Choosing the tags or keywords for your blog will encourage more people to find your posts.  I recently spent quite a bit of time cleaning up the tags and categories on my blogs, using Google AdWords.  I also made a spreadsheet of some very good keywords that you can use.  These words and phrases all have high search numbers with low competition. That means a lot of people use these words in searches while few blogs use them as tags, so a search will more likely find your post.

I’ll explain my spreadsheet briefly before you follow the link to it.

The first four columns make it easier to find words.  I chose headings for: ministry, issues, personal, and technical.  You may need to check more than one column.  The form of a word MIGHT matter.  For instance, I searched “recommended” versus “recommendation” and also “tsunami” versus tsunamis.”  What is in the spreadsheet is the best choice to use.  The difference in search results is sometimes significant between these variations.

I tried to have the document fit on one page so the last column has:

• General Guidelines – I didn’t list every country, state, metropolis, etc.  In general, these make good search words.
• Other – these tags didn’t fit in the first four columns
• Current – these tags are current and many other words may be much better to use depending on the news and trends of any particular day so you might just choose what you know is popular.
• Non-English – don’t be afraid to use some non-English words even if your post is in English.  I’m glad to put more words in this category from non-English bloggers if you would comment below.
• Not recommended – these are just samples of words you might think are good tags, but they either are used infrequently or they’re used a lot in searches as well as in blogs.  So, these tags don’t help potential readers to find your post.

The spreadsheet is easy for you to download or print.  I’ll update it occasionally.  Here’s my list of best tags and keywords for your blog on Google Drive.  Please let me know if making these changes helps more people find your posts.

NOTE: The tag cloud image is from my blog, The Sovereign.

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