Is this a pointless thing to do? I have a lot of these, so if there is no SEO advantage I might as well go through and get rid of the duplicates to shrink my category list.

I do use the “All In One SEO” tool kit, which takes your categories and makes them meta keywords, so does that make the separate categories useful?

Thanks!

Good tag clouds all have a few common traits (Limit the number of words, little overlap with category names, different sizes etc.), and by setting those traits as the defaults for the tags tag, it could instil some best practices in users. The Codex can then reinforce that in some of the examples it always does so well. :)

With all that said though, I rarely like tag clouds either. Tags are at their most useful for me when used to dissect a post a little more, and then search for similar posts (like on your blog). It works brilliantly when done correctly, but it all depends on the blogger.

They need to use the same tags consistently, month after month (e.g they can’t tag one post “writing tips” another “writing advice” and another “writing pointers” – They would have to choose one of the options, and stick with it). There is a level of self-discipline there which I know would be hard to keep up.

I’m working on ways to make tags become more valuable, such as the site search tags on a per post basis, such as those I create manually on my WordPress.com blog, but tag clouds – not working for me.

We need to do more to bring value back to tags.

Sly from Slyvisions.com