Tags for Noobs by a Noob

I've been posting on Steemit now for a whole eight days. An authority on the subject of all things steemit I'm not. What I do understand already though is that the tag system here on Steemit is very different that tagging a website or a youtube video. While those often employ the splattered against the wall method of throwing as many tags as possible at the SEO(search engine optimization) steem requires a more targeted approach.

You get five tags, that's it. Moreover they have to be single words, no phrases. Make sure you use all lowercase letters and no comas either. Just a simple tap of the space bar to separate them. Here's the big secret though, they are more categories than keywords and if you do it right you'll get your post on five separate new post pages at once.

I've made some captures using the snipping tool included with the windows OS and then added some purple(my favorite color) arrows in photoshop so you can find what I'm talking about. This first image shows you where the tags go. It's right between the box where you input your post and the preview section that shows you what it's going to look like.







Now that you know where the tags go let's figure out how to determine which ones are the best to use. If you click that ever present link(right click and open in new tab so you don't lose your post) in the upper left hand corner that says "home" then look to the right side of the page you'll see a list of trending "Tags and Topics".







Those tags are in order of popularity. Now you may be tempted to choose a tag at the very top of the list even if it's relation to your post is tenuous at best. I can't advise strongly enough against this. If a whale(someone with a lot of clout on steemit) wanders by and decides that your post is spam and flags it it is going to hurt. The other reason not to do that is that the first tag determines the topic your post will be listed as. For instance if I choose photography as the first tag my post will be listed as, "In Photography" no matter what other topics it appears under.

The post I was working on here was one of my daily wildlife photography posts so let's look at what tags relate to it in the list.







Right off the bat we have three good choices. The post I'm working on is strongly related to both photography and nature. It is related to art as well, but in a more general way. Now let's scroll down and see if we can find any more tags.







As you can see toward the bottom of the list on the home page we find another tag that fits strongly with my post. Wildlife definitely fit in the category of animals. Now we have a problem. We've exhausted the list on the home page and still need one more tag. This means we need to click the see more topics link to go to the trending topics page.







This page is a more comprehensive version of the tags and topics list on the home page. This list however is in alphabetical order rather than order of popularity. The list does give you three categories of information -posts, comments, payouts - to help you determine how active that tag is. Now lets scroll down till we find a tag that could work as my fifth.







As you can see there are three that could work - photos, photo, and picture. I went with photo because I looked at the content in it and felt my post would fit. It had the most activity of the three so since it was a good fit I didn't bother with the other two. Let's have a look at the tag box again with all five tags inserted.







I picked photography as my first tag because I photograph many subjects other than wildlife. Putting nature or animals first would have been just as valid of a choice however. Art and photo rounded out the five tags nicely. The next two images show the post listed after being posted. In the first one you can see it listed on the new page for all posts as "in Photography". The second images shows it listed on the new page for nature as well. You can tell it's the new page for nature because nature is bold in the tags and topics list to the right.











I hope this has help clear up how to use the tags here on Steemit. Now excuse me while I go figure out my five tags for this post.







Please upvote and resteem so others can find this post.