Content Tagging

Content Tagging

Content Tagging is a powerful way to categorize your content in the WCG:CMS system. Each article can be categorized with a set of tags that you define. As you create a tag, it's added to the list of previously used tags, so it's available for future use. With your content categorized with tags, your users can quickly locate other related content on your site that were tagged with a similar keyword.

Content Tagging is a crucial step in building a world-class website. First, let’s describe a “tag”. A “tag” is a word or short phrase that describes content. For example, it could be a place, a product, a person or any common term used throughout your site. Tags are displayed at the top of each article, when a user clicks on a tag; they immediately see all other articles that also have the same tag value.

Sample Tags

Here’s an example of tagging in action, this article is tagged with both “Hockey” and the local “UMHA” hockey league.

Tag Search Results

Clicking on the tag “Hockey” opens a list of all other “Hockey” tagged articles. Here's a sample of the search results, showing all articles containing the tagged term.

Benefits of Tagging

Tagging benefits both your visitors as well as your website.

First, visitors appreciate extra visual cues describing the content. Remember no one really reads the web, they scan it, and breaking out the key subjects into tags supports “scanning”. Visitors also appreciate being able to quickly locate other associated articles. When a visitor sees a tag, they are drawn to it to locate other similar content.

Your website benefits from tagging too.

• Improved credibility. Tagging is only found on professional websites, so you look like you really planned this all out and are on top of the game.

• Increased traffic and reduced “bounce” rate. Visitors are more likely to read more than one article, especially if they are interested in the tagged subject. More page visits means a smaller “bounce” rate (visitors that see one page and leave). Bounce rate is a key factor for SEO and sophisticated advertisers, it’s important to keep it as low as possible.

• Improved Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Tags become key-words that help search engines quickly identify your content. To continue with the example above, when Google sees a nested web of links to 10 articles about “hockey”, they correctly assume your site is of interest to those looking for “hockey”. You site will appear higher in the search results than sites that only had articles about hockey without the “hockey” hyper-links.

How to Tag Content

The WCG:CMS makes it easy to create tags, and importantly re-use the same tags later.

When you’re editing an article, simply start typing a tag name in the tag field. Use the “tab” character when you’re done. If a similar tag name appears, select it to it will be used again and appear with other articles tagged with it.