For many years now, traditional search engines have enjoyed a virtual monopoly on internet searches, and those web sites whose sites ranked low in the most popular search engine queries were often out of luck. Any web site owner can tell you just how difficult it can be to generate sales and find potential customers without a high page rank in the major search engines. For many years smart internet marketers have been using for alternative methods of getting the word out, and these days there is a viable alternative to the search engine monopoly.
That alternative is known as tag and ping, or tagging and pinging, and it uses a new technology that takes advantage of the newfound power of the blogosphere. Blogs are becoming increasingly popular ways for web users to share all kinds of information, including information on their favorite web sites and their favorite products. The many web sites that have sprung up to allow users to search blogs and other content use a very different method for ranking their content and finding the most relevant and useful sites.
While traditional search engines use spiders to constantly crawl the web in search of new web sites and new content to categorize, tagging and pinging uses humans to categorize their own content. Each time a new post is put up the user gives it a descriptive name, or tag. This tag is similar to the keywords with which most web marketers are already familiar. Most sites allow site users to assign several different tags to the same content, providing greater exposure and more relevant content to visitors.
It is of course important that the tags chosen be relevant and truly descriptive of the content being added. Content that is not properly described will be quickly removed and even if it is not the content will not generate any meaningful sales or leads. One way to find the best tags is to search for words associated with your own niche. An employment related web site, for instance, may want to tag applicable content with tags like "resume", "application", "job", "job search", etc. Keeping the tags descriptive and relevant is a proven way to keep those sales coming and keep exposure to the underlying web site high.
That alternative is known as tag and ping, or tagging and pinging, and it uses a new technology that takes advantage of the newfound power of the blogosphere. Blogs are becoming increasingly popular ways for web users to share all kinds of information, including information on their favorite web sites and their favorite products. The many web sites that have sprung up to allow users to search blogs and other content use a very different method for ranking their content and finding the most relevant and useful sites.
While traditional search engines use spiders to constantly crawl the web in search of new web sites and new content to categorize, tagging and pinging uses humans to categorize their own content. Each time a new post is put up the user gives it a descriptive name, or tag. This tag is similar to the keywords with which most web marketers are already familiar. Most sites allow site users to assign several different tags to the same content, providing greater exposure and more relevant content to visitors.
It is of course important that the tags chosen be relevant and truly descriptive of the content being added. Content that is not properly described will be quickly removed and even if it is not the content will not generate any meaningful sales or leads. One way to find the best tags is to search for words associated with your own niche. An employment related web site, for instance, may want to tag applicable content with tags like "resume", "application", "job", "job search", etc. Keeping the tags descriptive and relevant is a proven way to keep those sales coming and keep exposure to the underlying web site high.
