page will be assigned a rate ranging from 0 to 10. For me, I would rather leave the study of that algorithm behind, because by seeing the explanation of the formula, I feel dizzy.

Here’s a quote from Google, explaining what is PageRank:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.

Apparently, a lot of website/blog owners will try hard to get a higher PageRank, as it literally indicates that a higher PageRank proves the “importance” of that page. Hence, a higher chance of getting listed in the front page of the Google search results.

It’s said that Google will update the PageRank every 3 to 4 months by re-indexing the Google search engine. Each time of the update, you will see many blogs being affected. If you ever do a little research in Google SEO, you will know that Google loves blogs, but it dislike links (ie. selling of text links, doing paid post, etc). And that’s how bloggers (including me) get their PR penalized for doing so.

However, PageRank is not everything. Even a blog with PR0 can be really useful to some readers in certain extent. Meaning, content is the king! If you write unique and useful posts in your blogs, you still can gain traffic from various medium (ie. Referral from other sites), not only from search engines.

One of my favorite problogger, Darren from Problogger.net said that:

• I have a number of blogs with Page Ranks of 6 and 7 which get little traffic from Google.
• A couple of PR updates ago a number of my blogs went from PR of 0 to a PR of 6. Traffic did not alter that day or any time shortly before or after the changes.
  [Source]

He also gave advise on forgetting about PageRank and build a better blog, which I really have to agree with that statement.

Morever, PageRank is no longer so accurate as you can even build a FAKE PageRank! That’s what we call Black Hat SEO. It’s a bad attempt and you can get your websites/blogs banned in Google search engine forever.

In conclusion, just focus on producing quality contents in your blogs and don’t bother too much about PageRank.  Remember, PageRank cannot identify the actually quality of a blog!

What is your PageRank? Check it here.

What is it all about? Is it that important that a website/blog owner should be aware of it? Well, I can tell you that, there are many things to cover when talk about SEO. It’s a subject to learn by all times.

First of all, let’s take a look at a couple of definitions quoted from the web.

the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. [Source: Webopedia]

is the process of optimizing a website through an extensive mixture of tasks that help improve a website’s presence on the search engines. [Source: Ezine Articles]

Apparently, by the name itself, you know that SEO has something to do with search engines (ie. Google, Yahoo!, MSN). From the definitions above, we know that SEO is a way to get your sites/blogs high listed in the search engines.

Why do we even bother about get high listed?

This actually brings some impact to your blog. Imagine a search engine user (a.k.a. reader) type in a keyword in the search engine. If the user is searching something related to your blog, you might get a higher chance of your blog listed in the search results. Hence, you get a higher chance that the user might click to your blog. Traffic! It draws traffic to your blog!

I believe now you should see the importance of SEO.  However, don’t be too obsess on building SEO and forget about quality content of your blog.

Google – The famous search engine.

If you’ve been an Internet user for some time, you should know that Google is sort of owning the Internet world.  Therefore, whatever statement made by Google, we bloggers, have to be aware of (if you want to gain benefit from Google).

Google has implemented something called PageRank.  It has something to do with SEO.  Will talk about PageRank in the next post. Stay tune!

What is RSS? It stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a document that contains frequently updated contents of a blog/site. It can be either a summary of a blog post (site updates) or a full text entry from the blog (site). What does this mean?

The following video provides a very good explanation on RSS and feed reader. You should be able to get an idea of what is RSS after watching it.

Why is RSS important?

• Keep yourself up-to-date with your favorite sites.
• Won’t miss out any posts.
• Save time as you only read your favorite sites with updates, skipping those without updates.

Like what the video mentioned, you can subscribe to an RSS feed by using RSS reader such as Google Reader and Bloglines. There are many more RSS reader which allow you to do the same thing.

If you like what you are reading from this blog, you may consider subscribing to this blog RSS feed too. Then, you will be able to know when new entries have been published here.

Subscribe to this blog feed.

Additional Reading: What is RSS?

What actually is a blog?

A blog is a website, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what’s new. Then they can comment on it or link to it or email you. [Source]

The above is an easy-to-understand definition quoted from Blogger. Blog is actually a website but it is operated by dynamic blog script rather than traditional HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). You can consider a blog as an evolution of traditional website.

Blogs can come from many different categories. They can be blogs with a niche topic like tech blog, video blog, or even blogs like online personal diary. However, how do you differentiate a website and a blog?

Blogs normally have the following features:

• Links – hyperlinks within the blog itself or links to other blogs/sites
• Archives – a collection of older posts/entries
• Comments – interaction between author and readers

One good thing about blog over traditional website is that, it does not require the author (basic user) to have specific technical knowledge like how to code the HTML tags and stuff like that. One can easily post an update to a blog within a few clicks. Thanks to the blog software or blog platform that makes this possible – it has become more simple and effective now.

Many traditional websites start to shift to a blog platform.

Do you have a blog too?

Don’t have a blog? You can try to create one. There are several free blog service around. You can try the follwing:
Blogger
Wordpress