Categories and Tags on Your Blog: How to Use Them the Right Way

You’re about to publish a new blog post. You’ve nailed the content, made it look great, optimized it for SEO (H2s, bold text, title, meta description, a clean URL) – heck, you even added alt text to all the images.

You’re all set to hit “publish” when suddenly you notice a blank field: “tags.” What should you put in there? How do tags work on a blog, and how are they different from categories?

Let’s break it down.

A lot of bloggers treat tags like just another spot to stuff in keywords, hoping it’ll somehow affect web traffic positively. Well… I hate to break it to those guys but that’s not how tag works. Using tags to your advantage requires you to plan out a clear strategy first.

Before getting into how to use tags right, you need to understand what tags actually are.

? Fun fact: tags were around even before blogging was a thing. And the internet’s ultimate source of wisdom says a tag is…

Tags are everywhere – databases, social media, and of course, blogs. They make it super easy to filter content by specific topics. On a blog, they help users find exactly what they’re looking for without having to dig through every post. But wait – don’t categories do that too?

Well, yes and no. Categories and tags are two separate ways to organize your content. You can use both together, but if you don’t set up a clear system, it can turn into a cluttered mess fast, which can hurt your blog’s SEO rankings.

If your website is a full-on blog or content aggregator (like one focused on food, books, or movies) and not just an add-on for an online store or service, organizing your content properly becomes even more important. In this case, categories and tags play a crucial role in helping users navigate the website.

? Example: Imagine you’re looking for pasta or pizza recipes with a traditional Italian vibe. If you land on a blog with hundreds of recipes from all around the world, finding the right one can feel overwhelming. The chances are you’ll lose interest and visit another website. But if the blog is organized with clear categories like “Italian Cuisine,” “Polish Cuisine,” “Mexican Cuisine,” and so on, it’s easy to find exactly what you need without any hassle.

We’ve done something similar on our blog. Since we cover topics like SEO tips, Google Ads strategies, industry news, and updates from Delante, we created a well-structured category system. You’ll find it in a tag cloud at the top of our blog section, making it simple to find articles on specific topics related to what we do.

It’s not just users who benefit from well-organized content – good categorization can seriously amp up your analytical game too.

When you create categories or tags on your blog, you’re basically building an extra directory of URLs, which is super helpful for tracking performance in analytics tools.

Indeed, if you want to see how much traffic a specific category is generating, it’s as easy as plugging in the right URL into your SEO tools.

Plus, when you analyze the website crawl of a blog with categories, you can easily filter results and draw insights about different types of content.

⚠️ But here’s the catch: doing so can lead to some pretty long URLs, and that’s not exactly user-friendly.

Every time you add a tag, it creates a new page that lists all the posts associated with that tag – typically featuring titles, images, and short previews. If you just slap on tags without thinking, you could end up with a ton of them over time. In other words…

If your tags have the same names as categories or posts, you’re setting yourself up for keyword cannibalization. Search engines will have no clue which page to rank higher: the individual post or the tag page that groups all those related posts. This will cause your rankings to bounce around since both pages might show up in search results at different times.

Another common mistake is using a bunch of similar tags for the same articles. If you assign the same posts to two different tags, you’ll end up with two pages that contain the exact same content – hello, duplicate content! That’s a one-way ticket to more search ranking headaches.

Being careless with tags can lead to duplicate pages or overlap between tag and category pages. On the flip side, if you only use a tag once, it generates a page that only serves as a preview for a single post. The more – let’s call them – single-use tags you have, the more low-value pages you create. Even worse, if you slap multiple tags on a post that you never use again, you’re just cluttering your blog with a few more pages that don’t add any real value.

Are tags really the enemy we should avoid? Not quite! They weren’t created for no reason. To really get a handle on their purpose, you need to understand how they differ from categories.

Perceive categories are your go-to way to organize content on your blog. They’re a super precise method that lets you create a wide, hierarchical layout – think categories and subcategories. Just a glance at the categories on a blog tells you right away what it’s all about.

The number of categories really depends on how big your blog is, but usually, if you’re not writing about everything and nothing, you should stick to just a few. You can think of them like a table of contents in a book.

On the flip side, tags are all about giving a more detailed and flat description of your blog content. By flat, I mean they don’t have a hierarchical structure.

Tags have two main functions:

• First, they describe the content, giving users and search engine bots a clue about the topic.
• Second, they let you group posts together, no matter what category they fall into.

? Example: If you’re running a food blog, you might create categories like breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, work meals, and desserts. Then for tags, you’d use the main ingredients you’re using to whip up those dishes. But don’t go creating a tag for every single ingredient. I mean, think about what you’d find under the tag “salt”…

Categories on your blog can also come with their own set of pitfalls – just like tags. This is especially important to keep in mind for websites where the blog serves as a module that supports services or provides extra info for users.

Just like with tags, this can create confusion and make it hard for search engines to know which page to prioritize. So, it’s crucial to be strategic with your categories to avoid stepping on your own toes!

If you use a WordPress-based website, you can find the section for your blog categories on the left side of the dashboard, under the Posts menu.

This is where you can

• create a new category,
• set its name and URL, and
• even add a description.

In this section, you can also edit existing blog category pages. It’s pretty straightforward and gives you all the tools you need to keep your content organized!

When you create a new post, you can easily select (or add a new) blog category right from the panel on the right side of the editor. Any new category you create will show up in that section we talked about earlier. It makes organizing your content so much easier for everybody.

? Keep in mind that even a well-thought-out list of tags on your blog will grow as you create more content. That’s why it’s super important to plan out a system for categorizing and tagging your posts in advance.

Trust me, you definitely want to avoid situations where you have tags that only apply to a single post or where multiple posts share exactly the same tags. A little foresight goes a long way in keeping your blog organized!

It’s a smart move to create a unique description for each category and tag, as this boosts the variety of content on your tag/category archive pages.

Also, don’t forget to update your meta data too! Well-crafted descriptions on category pages will help search engine bots understand what the content is about. Plus, nicely described categories can help you generate more views and traffic on your website!

Moreover, take a moment to check how your theme displays posts on these pages. If full posts are showing up, consider making some changes to display only excerpts instead.

Another piece of advice: If you use tags, make sure a list of tags associated with the content appears with each post. Not all themes have this option by default, so it’s worth tweaking your setup, especially since you’ve already organized your tags and created their descriptions.

You might also want to think about using a tag cloud that present the most frequently used tags, similar to the category structure we talked about on the Delante blog. This feature can really help users browse through your content and find what interests them the most.

By following these tips, your tag and category pages will effectively group your content. Each of these elements will show different lists of excerpts, allowing you to create additional pages filled with valuable and diverse content, while also strengthening your internal linking.

Remember, you run your blog primarily for your readers, not for search engine bots. If you design it with usability and user-friendliness in mind, it’ll also pay off in terms of SEO. Think of your blog writing as a book that keeps growing new pages continuously.

1. Choose your blog categories wisely to show clearly the content you’ve created.
2. Use tags to connect posts across different categories, making the navigation easier.

And don’t forget: you’re not stuck with your initial method of organizing posts. Feel free to make changes, but if you do, just remember to set up redirects to the new URLs.

If you need help with your website or are worried about keyword cannibalization due to your current structure, reach out to us! We’ll conduct a comprehensive SEO audit of your website, analyzing your tag and category structure, and create a content plan that caters to the different types of posts you publish.