WordPress Tags vs Categories
This post is based on my personal experiences and I will share my experiences openly so that you can equally benefit by using ‘smart categories’. It wouldn’t be unfair to say ‘wordpress tags’ are ‘smart categories’ and to an extent, we can say ‘tags’ are ‘categories’. Listing a few common questions that came across my mind when I was new to WordPress.
Why should I use tags in my posts?
What is the use of tags?
How many tags are good to provide for each post?
How can tags help me get more traffic?
When you installed your wordpress blog, you must have thought deeply about categories you wish to keep on your blog. We all spend enough time in planning what sort of categories would be best for the blog. However, most of the time, we just skip thinking about tags. Honestly, how many times you ‘ever’ clicked on the tab above the Category tab in your wordpress admin panel? I can bet, very few people define tags as they setup a new blog. It is very important to define tags just like you define categories. Why? Please continue reading to find out why. I will include a few examples to make it clear.
Lets say you setup a brand new blog and your blog is about ‘Latest News’. So you would probably include these categories:
Business, Entertainment, Health, Science, Sports, Technology, Travel, U.S. News, World News, etc.
These would be the main categories, however, we fully understand that there is a lot more than just those Categories. You may think about using sub-categories, so for example, we talk about the category ‘Technology’ and create a few sub-categories under Technology.
Technology -
- Computers
- Gadgets
- Gaming
We have now drilled down Technology category to sub-categories. However, the sub-category in this case ‘Computers’ in itself is a sub-category that can have many other sub-sub-categories. You can’t simply keep going on and on with sub-categories, sub-sub-categories, etc. After all, you want your blog to look good and not a mess of categories, sub-categories and sub-sub-categories. So, the best you can have is Categories and Sub-categories. Now what? When you start writing and adding posts, you will definitely feel that Computers sub-category is getting jammed with all sorts of computer news and you wish to do something about it so that you can differentiate Dell Computers from HP Computers, HP Computers from Gateway Computers and so on. You would really wish that you go ahead and start creating sub-sub-categories under the Computers sub-category. This is where the Tags come into picture.
What I would do in this case, define tags before I write posts so that I can create ‘smart categories’ that will get indexed in search engines just like categories. Each ‘tag’ would act like a category of its own and will represent relative content. This will ensure more traffic to your blog.
Sub-category: Computers
Tags: dell computers, hp computers, gateway computers, acer computers, ibm computers, compaq computers.
Now whenever, I write a new post related to Dell Computers, after the post, I will define tags and will use ‘dell computers’ tag for it. Similarly, when I write posts about HP computers, I will use the tag ‘hp computers’. And so on. You can assign more tags depending on ‘how many smart categories you wish to create’.
Why and how this will be helpful?
Lets say, you wrote 5 posts on Dell Computers, 5 posts on HP Computers and 5 posts on IBM Computers. All these posts will be in Technology Category > Computers Sub-Category. So, your ‘Computers’ sub-category will have 15 posts which will be about computers belonging to 3 different companies. And the category path that will get indexed in search engines would be:
http://www.devduff.com/technology/computers
Where as, with the help of ‘smart categories’/tags, the path for Dell Computers will be indexed in Search Engines like this:
http://www.devduff.com/tag/dell-computers
http://www.devduff.com/tag/hp-computers
http://www.devduff.com/tag/ibm-computers
And so on …
It may be a little hard to get better rankings on Search Engines for a sub-category like ‘Computers’. However, you may get good rankings on search engines if you use ‘smart categories’. The smart categories could be anything ‘discount computers’, ‘computers coupons’, ‘latest computers’, etc. Ranking for these combinations may be quite possible and you may get a lot of traffic if you use good tag combinations.
You can experiment using different combinations of highly searched keywords to use as tags. Probably say a keyword like ‘latest computers’ would be good enough to create smart category and list all the latest computers in that smart category. Go on, experiment a little and see for yourself that you will get a lot of traffic from search engines with the use of tags/smart-categories.
On a side note, it is not advisable to have more than 2 or 3 tags for each post. Tags are ‘very powerful’ and you should use them wisely. Secondly, it is useless to have a tag with similar name to a category or a sub-category. There is no use of running into this situation:
http://www.devduff.com/technology/computers
http://www.devduff.com/tag/computers
Can’t say that this will hurt but both of these links will have almost same content if you are using ‘computers’ tag on all posts subjected to Computers sub-category.
Tags can be used in a lot of different ways. You can use a particular tag to pickup posts from different categories and present related posts in one category. You probably already know about it by now. I will let you figure out how best you can use tags to create new smart-categories.
I hope, I was able to explain ‘how to use tags wisely’. If I was unable to explain it good enough, feel free to ask questions. If you have any better tips wordpress tags and categories, please feel free to post a comment below. You can explore other wordpress tutorials that may interest you or help you in one way or the other.
Thankyou for reading this article!
Tags: Wordpress Tutorials
useful information it was
regards
malika
What is the difference between Tags, categories and Subcategories?
