Technorati Tags Explained

Technorati Tags are a relatively recent innovation that allows applying simple category or subject descriptions to blog posts. For example, I could decide to tag my posts on business blogging with the tag “bizblogging,” and my humorous posts as “funny” or “haha”  or anything I choose.

Anyone that searches on a tag you've applied to your post is more likely to find that post.

Many claim that using Technorati tags can increase the number of visitors you have, although not everyone agrees.

Tags are not predefined but can be chosen on the fly. Blogging software that supports categories, essentially all blogging software except the current version of Blogger, will automatically include tag information.

Users of blog software that doesn’t support categories can still use tags by adding a small piece of code that defines a link to the HTML of a blog post (click "edit HTML" or similar in your blog post editor before adding).

The general format is:
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/[tagname]" rel="tag">[tagname]</a>

For example the following code snippet added to a blog post tags it as “shave me,” a tag name I made up as an example. 

<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/shave me” rel="tag">shave me</a>

The post will now display a link named “shave me” and clicking on it will display recent posts with the tag “shave me.”