Tagging isn't just a tool for usability (even though it's typically mostly thought of in those terms), it's also a powerful weapon for search engine optimization. That's because tagging allows you to rejig your internal hierarchical linking structure, flowing the link juice more strategically throughout your site. And because those links are textual and keyword-rich, a tag cloud is far superior in terms of SEO to the traditional graphical navigation bar.
When tagging is applied to a website, such as a blog, it can significantly increase the site's traffic by achieving visibility for a much larger array of search terms.

The above quote is from my recent Search Engine land article entitled, "Effective Tagging For Both Usability & SEO." I go into a lot of details how strategic tagging can help you. Here is a tip about tag clouds that I'd like to share with you:

Tag Clouds: When you tag your blog or website, the items are then put into an organized, keyword catalog. By taking those tags, you can organize them into a "tag cloud," which shows keyword topic popularity by the size and sometimes color of the font. Tag clouds enable you to force a new navigation styles for your site or blog based on keyword popularity, and also help your website look up-to-date with enhanced, Web 2.0 functionality. (For an example of a tag cloud, you can see one at the end of my blog.)

For other, more specific tagging techniques, I hope you visit my article.

Remember those old commercials... "This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs." ? Well, if you do, then just imagine a take-off on the commercial... "This is your website. This is your website on WordPress." But in this version, imagine the latter is an Olympic weightlifter on steroids. If I hadn't made the case enough for WordPress as a CMS for regular websites (not just blogs) in this recent post and in this recent case study, then I guess the traffic increases must not have been impressive enough for ya! ;-)

So we decided to start experimenting with WordPress on microsites for clients. The first client guinea pig was Countrywide, and the site was Credit Demystified. I don't have any Before and After stats to share on this one, because the site was launched under WordPress from the get-go. Once we have a bit of a track record going (the site is less than a month old), I'm hoping that our client will give me permission to share some metrics here. So stay tuned. And in the meantime, check out the site. Any feedback is welcomed!

Here are some of the advantages of a website powered by WordPress:

1. tag clouds -- which provide keyword-rich text link navigation, which link to...
2. tag pages -- which contain excerpts of posts/pages that are related (by the fact they have the same tag in common)
3. RSS feeds -- which help with link building and garner you visibility in the feed/blog search engines like Feedster and Google Blog Search
4. Technorati tags -- to garner visibility on Technorati's tag pages, thus delivering you Google visitors too by the fact that Technorati tag pages tend to rank really well in Google
5. keyword-rich, search-friendly URLs -- that are spider-friendly and tend to be indexed and ranked better in search engines than the complex, dynamic-looking URLs that are typical of content management systems
6. content-rich, search-friendly HTML -- thanks in part to the presentation layer (usually) being cleanly separated from the content layer, along with semantic mark-up, which gives the search engines good clues as to what copy is important and what is not
7. visitor participation -- through comments, trackbacks, and pingbacks
8. post-dating of content -- to automatically "go live" on a scheduled date
9. ease of maintenance -- with no, or minimal, HTML skills required
10. extensibility -- through plugins (it's pretty easy to write your own. Heck, I I managed to), sidebar widgets (like the Swicki buzzcloud**), and direct hacks to the open source PHP codebase.
11. easy handling of "rolling events" -- like speaking engagements, news releases etc.
12. free support -- from the very responsive developer and user communities

The first six of the above list are of primary benefit to your site's SEO.

These were compelling enough reasons that search marketer Alan Rimm-Kaufman is porting his corporate site to WordPress. Good on ya, Alan! Now who else can I count on to make the switch? :-)

So remember, you don't have to have an actual "blog" to reap the benefits of having a "blog". I recommend you peruse both Netconcepts.com or CreditDemystified.com and prove it to yourself.

** Footnote: In case you were wondering what the heck a swicki was, it is a custom search engine, like this one, and a buzzcloud is a tagcloud type thing, but of popular searches rather than tags, that displays on your site along with the Search box, like the one displayed in the right column on my daughter's Neopets Cheats site.

Wouldn't it be cool if business websites were all tagged with meta data like:

• business hours
• geolocation (latitude & longitude)
• NAICS code (the successor to SIC code)
• physical & mailing addresses

Just imagine what a search engine could do with such data. Searchers could restrict their results to just those businesses that are open late, for example.

