Pro tip: finding information on this site

My goal when starting this blog was to write the kind of blog I would want to read, and part of that project has been the fact that I almost never repeat the same information twice. If I were an affiliate blogger I might find excuses to repeat the same tired cliches, but since my only goal is to write the best blog I can possibly write, I'm content with explaining just once why Club Carlson points are so valuable.

One drawback to this approach is that new readers may not realize that their questions have already been answered here on the blog, so they end up asking the same questions or making mistakes that could be avoided if they knew better.

This is surely especially common for readers who subscribe to the blog's RSS feed or have each new post e-mailed to them, rather than reading them on my actual website. Those readers may miss two powerful tools to find additional information about topics that interest them: the search field and tags.

"My blog has a search function"

I feel like I say this at least once a week on Twitter to readers who don't immediately understand something that I'm trying to sum up in 140 characters. If you have a question about a topic like freezing your IDA and ARS credit reports, you can pop over to the search field found at the top of the sidebar on every page, and type in "IDA." The first hit will tell you step-by-step how to freeze your IDA and ARS credit reports before applying for US Bank credit cards.

Almost every post is tagged

Sometime the search field won't get you the precise information you're looking for. At times like that, you can also search for "tags." If you're reading a post about a topic that's interesting, you can click on one of the tags at the bottom of that post to find more about the same topics. If you already know what topic you're looking for, for example all posts about Club Carlson, you can also do a command/ctrl-F search for the bank, card, or product you're interested in, and click the entry in the seemingly-endless list of tags found at the bottom of the sidebar on each page:

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I have no idea by what principle these tags are ordered, but the important thing is they're easily searched for and found.

Most, but not all, of my posts are more-or-less meticulously tagged, so if you can't find information using one method, you might have more success trying the other.

Conclusion

It sometimes seems that some of my readers think I have some incredible secrets I'm saving for myself, while in truth virtually everything I know is here on the blog. I simply don't have any interest in rehashing techniques that I've already covered and that have changed little in the intervening months or years. Learning about those techniques is as simple as exploring the multiple tools (in addition to Google!) I've provided for your convenience.