tags in blogs

[theredjellybean]

i have started my first blog, and have used wordpress, what are tags ? i think they are the long list of words you see on the right hand side of a blog post ...and have added some tag words to my site but not sure if that is the right thing to do ? Do you add as many tag words you can think people might use to search for blogs related to the topic they want to read about ?

Apparently they don't make too much difference in terms of search engines, I'm sure I've read that Google dislikes them. I only use them if I know I have another post about a similar subject such as Younique or The Orchard at Tesco as they are two things I regularly blog about and it makes it easier for readers to find the other posts.

1. Imagine you have to sort out some papers. Let's say it's recipes. You sort it out by 1st, 2nd, 3rd course dishes but then you put coloured sticky things, i.e. paper tags to show you which one are cabbage dishes, egg based, vegetarian or any other way. Those "1st, 2nd, 3rd course dishes" would be categories in this example and the other ones are tags.
2. Tags for readers' and your's convenience.
3. Google do not dislike them. It's the other way around but kind of indirectly. Google like when people spend time on a site and go from page to page. => if you do it right , tags will keep your readers on the site => Google will "add it to your karma".