One of the most discussed topics we see when attending WordCamps and other events is what’s better for SEO: categories vs tags? What’s the difference between categories and tags? What’s the optimal number of WordPress categories? How many is too many? Is it okay to assign one post in multiple categories? Is there a limit of tags we can assign to each post? Do tags work like meta keywords? Are there any SEO advantage of using categories over tags or vice versa? We’ve seen quite a few commentaries on this subject through out the web, but we found that they were inconsistent and incomplete. If you ever had these questions, then hopefully they will be answered once you are done reading this post, so you can make adjustments to your blog if necessary.
Before we discuss any of the questions listed above, we need to understand what is categories and tags. In the WordPress nomenclature, both categories and tags are known as taxonomies. Their sole purpose is to sort your content to improve the usability of your site. Meaning when a user comes to your site, they can easily browse through your content by topic rather than browsing chronologically which is how blogs were initially setup.
What’s the difference between Categories and Tags?
Categories are meant for broad grouping of your posts. Think of these as general topics or the table of contents for your site. Categories are there to help identify what your blog is really about. It is to assist readers finding the right type of content on your site. Categories are hierarchical, so you can sub-categories.
Tags are meant to describe specific details of your posts. Think of these as your site’s index words. They are the micro-data that you can use to micro-categorize your content. Tags are not hierarchical.
For example if you have a personal blog where you write about your life. Your categories can be something like: Music, Food, Travel, Rambling, and Books. Now when you write a post about something that you ate, you will add it in the Food category. You can add tags like pizza, pasta, steak etc.
One of the biggest difference between tags and categories is that you MUST categorize your post. You are not required to add any tags. If you do not categorize your post, then it will be categorized under the “uncategorized” category. People often rename the uncategorized category to something like Other, ramblings etc.
Another difference is the way your category and tags permalinks (urls) look. If you are using a custom permalink (URL) structure, then your base prefix will look different. Example:
http://yoursite.com/category/food/
vs.
http://yoursite.com/tag/food/
What’s the optimal number of WordPress categories?
Up until WordPress 2.5, there was no built-in support for tags. This led to very long category lists because people were using it to define micro-details. Tags were added to improve the usability of your site. Having that said, we believe there is no specific optimal number of categories. The optimal number varies based on the complexity of your site. However, for the sake of structure and usability, it is best that you utilize sub-categories and tags.
Categories are meant to encompass a group of posts. It is always best to start with generic categories and work your way down with subcategories as your site grow. After having run multiple blogs, we have learnt that blogs evolve. There is no way that you can come up with all the right categories. Chances are when starting out, you are only writing one post a day. Or maybe 3-5 posts a day. Having 30 top categories is pointless specially when some of them will only have one or two posts. You are better off with 5 generic categories that have fresh content rather than 30 top categories where majority are not updated.
Let’s take a look at an example. Say that we are starting a social media blog in 2012. We want to share how-to tutorials, news, tools, case studies etc. We can create top categories like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn etc. As sub categories of each, we can have tools, how-to’s, case studies, news etc. However that is a very short-term mindset, and we will run into issues in the future. What if one of the social media network dies and a new one enters the game? You will be required to add yet another top level category and more sub-categories.
A much better way of structuring this social media blog would be to have top categories that are future-proof. You can have your categories like How-To’s, News, Case Studies, Tools, etc. But how would people know that it is about twitter? Well your categories are not suppose to do the entire job. This is where tags come in. Let’s say you wrote a how-to post about twitter, simply add the tag twitter. In your design just add a section called Popular Topics and control that manually with links to popular tags like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc.
When do you add Subcategories?
Let’s say that you do a case-study posts where sometimes you interviewed an expert for a specific case-study. Because there is no category called “expert interviews”, you will add that as a tag on that case-study post. If you find yourself doing a lot of interviews for case-studies and your expert interviews tag has 10+ posts in it and is consistently growing, then you should consider adding expert interviews as a sub-category of your main category “Case Studies”.
