This is provoked by Gardening Gone Wild
Whether a blog is hosted at Wordpress or Blogger or wherever – you can use the search box to combine the blog address with your query. You, and I, can search for that one post on Veltheimia. When I see a blog with a bunch of a hundred or more tags, mostly attached to just one post – I ignore the tags, because they don’t get me any further.
Unless you have just started blogging. Or it is the first in a series you are launched on. Look at all your tags with just the one post, and try to tidy them up so they can become a useful basket/trug for you. And finally PLEASE don’t put a bunch of tags on a short post. If you are looking for information, as someone was, on growing restios in California. You don’t want to trudge thru a long list to find, TA DA, “One of the grasses I grow is some or other restio” FULL STOP. Thanks a bunch, I don’t think!
Tag - category - label - basket - trug - bunch - posy
Unless you have just started blogging. Or it is the first in a series you are launched on. Look at all your tags with just the one post, and try to tidy them up so they can become a useful basket/trug for you. And finally PLEASE don’t put a bunch of tags on a short post. If you are looking for information, as someone was, on growing restios in California. You don’t want to trudge thru a long list to find, TA DA, “One of the grasses I grow is some or other restio” FULL STOP. Thanks a bunch, I don’t think!
But if you are interested in any of my posts about BULBS the webbot cannot find them, unless, and it is a big UNLESS, I have used the actual word ‘bulbs’. As a human being you can think of the names of various bulbs, and ask, one by one, if Elephant’s Eye has written about Lachenalia? Or Freesia?? Or Zantedeschia??? Bored of that, let us find a blog that HAS written about ‘bulbs’.
If it helps – think of going down the allotment, or out to Carrie’s Grow Our Own. With your basket over your arm to collect ingredients for a fragrant pot of tomato soup. First you need tomatoes. If you write about heritage tomatoes, ONLY about heritage tomatoes, then yes, by all means tag them carefully, variety by variety. Otherwise, if you have a few varieties, put them all in the basket/tag as ‘tomatoes’, or even ‘vegetables’, or ‘recipes’. Choose a basket/tag that shows human thought. Yours is the hand that puts that post under that tag. You wrote it. What is it about? Really about?
Or think of Julie, going out into her garden to collect a trug full of foliage/filler, and some berries, or rose hips, and the flowers she has in mind for this week’s Flower Brick Friday. Use the trug/tag to pull together a bunch that you or I would/could want.
Basil, for the soup, and a Cymbidium for the cook/gardener
Something else I need to say. Blotanical is about garden blogs. Unless you are taking the biscuit at Blogging From Blackpitts, and writing about a garden is An Event, don’t lump all your posts under ‘garden’. Oh, and did I also mention ‘gardening’? And there I find the same old, same old, lo-ong list. My 7 posts on birds, don’t come up again in the 14 on wildlife. If a lot of your posts are coming up under a few tags, can you sort the heap into a few more baskets? Only 20 tags? That is two generous double handfuls, if you count all the fingers. Finger lunch anyone?
Do you, ever, follow up your own tags? For me, it is a hands on way of finding out if I will return to this new blog, or not. With Blogger, you can show your tags as a cloud and paint a focused picture of what your blog is about, when push comes to shove. A tag is not a flourish, or a garnish. There for decoration. It is a handle. To open a door. To useful, interesting, entertaining, or all of the above, information.
The word January, comes from the Roman god of doorways – Janus. He has two faces.
Not two-faced, as in dishonest.
But when you are in the doorway, you can look forward, or back. In, or out.
As we all do, with the turning of the year.
Look back, in anger, or relief, at the year which is drawing to a close.
Look forward, with regret, or joy, to the year which is beginning.
(Image of Janus is from Wikipedia)
Running thru January, I have a poll at the top of the sidebar (if you are reading this in Blotanical's Picks list, you may need to click Read in a New Tab, to see the sidebar). You are invited to leave any comments in response at this post. Thank you for playing along. And A Happy New Year To You All!
PS If you follow the good advice to make a dummy blog for experimenting with changes, remember to leave a link to your Real Blog
PS If you follow the good advice to make a dummy blog for experimenting with changes, remember to leave a link to your Real Blog
Diana, I know I made the beginner's mistake of tagging my posts left and right, and then, realizing that that was not useful, I stopped tagging. You're right - and thanks for putting it so succinctly -, it would be a good idea to go through them and apply good librarianship principles to choosing and sticking to a few terse, meaningful subject headings.
ReplyDeleteBTW - your photos are beautiful.
Funny those things called tags or labels..... it all starts off innocently enough and then in no time there are hundreds of them......
ReplyDeleteDon't want to lump everything under 'perennials' or 'gardening'... and so off you go! Now, thanks to this most timely of posts, I am going to revisit and start the purging and condensing process! Thanks!
Excellent post to start discussion.
ReplyDeleteMy blog has an enormous alphabetical label cloud, at the end of the posts, which are limited to 3 posts showing. Right now, daffodils, lilies, roses and pentas link to too many posts. I must choose a way to divide them, maybe by year as I'm moving into the fourth year of blogging.
I separated the butterfly labels into butterfly_sulphur, butterfly_buckeye and so on because there are so many butterfly posts each summer. It works for me when I'm looking for an old post, I hope it does for others.
Sometimes when I search for something, I take time to take off some labels that seem unnecessary, leaving only the best posts labeled.
Barbara, Teza and Nell Jean - Relieved that you three agree with me!
ReplyDeletePoll results. It's official. 2 out of 3 prefer Wildlife. LOL! (Only HAD 3 votes so far)
ReplyDeleteHmmm. I know I started off with way too many tags too, including gardening (*blush*) but soon became relatively sensible. However, having NEVER used my own tags (or anyone else's), I've not given any thought to the hows and whys and have no idea if I'm using them well or badly. Will have to look!
ReplyDeleteI do check out my own tags but I think after reading this I will have a closer look. I know I need to sort out my gallery section - its been bugging me for over a week now. Thanks for the reminder.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed my first visit here! Janus and tags--philosophy and house-cleaning for the New Year. I'll go home now and make a cloud.
ReplyDeleteDaffodil Planter - my loss, I have only now found your blog. Gardening with a sense of humour! I'll be back. May your cloud bring you rain, and if you've got enough, do send it this way please.
ReplyDeleteDiana, what a interesting post. I have to admit that I run with Sequoiagardens as to not paying too much attention to tags. I try to keep my down to a minimum, and will pay strict attention to it from now on.
ReplyDeleteYou asked who the quote was attributed to on my blog, sorry it took so long to look it up. It is attributed to "Japanese Proverb". Due to space constraints on the photo I did not add that in.
Thanks for the interesting reading.
Jen
Thank you for the link.
ReplyDeleteMy blog runs on iWeb so we don't really have a tag option and I'm afraid I am really bad at working Blotanical.
So I fail on all counts.
Still enjoy your blog though.
Thanks so much for this post, Diana. I've added it to the Garden Blog Projects page over at Gardening Gone Wild.
ReplyDelete