Goodbye Tags!
And so I did it. I finally deleted all the tags I accumulated in this blog ever since I started using WordPress as a CMS last September. They seem to have become a mess and I’m starting to dislike seeing them again and again. I “tweeted” about the importance of such tags last month and surprisingly got a reply from someone.
Yes, they are used for SEO and can help with navigation. You can use your tags in tag clouds which shows at a glace which subject your write more about. You can have more of them without having to organization mess that occurs if you do the same with category. You don’t have to keep track of them
I’m actually quite familiar that tags are helpful for SEO. But do I really need to require myself to use them? No. I even asked Euri if she uses them and she told me that she doesn’t — that her list of tags in the database is completely empty — because her blog is a personal one. She’s right. This one that I have is also personal and I write almost anything under the sun in this turf. I think her statement was one of the factors that finally provoked me to delete 600+ tags. I have to say that I somehow feel light right now. Even so, I do hope to own a different blog/site someday which is targeted to a bigger audience and will definitely need some serious tagging.
13 Comments
August 15, 2008 at 15:14
but even with a personal blog, tags aren’t completely useless. It might be useless to you, the author but for us, the readers (especially the ones like me) find it a bit useful.. When I visit a blog, I always look at their categories and tags to help me find common interest/s. Like, I want to know you better as a student so I’ll go look for the related category/tags. Or if you have a big font-sized “Harry Potter” tag, I’ll know right away that you’re a fan..
That stuff. It’s really useful for me as a reader.
That’s why, remember I asked about your categories before?
About your tags, I think with or without them, your template doesn’t show it anyway so it’s fine if you delete them. You can delete categories too, if you want since you don’t list it publicly.. 😛
and as for my blog, it’s not entirely about my life but I categorize it as personal because it’s all about what’s happening to me, so I use tags and categories and I like it because I’m kinda OC.. haha
August 15, 2008 at 15:37
And like I said, I do use categories but don’t display them in my posts (for now). They’re somewhere in this site if you only know how to look. I’m OC too, so don’t tell me what to do because it is indeed a possibility for me to delete all the categories I currently have. Happy now?
August 15, 2008 at 17:44
Err. why are you mad? o.O I’m just voicing out my opinion~
And yes, I know about your statistics page.
Ayway, I’m sorry Nelson, if I have offended you with what I’ve said. Peace? ^_^
August 16, 2008 at 19:29
Nah, forget it. :tongue:
August 17, 2008 at 18:16
Glad to know Nels ^_^
August 17, 2008 at 23:35
Well, to be honest, I don’t give a f*ck about SEO. I don’t think that I need SEO for my blog since I don’t really care if anyone reads it, anyway. XD I don’t even check my sites’s statistics. XP
Using tags and not using tags are of your own choice. Don’t let your visitors dictate what you need or do not need to put on your blog. It is your freaking blog anyway. =P
In a way, I prefer not to use tags because I don’t need it. Most blog visitors don’t really care if you have one since all that care about is that entry itself. That’s one the reasons. The other one is that they mess up my tables. I might looked messed us but I wanted every single thing in my site orderly in the fashion that I wanted it to. The same thing applies even to my databases, tables and the data themselves. I wanted them to follow a chronological and ordered numbering. And tags simply messes up my category IDs. XDI hate seeing my first 3 categories as 1,2,3 and the next one at 42. XD
August 18, 2008 at 03:24
I used to use tags for my previous blog, http://xhirokox.blogspot.com , and even made them public so that people can look for things they’d want to see, if they were interested, or if they wanted to read an entry from an earlier time, and knew what it was about, but not when, they could go through using it.
Mine now are pretty much useless- they say Japanese English Deutsch. XDDD
And it’s not public, so no one other than me can see it.
It’s really, I guess, all up to you how you use it. I just put the most random of the things EVER for my LJ, and I know I should clean it up, but I just use the liberty to do whatever I want and accumulate hundreds of tags.
But congrats on making the final decision!!! 8D
August 18, 2008 at 13:52
Exactly, because not all visitors/readers are bloggers like us. So you actually modify the category IDs every time that happens?
@Hiro: Glad to hear that accumulating hundreds of tags doesn’t seem to bother you at all. Liberty, alright. 🙂
August 19, 2008 at 12:25
i don’t use tags. i find it useless. i agree, it’s the entry itself that is important for me. o:
August 20, 2008 at 10:18
And bigla rin ako nag isip about the tags.. siguro since i’m having a personal blog too.. better take those tags away na muna..
tma ka rin.. when time comes when i need to build a site which will be having a bigger audience.. siguro that would be the right time for me to use those tags again..
^_^
August 22, 2008 at 16:17
Yep. Directly from the database. XD
August 22, 2008 at 19:47
Sounds too risky for me. :no:
August 23, 2008 at 21:29
That’s true. That’s why you have to keep backups first. 😀