Tags and Community Placement

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is mistakenly seen by many as the Holy Grail of content creation. (Spoiler alert: it is not. That designation is Quality Writing.)

Although it isn't the magic bullet, SEO is important and has a definite impact on getting your work in front of viewers when they search via keyword or topic.

Many platforms, like Vocal and Medium, allow and encourage the use of tags, publications (Medium) and Communities (Vocal). Using these increases the likelihood of readers seeing your work and thus building your earning.

And that's where the posting of AI-generated content can get a bit wonky. If the user isn't paying attention they can choose the 'Content Warning' for a story about bunnies creating a garden, or the Poetry Community for a Sci-Fi robot war.

Although odd pairings could be human error, there is good reason to be aware of the Community and Tag use on unaccredited AI-generated content, and learn from it to benefit yourself.

Arbitrary Tagging and Placement- or is it?

Our 11 sample pieces, all of which are Fiction, were placed in the following Vocal Communities:

• Book Club: 2 stories
• Fiction: 2 stories
• Art: 1 story
• History: 1 Story
• Earth: 3 stories
• Horror: 2 stories

When the sample content was written Art, History, and Book Club were newer communities. It could have been strategic to place the content there hoping for organic reads coming from curiosity about the new Communities.

Tagging, though, that's where the truly arbitrary choices emerge.

Pro Tip: More than one tag can be used on a Vocal story during the submittal process. All chosen tags will be shown at the bottom of the story.

Here are the tags that were used on our 11 sample FICTION pieces, shown next to the Community in which they were placed:

1. Book Club #1: Nonfiction, Book of the Day
2. Book Club #2: Challenge
3. Fiction #1: Satire, Mystery, Love, Fantasy, Fan Fiction, Fable, Excerpt, Adventure
4. Fiction #2: Fantasy, Fan Fiction, Adventure
5. Art: Illustration, Process, General
6. History: Discoveries
7. Earth #1:Sustainability, Short Story, Nature, Humanity
8. Earth #2:Humanity, Short Story, Science, Nature, Climate, Advocacy
9. Earth #3: Sustainability
10. Horror #1: Supernatural
11. Horror #2: Monster

Note: Although not reflected in our sample set, it is not unusual to have a story classified as a poem, a piece of poetry in Writing, information on opioid casualties in Feast, or as AI-generated article on choosing healthy foods in a Fiction Community.

Some Take-Aways

Random Community placement could be human error, but it is also likely an attempt to anticipate the most advantageous placement for organic reads.

Use this: If you are looking for inspiration for your next story, poem, or article review the Communities. Look for:

• A new community: more visitors discovering content
• A community with a current challenge: other writers visiting to check out the competition
• The number of Stories and Creators: Currently to Community with the lowest number of Creators in Critique, and the one with the lowest number of stories is Humor with 1064 stories. If you want to be a big fish in a small pond this might be the destination for your next piece.

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Clicking on a tag at the end of a Vocal story will take you to the first page on the platform of a collection of all content that shares that tag.

Use this: Check out the tagging on the latest Top Stories and those recognized in the Weekly Leaderboard. If your next idea is a good fit for those tags, then use them. It's certainly not a sure thing, but there is a chance that folks will search via a tag.

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Here is the previous chapter in this Guide:

The next (and final) chapter is an Index of the example stories that were used in the creation of the Guide. As of 12/11/23, all 11 are still on Vocal, and all 11 all still unattributed.

Comments always welcomed!