Thursday, June 18, 2009

Technorati Tags for SERP -- Useless?

Some time ago, I published another post: Technorati Tags - Useless or Just a Waste of Time?

Basically, I was rethinking the usefulness of putting Technorati Tags (TTags) on blog posts. Long story short, I have come to the conclusion that tagging blog posts with Technorati Tags (TTags) is BOTH a waste of time and useless.

First, both WordPress and Google's Blogger (blogspot) support tags (aka labels). So TTags is superfluous in that sense.

Secondly, using WordPress or Blogger tags or labels is better for YOUR SEO, SERP, whatever. The SERP benefit of TTags to us is minimal, if any. Consider that when you make a TTag and post and ping Technorati, your post will not show in their default index listings unless you have run similar exercises for them as you do for Google to get sufficient popularity. Then, even if you pass that test, your listing for that tag will get pushed down into oblivion in a few hours to days, as new posts by others using that same tag are indexed.

Finally, the TTags link to Technorati, not you. THEY get the Google "link love". BTW, Technorati supposedly indexes you regardless, tags or not, if you ping them. But who knows?

OTH, when you make WordPress tags or Blogger labels, the blog software creates another page on YOUR blog for that label/tag. You are getting internal links with the extra pages created for each tag. And Google gives you more love, the more pages you have, everything else being equal.

When someone clicks on a TTag, they are sent off to the Technorati site, where all your competitors are linked. When they click on a label or tag, they are sent to another page on YOUR blog. Another chance for YOU, not your competitors, to get a click to AdSense or an affiliate.

Now, MAYBE there is some benefit for you to use TT, but I don't know what it is. About the time that I wrote that previous post, I wrote to Technorati asking them of what benefit is it to bloggers to use Technorati Tags. Granted it benefits Technorati, as each tag links back to Technorati. Imagine my surprise that I never received a response back. ;)

And here is how I wasted a TREMENDOUS amount of time with Technorati Tags. I fell for the hype. So I actually spent quite some time writing a program to generate Technorati Tags and then went and laboriously added TTags to EVERY fricking post on every one of my blogs. Sheesh! Now, I am in the process of removing them and replacing them with tags and labels that do ME some good.

Disagree? Comments are open.

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