Blog Post #5 - Labels

When composing a new blog post, there is a section to the right, under "Post Settings", called "Labels." In some blog programs, these are called tags.

Labels like this are important because they help your readers find your posts by categories. By typing in a word, say, "Eastern University," as I have here, Blogger automatically creates a new category. When I publish this post, Blogger simultaneously files this post both on the main page chronologically, like it did every time before, but it also now files it under the new Eastern University category.

You can add multiple labels to the same post. I have added the word "labels," "Eastern University" and "St. Davids." The first two are self-explanatory. I added St. Davids because it's good to label a post with a location, either where I'm writing from, or what I'm writing about. This helps readers, as well as Google, know more about you.

Having categories is important for your regular readers. It also helps you find old posts if you need to reference them in the future.

Categories are also important because they're a piece of puzzle Google uses to find your blog. Now that I have added an Eastern University category, Google will rank my blog higher on the search list when someone searches for Eastern University. However, don't think by adding the label Eastern University, your blog will reach the first page of Google.

When I do a search for Eastern University, 41 million searches come back. I'm just saying that instead of being at the 40 million mark, Google might move me up to 20 million simply by adding a category with the same search term. Google does, however, push your blog higher on the search results page if you were to add Eastern University to every blog post, as you add more posts in the Eastern University category, and after getting many more hits and more traffic to your blog.

Your task for this week? Create a post about anything related to your theme. Then, in the labels section to the right of your new post screen (directly to the right under "post settings"), add a label or labels for this post. You may also want to go back through your past posts and add labels to those too (as I have done). If you want these labels to appear on the side of your blog's screen, you need to go into your "Layout" menu, and add a Gadget on the  side of your blog page. Then scroll down to "Labels" and click on the plus sign.