Why My Tag Cloud Is First
When you visit my home page, one of the first things you see is my Gigantic Tag Cloud! I have that there for a reason. I have never liked how blogs are formatted, I don’t like conforming to dates and times. And with my blog, I basically dump everything that is on my mind into it. I think and write about a ton of stuff. And to be honest… the things I write about don’t have much rhyme or reason when it comes to dates and times. One week I talk about Google Adsense and the next week I talk about creative marketing.
In order for my readers to get a quick scope about what I talk about the most, I have the tag cloud right there, top dead center on every page. I don’t want to make any mistake about communicating clearly what this blog site is about. The older this blog gets the more you will see predominant topics being discussed. Yet, also you will see hundreds of other topics that I may have touched on briefly.
The main reason why my tag cloud comes first before anything else is because I want readers to know exactly what I write about in less than 2 seconds. Readers are either interested or not… I don’t expect to capture the attention of every blogger in the blogosphere; however, I do expect to attract the attention from the bloggers that normally would have been interested, only if then knew what I write about. A bonus: Consequently, when I flash a huge tag cloud to my readers, I also flash it to search engines. Search engines quickly crawl and index the pages that are more popular, rich in quality content and absorbed on a concentrated topic. This is a double win / win situation! Not only do I have extremely high traffic conversions based on relevant content, but I also have the same success with gaining a highly effective and relevant index of my site within the results pages of the search engines.
In other words, I favor my tag cloud and make it visible on every page within my entire site because I favor having a high conversion rate of traffic from viewers who are totally interested in what I write about. I value this more than compared to having a larger volume of lesser interested viewers. Lets suppose after having my site up for five years, I decide to spend the next year writing articles about small business blogs. But prior to the newly written articles, I have already written a total of 1000 articles that teach people about search engine optimization. The way standard blogs are formatted, unfortunately my previous five years worth of posts about search engine optimization will be buried by all the newer published content about small business blogs. What happens is that new readers will have no clue about the topics I wrote about prior to writing about small business blogs. Little do they know… “I spent the last five years talking about search engine optimization! Do you see where I am coming from?
If I chose not to display my tag cloud, I would cause readers to only see what I write about now in the present. New readers will not discover that I have written many articles over the past years because these posts all have gotten buried with newer ones. The result: The new first time readers may or may not be interested in what I write about now. This potentially creates an increased risk of causing the new first time readers to leave my site and never to come back. Why: Because the new first time readers have no clue that I write topics that interest them! They only see the one topics I am currently talking about now!
The Recommendation: Be Creative. Be Different. Proudly display your tag cloud and let your freak flag fly! 
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7 comments
[...] Garry on Why My Tag Cloud Is First [...]
Garry, I think you maybe the only blog that I came across with that placed the tag cloud right in the top middle of the page.
Definitely very creative … would you consider putting it at the top right corner as a test?
Interest idea, do you have any data on how people like it? It kind of throws me off at first.
The first thing I thought about the first thing I saw when I first landed on your site is: “Cool!”
I haven’t checked the archives yet, but if you haven’t already done one, how about a post showing us how to create such a nifty tag cloud? Yours is probably the best one I’ve seen. And since I’ll be pulling in my content from older blogs, to consolidate in my new one, I think something like this would come in handy, and be much more interesting than a static category list.
Glad to be getting to know your blog.
Meg
http://www.centerofmuse.com
I’ll be honest, I rarely look at it. As a reader, I just scroll down your page and read. Or I go to the side bar and look up your latest articles. Other sites I visit that have tag clouds get ignored by me, now if they have those categories off to the side (in a bar)I’ll normally visit them.
My question for you is can you tell how many people read your articles through that cloud? ie, say 5 people hit Making money and 25 hit blogging tips.
It is an interesting idea. I am one of those that tend to ignore clouds a bit. Now that you point out why you have it there I might pay more attention to them.
I also would be interested in knowing what you use to create it.
Another excellent idea.
Although I don’t use tag clouds, I may have to look into it. I do have UTW installed, so I guess I’ll just put it to good use! Thanks for this info.
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