I am running behind this question since more than a year to understand that. Since a year as I started my carrer as a webmaster and started writing wordpress blogs and websites, I am trying to find the proper use of Tags in a wordpress blog!
Thanks for this big and helpful post. Now I understand why tags are important and what are the differences between categories and Tags.
How many Tags must be used in a wordpress blog post?
This I will have to look yet. As I am using on some of my posts more than 10 tags. Well the tags brings traffic, that is sure. If less tags brings more traffic to my blog? I will try to find with new posts.
Neverthless, Very good blog you have here. Will try to get help here always, if I need to solve any WordPress related problems.
Marvin.
I’ve been searching for the difference between WordPress categories and tags. Your post is the first one I’ve found that explains it in plain English. I’m importing my Blogger blog to WordPress.org and want to set up the categories and tags the right way – Right from the beginning. Thank you for the Technology/Computers/Dell Computers example. Now, I just need to find the right category and tag words for my blog.
~Marilyn
Good day Marilyn,
I saw your blog, it looks gorgeous! Congrats on setting up such a beautiful blog
Glad you like this wordpress tutorial. As usual, I did forget mentioning something important. Please look out for the “slug” you use for categories, sub-categories and smart-categories/tags. Slug is a great feature and can be really helpful in making your blog URLs more effective.
For example, the link Technology/Computers/Dell-computers could also look like Technology/Computers/Latest-Dell-computers or may be Technology/Computers/Discount-Dell-computers ..
I guess, you know what I’m talking about. But please feel free to ask questions, I will be more than happy to share my experiences.
Regards,
Dev.
Dev Duff,
I am in the early stages of blog development and have been having trouble figuring out the best use of categories and tags. The issues you raised, are definitely right on the button.
Glad I found your post now, rather than later. Just looked over all my sub-categories and think they would be better as tags.
One quick question. What are you using for CAPTCHA generation? Think I should install it. As you can see, I am also using a Vladimir Prelovac theme.
Thanks for your help.
Hi Gary,
I’m happy to know that you liked this post. There is something important that we all should read. Check this post:
http://www.prelovac.com/vladim.....gory-pages
I’m not sure which SEO plugin are you using. There are two that you may use:
All-in-one SEO Pack
Platinum SEO Pack
Both are good. I prefer the later: Platinum SEO plugin. Use it to noindex the category pages.
To answer your other question, I’m using 2 different CAPTCHA plugins:
For Contact page I’m using Really Simple Captcha plugin which can be used with Contact Form 7 plugin.
For comments I’m using SI Captcha plugin. I like this plugin a lot. Easy to configure.
Your blog looks great Gary! You may like to read this post, this may help in setting up Scriptaculous slideshow on the images on right side of your blog.
Scriptaculous slideshow for blogs
If you need any help with configuring plugins or configuring the slideshow, I will be happy to assist.
Regards,
Dev Duff.
So what is more effective? Categories or tags?
I believe tags are more effective than categories. But why?
I have learn a lot from your experiences. I personally feel that tags are the much better option than categories. Tags give you the targeted traffic to you. Thanks for sharing such a valuable piece of information with us.
Although I found your article most helpful … thank you, it did raise a couple of confusing issues for me.
1. Sub-categories
My wordpress dashboard has Categories, and it has Tags. Where / How do you create Sub-categories, and then assign them to their parent Categories?
2. Following from 1. above, logically you would assign Tags to the Sub-categories (not Categories). Is this correct?
Many thanks,
Ray
Hello Ray,
Sorry for the delayed reply, here are the answers to your questions:
1. You can create sub-categories just like you create categories. When you wish to create a sub-category in a particular category, choose that category as the “Parent Category”. This is how you can create sub-categories, sub-sub-categories and so on.
2. Tags are totally separate entity and you can’t assign tags to categories or sub-categories or sub-sub-categories. To an extent, I consider tags a form of “top level categories”. So yeah, tags are a totally different entity.
Hope this answers your questions and hoping I haven’t confused you even further.
Regards.
Great article. I have a question. I have a blog on Vegas and I want to provide information on activities for families with kids. When I research keyword phrases many different keyword phrases are heavily searched ie, “Things for kids to do Vegas” “kid activities Vegas” etc.
Would it work to create a tag for both of these top search queries so that my post might rank high on either search phrase?
For example:
Vegas511.com/tag/things_for_Kids_to_do
Vegas511.com/tag/kid_activities
Especially since it is beneficial to have the exact key words in the URL.
Hi Al,
I don’t think there’s any harm in using such phrases as tags. But I would recommend using smaller tags. The second one is much better:
kid_activities_vegas
You can come up with some more tags. But if you can’t find shorter tags, try the phrases that you think may work, there’s no harm in trying things.
Secondly, Do edit your Archive.php file and there you can include more stuff related to the tags. If you dig a little deeper, you can use many functions to come up with stuff that can amaze you and your readers. Hope I haven’t confused you too much.