Yes, you will have to go back and edit your older posts. If your URL structure is /category/postname/, then you have make sure you are using the Redirection plugin. It automatically redirects your modified posts to their new URL, so you can keep all the search engine rankings.
Do I have to use sub-categories?
No ofcourse not. You can always leave popular tags as tags. In our example above, almost all posts will have a tag for a specific social media network like twitter, facebook, etc. But we are not creating those as categories. The only reason why you add sub-categories is to make it easy for your users to find the content. You are more than welcome to simply add the Expert Interviews tag in your site somewhere.
Remember the whole purpose of categories and tags are to make it easy for your users to browse your site.
Is it okay to assign one post to multiple categories?
You might read on other sites that assigning posts to multiple categories can hurt your SEO. Some say that you can get penalized with duplicate content because of that. We believe that statement is not entirely true. First of all, don’t get lost with SEO. Remember the purpose of sorting your content efficiently is to help users find it. By the nature of how top categories should be setup, you shouldn’t be able to classify one post into multiple top-level categories. For example, if your blog has three categories “Advertising, Marketing, and SEO”. Your posts often tend to fall into multiple categories. Perhaps you need an umbrella category for all three? Maybe they should all fall under Business? Or you can have one category called Advertising & Marketing. Then have SEO as a sub-category for those.
There is no SEO benefits to adding multiple categories. If you think it helps your users, then you are more than welcome to add one post into multiple categories. However, if you see this becoming a regular issue, then you should consider restructuring your categories. Maybe some of your categories need to be tags. Or maybe they should be subcategories of one major category. It is mainly about making the user experience better.
If you are super concerned about duplicate content penalty, then simply (noindex, follow) your category taxonomy using the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin.
If you only want to (noindex, follow) specific categories, then you can do so by editing the category themselves. Yoast plugin has the setting to override the global settings.
Basically when you (noindex, follow) certain thing, it tells Google and other search engine bots to follow all post links in these categories, so all posts can be indexed. However do not index the main category archives to prevent duplicate content.
Short answer: WordPress allows you to add one post into as many categories as you like. Yes it is okay to assign one post into multiple categories as long as you think it helps your users. However, if you think of categories as Table of Contents for your blog where posts are chapters, then can you have one chapter in two separate sections? The answer to that question is NO.
Is there a limit of tags we can assign to each post?
Short answer to this question is NO. WordPress has NO limits on the number of tags you can assign to a specific post. You can add 1000+ tags if you like. However, the purpose of tags is to relate your posts together. Again think of tags as the index or your book. These are popular keywords that you can use to loosely relate your posts. This makes it easy for users to find your posts specially when they are using the WordPress search. It also helps if you are utilizing the tag archive for users. We say add no more than 10 tags to your posts unless you can justify it. For example: if you are running a movie review blog, you may add multiple tags: actor/actress names (this alone can be over 10). But chances are that you may review multiple movies that have Adam Sandler in it. But for other simpler scenarios, you should really limit the amount of tags you use. Otherwise, you may find yourself with over 10000+ tags with only 300 posts on the site.
Do tags work like meta keywords?
Often people mistake tags to be like meta keywords for your blogs. This is the main reason why they try to add as many tags as possible. Tags are NOT meta keywords for your blog. At least not by default. Popular plugins like WordPress SEO by Yoast allows you to use your tag values to be in the meta keywords template. But if you don’t have these plugins configured to do that, then your tags DO NOT work like meta keywords.
Categories vs Tags: What’s better for SEO?
The most asked question that we see being asked on this topic is: Are there any SEO advantage of using categories over tags or vice versa? The simple answer to this is NO. You should NOT look at this as categories or taxonomies. They are meant to work together. If you have read this post, then you should be able to understand the individual purpose of categories and tags as well as their combined purpose for your site’s usability.