What else would you add to the above list?

Webmasters the world over have already tagged their websites with meta keywords and meta descriptions, and many are rushing to post Google Sitemaps XML files, so the idea that they will also tag their sites with additional meta data seems pretty plausible to me. Particularly if there's a ranking benefit to be had.

If this sort of thing becomes widely adopted and integrated into local search on the major engines, it could spell doom to the online Yellow Pages directories, at least those that fail to keep innovating. More and more, Google and Yahoo are becoming our universal "operating system" for the Internet, and I see that trend only continuing.

Tag clouds, a Web 2.0 sort of user interface for navigating tagged content a.k.a. folksonomies, gives certain hyperlinked keywords a larger font size treatment than others. These links lead to various category pages, tag pages, or search results pages.

One of my favorite implementations of a tag cloud on a blog is on O'Reilly Radar (on the right).

Another is the one on Eurekster's blog (on the left).

The latter uses a new approach of "auto-tagging". Eurekster calls this tag cloud of theirs a "BuzzCloud". Webmasters can get one for free by signing up for their new Swicki service, which is a personalized Web search engine that is targeted and relevant to your site's audience. You can seed your buzzcloud with search terms of your choosing, then Eurekster adds additional terms based on which searches are popular with your visitors. Visitors who click on the links are taken to a Eurekster search results page for that term. The results popular with you & your audience are promoted to the top of the search results and marked with an icon — in essence, tagging the results as well as the term.

Tagging that requires manual intervention such as del.icio.us and Technorati definitely have their use, but I think they are primarily for more web-intensive users; the combination of manual control and auto-tagging offered by Eurekster with swickis can potentially lead to mass uptake amongst web content editors. I've put a Eurekster swicki & buzzcloud here on my blog (on the right-hand column, near the bottom). Try it out and let me know what you think. Get your own free swicki for your blog or website here.

Raj Setty offers some great pointers for starting a business blog in his Blogging Starter Checklist:

1. Register a domain name with your name and redirect to your blog.
2. Get a "Creative Commons License"
3. Get a feedburner account and direct feeds through feedburner
4. Implement subscription chiclets
5. Enable search
6. Claim your blog at Technorati
7. Allow users to get your blog via email
8. Link to your profile
9. Link to your photo album
10. Announce your blog to the world
11. Provide a way to contact you
12. Link to your bookmarks
13. Create meaningful categories and chunk content
14. Put your photo on the home page
15. Ensure that your RSS feeds are OK
16. Geo-tag your blog at Feedmap
17. Include a blog link in your email signature

This is a great list. Be sure to check out Raj's post for the details behind each of his 17 points.

Some things I might add:

• Add Technorati tags to your posts. It's as easy as adding some hyperlinks at the end of your post, like this:Technorati tags: Tagging, Blogging

  There are some handy plug-ins for WordPress that make this even easier, like Bunny's Technorati Tags plugin and Ben O'Neill's Technorati Tags plugin.

• Add a "tag cloud" that shows what tags and/or categories are most popular on your blog. For example, check out the tag cloud on the right hand side on O'Reilly Radar. Two different WordPress plug-ins that allow you to do this are: Ultimate Tag Warrior and the Weighted Categories plug-ins.While you're at it, also add a Swiki "buzzcloud" from Eurekster to your blog. You can see an example of a buzzcloud on the Eurekster blog on the top right undeneath "Hot Searches". It's a great way to show your readers at-a-glance what search terms in your niche topic area are the most popular.
• Have a custom favicon. This allows subscribers to your blog to see this custom icon in their newsreader. Take a look at the screenshot of part of my subscription list in the newsreader I use, NetNewsWire. Notice that the Dilbert Blog, Matt Cutts' blog, and ResearchBuzz all show the same generic favicon. Custom icons would look much cooler.
• Post a Flickr badge on your blog. Here's an example (underneath "Recent Photos" on the right). You can use the badges supplied by Flickr or some free third-party ones like this one.
• Install an industrial-strength comment spam plug-in into your blog, such as Akismet or Spam Karma.
• Give your blog a boost in link popularity. Link to it from your home page and ask customers, suppliers, business partners, and colleagues to link to it too. Review my Powerpoint on link building for many more tips on boosting link popularity.