Making Sense of Tags & Categories

Writing a blog post is pretty easy, right? You can find all kinds of blogging platforms with “what you see is what you get” editors (WYSIWYG) that mimic the look of a word processor. It seems that all you have to do is type and publish!

Well, writing a post and putting it on the internet might be easy… but what about using tags and categories? Now, I know that for some of you, this is where things get a little difficult.

Here’s my two cents on the subject:

Categories

I think that is is very easy to get carried away with the categories feature. I have seen blogs with 200+ different categories! That’s a bit much. Categories are supposed to help people find blog posts about specific things on your blog, not overwhelm them.

Depending on your blog’s layout, your categories might display in a sub nav bar under your main nav bar. If not, you can enter in a bit of code and make it display, but I don’t want to get into anything too technical here. (You can always Google that if you want the code and find some tutorials.) Another option is to use a widget to display your categories over on the sidebar. OR you can just not display them at all. It’s up to you.

If you choose not to display them, it is still important to use them on each posts, as it can help with your SEO (search engine optimization). It will help the search engines figure out what your post is about.

Tags

Tags can be used a bit more freely than categories, as they won’t be displayed all together for your readers to try and choose from. Think of them as little “keywords” for your post. Again, using them will help with your SEO efforts, AND they can also help your readers pinpoint things easier if they use the search function on your blog.

Real Life Example:

Let’s say you are a virtual assistant and you wrote a post on time management tips for freelancers. Depending on the categories you have chosen, it might fall under “work at home” or “business tips.” You can also tag this post with things such as “time management,” “organization,” “freelancers,” “work at home,” etc.

Above all, do NOT get overwhelmed by categories and tags. They are there to help make things easier, not confuse you. Sometimes, when people feel like they are not doing something right (like using tags or categories) they stop blogging all together. Don’t let that happen. Just keep blogging and keep playing with your tags and categories. Eventually, it will get easier and things will fall into place.

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