display the number of posts using a tag in the sidebar?

Hello,

I’m trying to use a snippet I found on this post display post count to make a list of tags used (wrapped in a hrefs) the amount they are used and display it in my sidebar.
Here is a link to my site, the Tags section is near the bottom of the sidebar gtsb

The snippet I found that user and moderator Mark / t31os posted on that topic is this:

<?php
	// Select all the post tag IDs
	$the_tags = $wpdb->get_col("SELECT term_id
	FROM $wpdb->term_taxonomy WHERE taxonomy = 'post_tag'" );

	// Loop over each ID, and grab associated data
	foreach($the_tags as $tag_id) {
		// Get information on the post tag
		$post_tag = get_term( $tag_id, 'post_tag' );
		// Print the tag name and count (how many posts have this tag)
		echo $post_tag->name.' ( '.$post_tag->count.' )  ';
		// Unset the data when it's not needed
		unset($post_tag);
	}
	?>

I did a minor visual adjustment to the brackets and wrapped it in this:

<div class="sbtags">
<?php
	// Select all the post tag IDs
	$the_tags = $wpdb->get_col("SELECT term_id
	FROM $wpdb->term_taxonomy WHERE taxonomy = 'post_tag'" );

	// Loop over each ID, and grab associated data
	foreach($the_tags as $tag_id) {
		// Get information on the post tag
		$post_tag = get_term( $tag_id, 'post_tag' );
		// Print the tag name and count (how many posts have this tag)
		echo $post_tag->name.'<span>('.$post_tag->count.')</span>';
		// Unset the data when it's not needed
		unset($post_tag);
	}
	?>

• What would I need to do to get each tag result (not the number) wrapped in a link? (that link I would assume would go to search.php?… ).
• A couple bonuses that would be nice (if it’s not to much reworking of the code) would be to limit the list to a certain amount of tags (perhaps the 15 most used?), and wrap each in an for semantic purposes.

Thanks in advance for any help!