- Do you input 50 different tags to compliment your post?
- Use “blog,” “blogs,” and “blogging” as a tag every time you post?
- List “WordPress” as a tag simply because you’re using that blogging platform?
- Add random things that have nothing to do whatsoever with the content of your post itself as a tag?
- Put flashes of thought or sudden inspiration in that little box labeled tags?
I’ve seen way too many WordPress blogs with a long list of tags for each post. Even I have Are Tags Working For You?.
Categories are your blog’s table of contents. Tags are your blog’s index words.
Categories are large groupings of related articles, and tags are the micro-categories, keywords that describe the content within your blog post.
That’s the basis in which we need to create our tags.
I have quite a few ” title=”WordPress Topics”> WordPress.
What’s that telling me about posts that are related to this post? That’s the question you should ask yourself when thinking of tag names. We need to narrow the field down a little bit because there are many things that could go under the WordPress category, such as “plugins,” “themes,” and “custom fields.”
I like to think of tags as “your blog’s index words.” That’s the best way to describe it.
Example:
I have a category named ” title=”Tag Archives”> tag archives start taking shape.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to go back and change all your tags in your old posts. That’ll just take too long. One thing you could do is update your tags in important posts, reader favorites, or highly commented posts. At least start helping readers find your best content.
Do you have any strategy that you use when listing tags? How do you use tags to get readers to related content?
Justin, great post! You did a great job explaining how to best make use of tags and categories – thanks for the tips.
Thanks Travis. It will be an ongoing experiment for me, just as putting together a solid group of categories. I’m going to try to put my money where my mouth is when it comes to tags.
Thanks. We need to get this right. Or the whole blogosphere will become irrelevant. Much like the old keyword meta tags. GD.
Hi,
What do you make of the following case. I have, besides categories, also sub-categories. For a long time, I wanted to share sub category-names/items over several categories, so:
* US
** Military defeats
** Military stalemates
* France
** Military defeats
** Militray stalemates
However, with categories, this is not possible, as Military defeats would only be subcategory for one higher level category.
So I moved on to tags. However, tags have no organization whatsoever. The it would just become an arbitrary list of items, France, US, Georgia, Defeats, losses, etc. But I’m looking for something in between there. I wont to have the hierarchical of tags – because I have a lot of categories, and I like to fold them – but I also want to share sub-categories, which then would become tags, so maybe a possibility to categorize tags?
See my site for a more live example. Some companies are French, some of them German, but then they are also companies, so they fall in both these categories or tags…
Geoff
We sure do need to get it right. Here it is months later, and I’m still trying to think up a great tag strategy.
Daniel
You definitely have too many categories. Seeing that many categories from a user’s perspective is just daunting sometimes. Of course, it’s also neatly organized, which you don’t get with tags.
I haven’t really stepped into organizing tags yet. I’m sure there’s got to be some good plugins or tutorials for organizing tags for your users. WordPress 2.5 should have a manage tags page in your admin panel, which will at least help you behind the scenes.
Mostly, I was referring to getting your users to check out other posts from a single post’s page by using informative tag names but not overdoing it with too many tags. Only use the ones you need.
I am just starting to get a hang of tags. One thing not mentioned is a tag can help a searcher find the right post. Well thought out tags can lead to higher traffic if they match low-competition phrases.
But how many of those can you stuff in one place? Good question.
I have just recently setup another new blog and tags became a subject which I needed to know more about. Your post clears some things up for me, and I will have to consider cleaning up my other blog as far as tags.
What I have noticed is that many A list bloggers seem to be dropping tags all together. Has anybody noticed this and know what the reason might be for this movement? I have a few ideas, but just wanted to see if anybody else has some input to it.
I like how you have simplified this topic. People ask me all the time how many tags, what to use etc. I’ve been likening Categories to Chapters in a book, and tags to the word index in the back. I like how you put it even better!
AJ