A tag cloud is an aesthetic piece of design for your blog but it’s useful as well. If you have a WordPress blog, it’s as simple as adding a tag cloud widget to your blog sidebar. Then, use a group of tags regularly in your blogging.
A tag is equivalent to a category or topic on the page. Search engines read them and they can be used by web surfers looking for information on a particular word or phrase. By using tags, you’re making your subject matter more obvious to search engines and people.
Benefits Of A Tag Cloud
On your blog, your tag cloud will show a list of popular tags. Tags, or subject keywords, will appear based on frequency of use. If your blog is about dieting, you might have many diet-related words in the cloud but the most popular tags will appear to be the largest.
Not only does the cloud show popular words but is clickable as well. If someone sees a word that appeals to them, they’re going to click it and be taken to a category search, where they’ll be directed to a results page filled with blog posts of yours that use that tag in them. Each click that is made on your site could be a click closer to a sale.
The tag cloud shouldn’t be overbearing or incredibly large on the blog but it’s a good idea to make sure people can see it. You might place it on a sidebar just below the fold, for instance.
Choosing Tags
Keyword research can help you choose tags to use. Using tools that help you determine keywords to use and then sprinkling those words throughout your text can help you get search engine traffic based on those words. When creating your WordPress blog post, be sure to enter those tags into the tag field as well as use them in the blog post itself.
It’s a good idea to pick a few standard tags that you’ll use regularly. Overdoing it will make the cloud really large and will reduce the likelihood of several important phrases being depicted as popular. It’s a good idea to have a few keyword phrases really stand out. It might be a good idea to choose 2-3 primary tags that you use on just about every single post, for instance.
There are a lot of different aesthetics for blogs and tag clouds are just one of them. Again, whatever you can do to grab people’s interest is going to keep them on your site longer. Don’t forget to use tags when doing social bookmarking as well. You can add them on many social sites and create your own tags on Twitter (known as hashtags, by putting a # before a popular phrase in the Twitter update). People visiting home pages of those social sites will often be able to search on tags and could find you as a result of their search.
How To Add A Tag Cloud For A WordPress
Go to the appearance/widget section of your WordPress blog and you can generally choose tag cloud from a list of available widgets. Just drag it and drop it where you’d like to put it on your sidebar. You can preview to see if it’s in an ideal spot. If none of these are to your liking, you can also go to “add plugins” in your WordPress dashboard and do a search for tag cloud, there are plenty available.
About Sean Rasmussen
Great article! I just added a Tag cloud to my blog because of this post and I love having it there!
Great to hear Catherine. Hopefully you will now get more traffic to other pages on your site generated by clicks on your tag cloud, as well as search engine benefits.
Regards – Sean
There’s also a widget to add a cloud to blogspot blogs – which I’m going to do now.
Thanks for good info.
Steve
Good to know Steve, thanks for the info mate
Do you need Disclaimers for Tag Clouds?
Maybe if you are a tag cloud plugin developer Jason
Sounds like a good idea.
I didn’t think about adding it. Off to do it now.
Thanks
Is there a trick to it. I added it but all I got was the word tag?
There are lots of different plugins Gee, maybe you need to try another one.
I will check it out. I just used the widget.
I will be wanting to add a Cloud Tag widget to my blog once it’s set up properly.
Ah, so that’s what those massive words – people have on the side of their blogs – are collectively called. I’ve seen them, just didn’t know the name for them. From a design point of view, it is strange. From SEO/navitgational point of view, makes sense.
totally agree- design-wise it makes my head spin but from SEO perspective- wow- huge and makes easier navigation of page too! bonus!
I too agree it most times looks a bit messy but I guess if it is good SEO who cares
That means i will be taking another look at the cloud tag widget.
Hello Sean,
I have seen tag clouds on blogs, and was wondering what the reason was for them. Now I know !!! I have seen tags Clouds that are so big that they almost take away from reading the blog, and that’s not my thing. I like the discreet version so will need to find one for my blog that suits my taste
Thanks for the handy hint, I need to add a tag cloud to my blog “Woodys boys”
Cheers
Lisa
Great to find out about Tag Clouds. They, for me, have the great advantage in that they can truly be creative tools and unique if enough time and energy is spent on them.
Thanks for doing an article about them. It makes it so much easier to get down to actually doing it rather than staying up in the clouds wondering how to filter down to earth and get things done.
Thanks for all your help.
Hi Sean,
I’ve seen a few tag clouds. I really like the ones that move. I’m just not sure that I want to use one because I seem to spend more time playing with them on other people’s blogs than I do reading their content.
Still, I’ll probably try a tag cloud on one of my blogs and see how many people click on it.
That is really funny Jazz. I haven’t seem a tag cloud that moves.
How do you get those?
Moving tag clouds – that sounds like fun
But I agree with Jazz, it can be distracting people from the content of the post, because they love to play
I think tag clouds are ugly things. As a result of reading this post, I will experiment with using them but I will put them right down the bottom, below everything else, where I don’t need to look at it much, and I will make it as small as I can.
I’ve been using Tag clouds for a while just using the widget on wordpress and they are handy just to quickly find a post you made as well as for visitors to your site.
I am currently looking for a custom tag cloud and I’ll let you know what I find.
Tanny
Thanks Sean,
Funny I was just playing around with some plugin’s today for one of my websites & looked at the tag cloud plugin but didn’t really know what the benefits of using one would be… & now I do!
I will have to experiment with some tag cloud widgets once I have a decent amount of content posted : )
thanks for hilighting what is important for wordpress, again like jeremy that dashboard can be intimidating- having a bit of information constipation really so finding it hard to make a decision at the moment. this helps heaps to know here’s a tool that acheives a few things in one swipe- so excited to have a cloud – adding now! tx e
Hi Sean
I think tag clouds are really cool and I will put one on my blog. If it can increase SEO to my site then it’s a great asset to have.
Thank you for giving instructions on how to install it to. A nice little gift.
I will need to look out for other types of keyword aesthetics.
Blessings.
I see your point, but often tag clouds get too big and ruin the ‘look’ of a site by taking up too much sidebar space. I like them for SEO though.
I don’t notice one here? Any reason?
One of the reasons is that there are over 500 posts on this blog and loads of tags, it’s just something I chose not to have on this one
Hi Sean,
I like “Benefits Of A tag Cloud” article, it’s great -very practical!
One thing I’ll do right away is to go on my WordPress dashboard and do an add plugins search for ‘tag cloud’ to see what it’s available!
I have one on my sidebar but I would love to see other options too!
Tag clouds are a great thing as they show you immediately what the main keyword of this blog is.
My question now – does Google or any of the other search engines “see” that from the tag cloud as well? Or is it just an equal mentioning of all tag words used on the website? If it is adding a weight to the tags that would be really great SEO wise.
I’m curious to know whether Google picks up the tag cloud. Going to try it for few weeks.
Great information about tag cloud. Didn’t know that tag cloud could contribute so much to the blog. The most important is to let the search engine to pick up our main keyword. Making the site looks stands up also a great idea to attract visitor attention.
Like it, dugg it and shared it! Thumbs up for you.
I don’t like em either, but I like what they do.
Mine are hidden in a footer widget though!
Waste of time, if you ask me.