Conclusion
Your site is about your users not search engine bots. The goal of every search engine is to think the way users think when valuing your content. If you make your decisions based on usability, you will almost always find yourself reaping the SEO benefits. Categories and Tags are just the two default taxonomies that comes with WordPress. Most advanced sites use custom taxonomies for sorting their content alongside with categories and tags. Think of your blog as an ever evolving book. Choose the Table of Content (categories) wisely. Make sure that they are broad topics, but be cautious to not make it too vague. Use tags to loosely relate multiple posts. If you see a certain tag is becoming popular, then consider adding it as a sub-category. However, if you have to add the tag as subcategory of multiple top-level categories, then leave it as a tag. The goal is always to make the site as user friendly as possible.
We hope that this article helps clear any and all confusion when it comes to the topic of categories vs tags. We would love to hear your thoughts on this matter. How do you sort your content? what best practices do you follow?
Thank you so much for your work. and here is my question:
I hope I am getting this right point. I need to tell search engine to not index my tags. why? They have the juice of my content!
My competitor is ranking high with his tags not categories! I am sure if he noindex his tags he will loose all of his traffic. Why are tags bringing good traffic while categories not? There is something not clear about noindex for tags.
You can choose to index your tags instead of categories. It is your personal preference. Remember that the goal is to organize your site.
Great article! I was hoping for some advice. I run a blog for a bar chain with 12 locations. So say my category would be Cityname Nightlife. Would you suggest making a Nightlife category with the cities as subcategories, or 12 categories of Cityname Nightlife? (there are other terms I want to do this for besides nightlife)
I appreciate your help
It really depends on how you want to structure your site. If you want to show content by cities, then make cities the parent category. If you want to show topics as the main thing and let users pick their cities secondary… then make cities a sub category.
Please I cannot believe the information I have found on this website. It was so well explained in that I was like watching a video tutorial. I had read alot of information from other websites, but they all failed to explain the meaning of categories and tags or pages. It only here where I have found clear info.
Thanks for the great tutorial
Hi it is very informative
but i am just wondering to know how multiple taxonomies wil work for SEOs, for user i need to create 4 -5 taxonomies to attache with a custom post type for databse type project where user can filter the data within multiple taxonomies.
is it will also make effect on SEO , and will create a duplicate content issues.
please suggest
regards
Just set noindex, follow tags for all the other taxonomies. Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin has the option to do so.
Very helpful article. Do have a question:
Currently, in Yoast, I have” title template” for tag + categ are populated with (%%term_title%% Archives %%page%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%), while “meta description template” is (%%category_description%%) and (%%tag_description%%) respectively. I should point out that it’s a new blog with no real content just yet and my goal is to have elements set up correctly for smooth sailing. That said, as categories and tags get added, do I need to be filling out their descriptions so that yoast’s “description templates” pull that info? What is the benefit of naming categories? Lastly, if I don’t name and with my current set up, what would a search result end up looking like (what will meta be?)
Thanks in advance!
R
Yes it is helpful to add category description if you want that category to rank for certain keywords. Most folks don’t add that because they don’t care enough. Some folks noindex their categories if they don’t think category archive is related.
It really depends on what you are trying to do with your site, and how you are using categories. On WPBeginner, we have meta description for our categories.
Thanks for this great informative post. A lot of confusion related to categories and tags have been cleared. But I have a small question regarding categories. When I am entering my site’s name in Google search bar, the category archive links are also showing in search result. So my question is how to remove those category archive links from search result and is it required to remove those links from the search result. I am quite confused regarding this.
I am using Yoast WordPress SEO as my blogs SEO plugin..
You can noindex the category archives from Yoast’s plugin settings if you like.
Awesome insight you have, I was just about to strip category base from my url! I am still confused whether should I do it or not ?
It’s really a personal preference. We wouldn’t recommend it though because we have had some issues with redirects if your post/page and category slug are similar. It’s really weird.
I read the whole article carefully and comments as well. what i personally learn is that
Tags should be – > No Index , Follow
Categories should be – Index, Follow
Also try to put you post in just one category. This is I personally follow and implement.
Is I am right and going in right directon ? Please reply editorial staff !
That’s a good practice.
