Tag Clouds, whats that all about

[Bedspring]

Hi,
i have was looking at a competitors site and came across a Tag Cloud, I have seen these on the web but did not actually know what they are, but this one was labelled as such, what is the point of them, do they enhance SEO or are they a form of site navigation, or are they something not for me to worry about.
Regards Steve

[leehack]

They assess the content on the page and build the cloud according to what they perceive as the content on there, try this to find out more about them - http://tinyurl.com/62ra4sv

[Bedspring]

LMGTFY very good, I did and found some general stuff and used the search function on the Actinic Commuinty and got 4 results pointing to Actinics Tag Cloud. So in relation to Actinic what is the point of them, do they enhance SEO or are they a form of site navigation, or are they something not for me to worry about. Or do you not know? :-P

[Steve G Griggs]

Tag clouds are lists of the more frequent keywords in the site. They are often found in blogs (such as wordpress). They can add to navigation and SEO depending on the type of word cloud.
Some are animated using flash or JavaScript combined with images and as such don't add much in terms of SEO. They do give the visitor an indication of how much a keyword is used as a lost tend to make the more frequently used terms bigger in font size. I think there are some that add SEO value to the site by virtue of not being produced by adding images (don't hold me to this though ).
Some of them auto generate the cloud, and some you can edit your "cloud" manually.
If done well I think they can look good, and add some extra navigation at the very least to the site. If you want to try one out its worth "googling" the term "tagcloud software". There's a few sites around that make some available both free and paid for.
It's not something I would personally rate as being an essential part of SEO but done properly one could add a bit more..I'm not sure personally.

[leehack]

I've always seen them as a trendy widget type thing more than anything else, I've never used one on a site, they just look cool. The auto solutions that add real text are best IMO.

Ultimately from an SEO point of view IMO, Google's algo effectively does this on every page you just never get to see it and Google will rate you on what they think, not what a tag cloud tells them.

[Bedspring]

Going back it was actually a blog that the competitor was using, so probably generated by that. As said it`s maybe a visulization of how Google is seeing the site anyway so maybe adding a Tag Cloud could appear as Tag spamming, hmmm interesting, cheers for the replies.

[Steve G Griggs]

I've always seen them as a trendy widget type thing more than anything else, I've never used one on a site, they just look cool. The auto solutions that add real text are best IMO.

Ultimately from an SEO point of view IMO, Google's algo effectively does this on every page you just never get to see it and Google will rate you on what they think, not what a tag cloud tells them.

More or less what I think: it's only the auto generated ones that put proper HTML into your page and so have any (limited) value.

[globalee]

Tag Clouds SEO

More or less what I think: it's only the auto generated ones that put proper HTML into your page and so have any (limited) value.

Not useful for a bit of keyword stuffing?, and to improve keyword density, if they are configurable.I would like to use one use one on the page is it possible in actinic? display keywords for example?

Ive got a page that ranks well for the last year, seems to be update proof from google algo and has a unorder list of keywords in plain text on the page and it ranks well? so a tag cloud would be a bit smarter way to display this.

cheers, lee

update
check this site out, commercial version for websites is 19$

tagcrowd [dot] com/