A Guide to Using Labels.

When I first started blogging, I used to label each my posts with about 5-10 labels. I thought that my labels would be used for Google searches and not just for my own blog. Once I realized that I was totally wrong about blog labels, I went through each of my posts and reduced my labels, keeping them more general and more easy to navigate. These are few things that have worked for my blog when it comes to labeling my posts, and I hope you find these tips helpful!

USE NO MORE THAN 3 LABELS IN 1 POST Unless you plan on blogging about that particular subject again, then I would recommend keeping your labels to a minimum. For example, for book reviews, I simply use the word "books" instead of labeling each of my reviews with a genre, author's name, title, etc. It's not guaranteed that I'll write about those subjects again, so I don't want to label something with just one blog post attached to it. If you're doing DIY projects, you could just label all of these posts "DIY" or "crafts" rather than labeling it with the specific project name. 
If you're doing a highlight post, like highlights of a place you traveled to or highlights of a holiday or birthday weekend, then using multiple labels is expected if you did multiple things that are worth labeling. I.e. if you spent the weekend going to a concert, going to a movie, finishing a book, spending time with friends and family and eating a fancy restaurant, then you have a number of labels that you can use with topics that you will most likely talk about again. You can see an example of that here. For the most part, I would recommend using less than three labels and keeping them simple, which brings me to my next point.
KEEP YOUR LABELS SIMPLE The point of labels is to separate your blog posts into different categories. If you are a lifestyle blogger, it's likely that you write about a few different topics, but the topics will usually be pretty broad, like friendship, relationships, college, fashion, advice, etc. If you keep your labels broad and simple, when your readers click on them, they'll be brought to several posts about the same category rather than just one or two posts. Not to mention, if someone is drawn to your blog via a specific post, such as a recipe, if they're interested in searching for more recipes, they can click on your label, "recipe," and it'll display all of your recipes. It would be ineffective if you only use the label for the name of your recipe because that label wouldn't lead them anywhere else. 
DON'T USE A LABEL THAT YOU'LL NEVER USE AGAIN Having too many labels will crowd your label list. Also, readers will get easily overwhelmed by the amount of labels they have to sift through to find a certain subject. For example, if you're doing a book review, I wouldn't recommend using the title of the book as one of the labels. Instead, just use "books" or "book reviews." This way, people who are interested in the topic of books can simply click on that label and see all of the posts you've written in that category. 
DISPLAY YOUR LABELS If you plan on using labels at all, I would highly recommend having the "labels" gadget on your sidebar or at the bottom of your blog layout. If users want to look for posts of a certain category, having all of your labels readily available will give your readers easy access to the topics you write most about. A screenshot of my labels are below, but you can also scroll to the bottom of layout and view them there as well. 

Do you use labels on your blog posts? What other tips do you have for using labels?