Tagging is the essence of the social bookmarking sites I outlined in the previous Social Bookmarking Explained article.

Tags provide you with a way to categorize your image, post, or web page. Keywords are virtually always used to organize topics on the internet. Tags are really just more of the same. The users tag a web page or an image with a keyword (or key phrase). By doing so, all the other web pages, posts, and images with the same tag can be organized together. This means you can find things easier. The related information is compiled together for you so you don’t have to search all over for it.

So tags aren’t really any different than keywords. Just in case you’re still not sure what I’m talking about, here’s a real simple example. Let’s say you write an article about cell phones. You would use the tag “cell phones” to help categorize it. This is hardly rocket science at all, so please don’t fret over it. Tags equal keywords.

I’m sure you already know the importance of keywords and key phrases and how you should go about finding them. If not, please review some of the Keyword Research articles I’ve put together for you.

The difference is that organizing information by tags the way some of these innovative sites are doing turns them into more of a browsing tool than a searching tool. Many people find it a little bit messy, but at the same time, that’s what so many like about it. It’s free structure is a breath of fresh air compared to the rigidity of the search engines. Type in the wrong keyword in Google and you’ll just get pages of results related to something you’re not interested in at all.

But with tagging, you get to browse through the information. Most of the tagging sites will display a list of related tags for each search you make. This way if you don’t see what you like with your first search, you can keep browsing.

If you want to see tagging in action, I suggest visiting Technorati or Delicious.