I did use simple tags earlier – but I am not sure I like the idea of sending a visitor to technorati when they click on the tags. Being a recent entrant to the blogging world, I am not sure about the value addition of sending a visitor out of my site.

What I like about Jerome Keywords is that when a visitor clicks on a keyword, all posts within my blog containing those keywords gets displayed.

You can see the feature list here: http://vapourtrails.ca/wp-keywords

I did try Ultimate Tag Warrior too – but as Ben said, it is a beast to configure.

Incidently, Ben, Jeromes Keywords creates TAG pages on your site too.

Bret is right regarding SimpleTags. I did recommend it as an easy way to implement tags. I know use Ultimate Tag Warrior. It's a bit of a beast, more fickle and not as easy to setup. But one of the big advantages is that it creates TAG PAGES on your site.

So let's say you have a tag called “Accounting” – Ultimate Tag Warrior will create a page like:

http://www.instigatorblog.com/tag/accounting/

That page gets indexed by Google as additional content, and can draw search engine traffic.

I did use simple tags earlier – but I am not sure I like the idea of sending a visitor to technorati when they click on the tags. Being a recent entrant to the blogging world, I am not sure about the value addition of sending a visitor out of my site.

What I like about Jerome Keywords is that when a visitor clicks on a keyword, all posts within my blog containing those keywords gets displayed.

You can see the feature list here: http://vapourtrails.ca/wp-keywords

I did try Ultimate Tag Warrior too – but as Ben said, it is a beast to configure.

Incidently, Ben, Jeromes Keywords creates TAG pages on your site too.

Bret is right regarding SimpleTags. I did recommend it as an easy way to implement tags. I know use Ultimate Tag Warrior. It’s a bit of a beast, more fickle and not as easy to setup. But one of the big advantages is that it creates TAG PAGES on your site.

So let’s say you have a tag called “Accounting” – Ultimate Tag Warrior will create a page like:

http://www.instigatorblog.com/tag/accounting/

That page gets indexed by Google as additional content, and can draw search engine traffic.

I install the SimpleTags plugin for WordPress recommended here by Ben. The plugin is very easy to use. Write a post and the surround key/important words with the SimpleTag (similar to using any other HTML tag but uses different syntax). When you publish your post you'll see the list of words you tagged with SimpleTags at the bottom. Click on anyone of those words and you'll get taken to Technorati where you'll get presented with other recent blog posts with similar tags. For example, if you surround the word “blog” with a SimpleTag, and then click on the link at the bottom of your post, the link takes you to technorati.com/tag/blog. There you'll see your post and others with the same tag. I think Ben has his tags set up a little different here, but what I described is the general idea. Hope that helps.

I install the SimpleTags plugin for WordPress recommended here by Ben. The plugin is very easy to use. Write a post and the surround key/important words with the SimpleTag (similar to using any other HTML tag but uses different syntax). When you publish your post you’ll see the list of words you tagged with SimpleTags at the bottom. Click on anyone of those words and you’ll get taken to Technorati where you’ll get presented with other recent blog posts with similar tags. For example, if you surround the word “blog” with a SimpleTag, and then click on the link at the bottom of your post, the link takes you to technorati.com/tag/blog. There you’ll see your post and others with the same tag. I think Ben has his tags set up a little different here, but what I described is the general idea. Hope that helps.

I must admit that I am still a bit hazy about the whole tag thing in the overall scheme of things.

Having started off with WordPress in Feb, I have had my share of mistakes – most of them due to lack of thorough research. Permalinks for one – I submitted the sitemap to google with query links.

I have never used punctuations. I have a question about the question mark. For example – for a page with URL – http://blog.somehost.com/index.php/some-article...
won't the search engines recognize this as a dynamic page and not index it?

I must admit that I am still a bit hazy about the whole tag thing in the overall scheme of things.

Having started off with WordPress in Feb, I have had my share of mistakes – most of them due to lack of thorough research. Permalinks for one – I submitted the sitemap to google with query links.

I have never used punctuations. I have a question about the question mark. For example – for a page with URL – http://blog.somehost.com/index.php/some-article-question?
won’t the search engines recognize this as a dynamic page and not index it?

I have seen some very popular stories with headlines like this:

How-to: (Insert something here)

But I think generally you're correct – there's no reason for the punctuation in there.

I have seen some very popular stories with headlines like this:

How-to: (Insert something here)

But I think generally you’re correct – there’s no reason for the punctuation in there.