Its a holiday break for your blog - and for you to get it sorted out - new design, tidied up (thats me), listed with search engines (like Jonny) and my big recommendation this season . . . to start tagging your posts and even go back through your blog and tag the important posts.
Can you imagine how much hassle it would have been for Noah to collect and count all the animals if Adam had not tagged them all in the first place? Adam was closer to the creative process than Noah in both time and location, so it makes sense that Adam was the Tagger and Noah the Aggregator.
Tagging your posts allows your data to be easily found by people who need it, and allows your posts to ride the long tail of the blogosphere. If you tag your posts well, people will be finding and reading them in years to come, even if they don't read them now.
I use Technorati tags for my posts. Its easy for me because my blog editor (Ecto) allows me to ascribe technorati tags before publishing. Today is the last day of their 20% off sale. Its totally worth buying! Trust me. Its 11 pounds or $US 17 and worth every penny or cent.
If you dont have a blog editor, Technorati tells you how to add tags manually to your posts.
- My photos are not tagged. I started off with Flickr almost a year ago but have lapsed. I just took a look and i have 47 new messages, most of them "New Contacts" I need to take Flickr more seriously. I will start using it again and tag my photos.
- I have also neglected Del.icio.us but hope to rectify that in the New Year.
- BlogFresh has more advice on tagging.
GeoTagging
I wish I had been geotagging my posts for the past 5 years - especially since i have blogged from so many countries. I have tried to add the country or city names to a few posts and images, but I about to add the right code with longitude and latitude (as well as attitude). Ravi says WordPress users can download a Geopress plug in that will work with Yahoo Maps geocoder.
UPDATE: I found a way to add geotags to my feed using FeedBurner
MakeZine tells you how to geotag your del.icio.us bookmarks.
Geourl.org will help you find your co-ordinates.
And for other ideas on sorting out your blog, Problogger Darren has some good ideas on how to use this quiet patch:
" 1. Some take advantage of the quiet news patch and low traffic and go on vacation
2. Others use the next few weeks to do redesigns
3. Experience bloggers often use the end of the year to do reviews, look at stats and set direction and goals for the year ahead
4. Quite a few bloggers use the time to launch new blogs
5. Some bloggers use this time to start up other projects like writing books, recording podcasts etc
6. Others use the time to write posts and series that they’ll use later in the year
7. A few bloggers I know spend January going through their current blogs with a fine tooth comb to do SEO, delete dead links and basically get everything in ship shape order"
Now . . . how shall i tag this post?
Technorati Tags: andrew-says-tag-your-bloody-blog, blog, tags, web 2.0
