Tags are an immensely powerful and flexible ways of categorizing content. Most previous organization systems on computers required entries to belong to one folder, in a specific place, in the same manner as real world file systems. Much of the internet was created with a defined structure in mind, and tags make for a far more flexible system.

Original computer file systems modeled the real world file system by default, requiring users to store items with the correct name, generally sorted into usable directory or folder names. Sorting through the files required either prior knowledge of the content, searching all text, or reading filenames. If a person happened to look in the wrong folder, there was no way of coming across the content.

The concept of tags predates computers and the powerful of using keywords was recognized prior to the 18th century:

Paper data storage devices, notably edge-notched cards, that permitted classification and sorting by multiple criteria were already in use prior to the twentieth century, and faceted classification has been used by libraries since the 1930s

Computers have made the usage of tags much more practical to implement. Most blogs use tags to some extent and they still seem underused as an search engine optimization strategy. Often tags are just an assortment of posts, not necessarily tied together in any meaningful way. Rather the content is generally linked together and presented in archival order.

Tags can be used implemented within structures of pages to link various types of content together in a central location. The page is more useful than a relatively unsorted list, and becomes more usable for the site visitors.

We're experimenting with tying various types of content together via tags and believe it will yield benefits for visitors and SEO.