Imagine entering a library and finding all the books lying in a pile on the floor. How would you find what you were looking for? If you are not using your blog categories and tags effectively you might as well be building that pile of books on the floor. Libraries use a cataloging system that makes it easy to search out information on the topics that interest you, and your blog should use a catalog system too.
So What Are Blog Categories?
Categories are the main way to organize your blog posts. Your categories should be created based on the broad topics that your blog covers. Categories can be organized in a hierarchy so that you can create sub-categories under your main topics.
It works well to think of your categories list as a table of contents for your blog. It is an overview of the major areas of information on your blog. TIP – If you are too specific in your blog categories, you may fall into the trap of creating a category for almost every blog post. The whole point of categories is to group like content together – not keep it separate.
So What Are Blog Tags?
Blog tags should be considered the index for your blog. This is where you should get specific about the content of each blog post. Tags tend to be one or two words long and are used to describe the topics or key points of interest in the blog post.
TIP – It is important to reuse the same (identical) blog tags, so that related articles become connected. Tags are case sensitive so the tags “Email Marketing”, and “email marketing” are two separate tags. Keep consistent on how you tag by making use of the “Most Used Tags” function.
Both tags and categories are important for search engine optimization so it is important that you are using them effectively.
If you have questions about using categories or tags on your WordPress blog, or if you have any other WordPress questions feel free to email me.
