Tag Clouds

Overview

Displaying a Tag Cloud on your website is a great way to help visitors find their way around your content and directs them exactly to where they want to go. This article explains what it is and why you should use it on every page of your site.

Tag Clouds

There is nothing mysterious about tag clouds. They are simply a collection of different keywords that when clicked display a list of pages that are all related to that particular keyword. If you click on the tag ‘keywords’, you will be presented with all my articles to do with keywords. Tag Clouds offer an easy way for visitors to find the content they are looking for on your website, and the easier it is, the more likely they are going to stay.

Tags

A tag is simply a word chosen to be associated with a particular page on your website. Tags are typically single or hyphenated keywords. Wordpress makes it easy for me to add tags and manages them all for me, no matter how many pages of content I have or how many tags I use. A set number of tags are then displayed in my Tag Cloud and depending on how popular they are, determines the size of the tag within the cloud. The more times a tag gets clicked, the larger its font size telling visitors what people are typically looking for.

Why Use a Tag Cloud

If your website contains a lot of content covering many different subjects, then it can be difficult to display your categories and pages in a simple and clear way. If you have what your visitor is looking for, you want them to know its there as quickly as possible. If you give them too long to try to find it themselves, they are going to lose interest and leave. Having a tag cloud on every page is not only eye-catching, but will help them find this information quickly.

Think About Your Tags

It is worth spending some time thinking about your tags before you start assigning them. If you use a different tag for every page, then if you have 100 pages, you are going to have 100 tags. Now that’s a lot of tags and if you’re limiting your tag cloud to 50, then that’s 50 pages that are not referenced. Create your tags so that they can be re-used across pages and where possible use plurals. Your tags should basically be your main keyword or keywords for that particular page. Therefore, if you display your tag cloud on every page, then every page is going to contain all of your main keywords which helps to reinforce the theme of your website.

SEO Expert Tip

Create your tags so that you can access every single web page of interest from your tag cloud.