Website editors cat­e­go­rize content, topics and products using keywords. These tags allow users to get a quick overview of similar topics and navigate between them easily. There are many other types of tags, such as hashtags, meta tags and HTML tags.

Why are tags used?

Websites, blogs or online magazines may use tags to give users a more struc­tured and effective website search using specific keywords. Tagging articles, product pages and guides in your CMS (content man­age­ment system) with topic/content-related tags allows site visitors to view similar content by clicking or entering the ap­pro­pri­ate tags. The tag function’s main advantage is optimized website usability.

What are the different types of tags?

There are many different types of tags for websites and in online marketing. We have listed the most important types below:

Indexing tags

When it comes to tags, most people think of keywords assigned to different topics on a website or blog. For example, a blog about vegan cooking or electric cars would use words like “vegan” or “e-car” as thematic tags. If users search for these keywords in the website’s search bar, related and tagged articles will appear.

You can also integrate a tag cloud into the website. This high­lights popular tags by using different font sizes or by dis­play­ing the total number of articles. Tags play an important role in a website’s clarity, user-friend­li­ness and browsing time. However, tagging is not as important for search engine op­ti­miza­tion, as cat­e­go­riza­tion tags mainly optimize the user ex­pe­ri­ence design, graphical user interface and search function.

Social tagging

Social tagging refers to tags that website, social media, blog, or other web content users come up with to make in­ter­est­ing or similar content ac­ces­si­ble to the community. Compared to tagging and indexing by content creators, social tags focus on col­lab­o­ra­tive tagging. The term “folk­son­o­my” is the generic term used for the specific keywords used in social tagging. This can be rep­re­sent­ed as a tag cloud.

Instagram, Flickr, and Pinterest fre­quent­ly use social tagging. The tags allow users to organize images by topic and category. Setting bookmarks or hashtags also falls into this area. Social tagging does not follow any fixed indexing rules and all users take part in cat­e­go­riz­ing content and making it ac­ces­si­ble.

Hashtags

Hashtags are used for the­mat­i­cal­ly struc­tur­ing content and social media posts. This is not local website-specific tagging, but cross-page tagging. Hashtags are mainly used on social media for social media marketing, hashtag marketing or as social media tools. In­di­vid­u­als, companies or online stores may be known for their own hashtags which helps them increase their reach, address target groups and promote campaigns.

Meta tags

Meta tags are inserted into a web page’s HTML header and contain in­for­ma­tion about the content of the page, for example, the de­scrip­tion and keywords. Unlike tag clouds on blogs, they provide important in­for­ma­tion about a web page to search engines. This makes meta tags important for search engine op­ti­miza­tion. They ensure the web page gets a good search engine ranking through SEO.

The following meta tags are important ranking factors:

  • De­scrip­tion
  • Keywords
  • Content Type
  • Page Topic
  • Robots and Revisit - In­struc­tions for crawler
Note

The Page Title (title tag) is often referred to as the “meta title”, but it is not a meta tag.

HTML tags

HTML commands are used to structure a web page document and they tell web browsers how the page should be displayed. These HTML tags refer to the basic structure of the page, in­te­grat­ed media content, various typefaces, and forms, links, and high­light­ing. Start and end tags in accolades are mostly used.

This is a list of important HTML tags:

  • <!DOCTYPE>: Specifies the type of the HTML document
  • <html>: Defines documents as HTML documents
  • <head>: Stores metadata for search engines in the document’s HTML header
  • <h1>...</h1>: Stands for H1 headline
  • <p>...</p>: Stands for the beginning and the end of a paragraph, as well as an automatic line break and a new paragraph
  • <i>...</i>: Stands for an italic typeface
  • <a href="Link URL"> Linked term</a>: In­te­grates a link

Online Marketing Tags

Tags are also used in online marketing and e-commerce. These come in the form of code snippets which are used to analyze website per­for­mance and marketing strategy success. They can also be used to evaluate visitors’ behavior, page views, con­ver­sions, and they can carry out re­tar­get­ing.

The most common tags in online marketing include:

  • Counter tag: Counts a website’s page views
  • Con­ver­sion tag: Counts the website’s con­ver­sions and analyzes an ad­ver­tis­ing campaign’s success
  • Re­mar­ket­ing/re­tar­get­ing tag: Targets users who have already visited a specific website, e.g. through targeted ad­ver­tis­ing measures and ads on third-party websites
  • E-commerce tags for universal analytics: The data col­lec­tion tech­nol­o­gy, Google Analytics, provides reports on trans­ac­tions and on pur­chas­ing and user behavior.

There are several online marketing tags which perform different functions. This makes efficient tag man­age­ment essential for a complex page or third-party ar­chi­tec­ture. This is key when changing providers, launching new campaigns or new ad­ver­tis­ing strate­gies and projects.

Tip

A good SEO guar­an­tees greater reach and an improved search engine ranking. Use the free SEO Checker from IONOS and optimize your website.

What are the ad­van­tages of tags?

The benefits of tags vary depending on the type. We’ll focus mainly on the benefits of tagging for platforms like YouTube, on blogs, or in online marketing.

YouTube

YouTube tags are search terms and keywords that you can add to your videos. They play an important role in making the YouTube algorithm work for you and improving your YouTube SEO. Well-placed tags improve the chance of being con­sid­ered relevant by the YouTube algorithm and being placed higher in the rankings. This increases your reach and views, and it may direct more visitors to your online store or company website. Setting tags in YouTube should always be targeted and not dis­pro­por­tion­ate, so it is not flagged as spam. To add tags, go to “Content” under the video in the YouTube Studio or go to “More options” for new uploads.

Blogs

Tags in blogs consist of certain keywords that relate to the topics and content of blog posts. These make it easier for visitors to find similar articles on specific topics and keywords using the search function or filters. You can also use a tag cloud to highlight par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ing or popular topics to optimize browsing time and traffic on your website.

Image: The Tag Clusters for the IONOS Digital Guide Online Magazine
Use a tag cluster to show your visitors the topics that are most popular on your blog.

Online marketing

Tags in online marketing offer ad­van­tages for store operators. Online marketing tags record the ac­tiv­i­ties while users are viewing articles, subpages or buying products. They analyze click and purchase behavior to help optimize marketing campaigns and ad­ver­tis­ing strate­gies. This not only increases your con­ver­sions, but also enhances your business strategy.

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