It’s nice to see that the concept of creating sites for the people, not the search engines, is prevailing again. I am so fed up with people seeing their sites as search engine results. Furthermore, the irony in that case is that sites built with SE’s in mind usually does not rank as well as a user-friendly, (useful!) content-rich site.
Hi!
I’m getting crazy with the problem of categories in my blog. The fact is that there are posts that I want to put into 2 categories. People told me that Google doesn’t penalize for this but could not index one of them. So, do I have to index categories or not? What do you suggest?
Thanks a lot
Just noindex, follow your categories.
Thanks a lot! Just the last question…if I noindex the categories, will my articles be index?
Yes. It will only noindex the category archive pages. It will still follow all of your articles and index them.
Thanks very much to make things clear.
The information you provided on these topics for my Steel City Artist website was very helpful and the most informative that I came across this evening. Thank you!
really nice tips for new blogger as in my blogs i will have to cut down categories
Thanks for the wonderful information!!! It now makes sense!!!
I have been trying to make sense of this for quite a while. This really helped, many thanks.
Nice post, thanks for the useful information.
Great article…I’ve been thinking about my tags and categories for my new blog and this definitely gives me some clarity. Thank you!
Thank you for this very helpful article. I am in the process of restructuring my categories and using them as a Table of Contents has been a great insight. I have way too many categories and will now pair them down to the core of what my site is about and use tags like an index. Brilliant
Thanks!
Thanks for posting this. I’m still undecided on whether or not to use tags for my blog. Really liked the “noindex, follow” tip!
This article was a big help for me as a beginner. I was hoping to see a sample website identifying the use of categories, subcategories, and posts. Just a suggestion. Thanks
Thank you! I didn’t really understand the point of tags. I’ve learned so much on this site already. Thank you for sharing so much information. It’s so clear and easy to understand.
In regards to putting one post in multiple categories there is nothing wrong with it SEO wise. Personally, I have done this a number of times and didn’t even both noindexing the tags and categories.
On tags just make sure you’re adding relevant tags. If the words are not in your body then I wouldn’t bother don’t add them as a tag.
Also, for all your SEO gurus out there don’t get to hung up on noindexing these as I run a number of sites and my SEOmoz Pro account tells me there is 1000+ duplicate content. However, Google is smart enough to tell article “A” is also found in your tags and category. In this case Google will rank your article over the tags or category. If you find Google ranking otherwise then you might want to think about no indexing the culprit tags or categories.
I retweeted this article
Garen
I like to think of categories as type of posts: review, rant, tutorial, etc. Then, I use tags to fill in the content of that review or rant
On the subject of tags – I’m a big believer in using nouns for tagging blog posts. You don’t have to think as hard — just pull them from the content! I also think users are more inclined to search for nouns than adjectives or verbs or anything else.
Heya!
Another great little feature when using Yoast’s WordPress SEO?
Unless you have a well thought out, very specific reason for displaying a specific word as your category designation–use the WordPress SEO plugin to automatically strip that out of the URLs that get printed on your pages.
By default, WordPress will display, usually /category/, for your category pages. Something along these lines:
Your-Awesome-Website.com/category/actual-category-name/post-name/
However, hold the show!
Go to your WordPress admin area, scroll down and click on the “SEO” menu item and find the “Permalinks” sub-menu link. The very first check box option should be:
“Strip the category base (usually /category/) from the category URL.”
And that will remove that somewhat superfluous “/category/” from the URL, leaving (in our example above):
Your-Awesome-Website.com/actual-category-name/post-name/
(The above URL examples assume your awesome permlink structure was set to show /%category%/%post_name%/)
Cheers!
We do NOT recommend removing the category base. It will cause issues with permalinks. We tried it on another site, and it was not fun fixing it.
Thanks for an excellent post. In confirmed that categories are for helping the users to make sense out of my blog. I’m still not very keen to include the tag could into a widget. I just don’t like the look of it. (I do use tags, but if they’re not meta keywords, and I am not displaying them, what is the point of having them?)
It helps with WordPress search.
This is a very comprehensive post about those damn categories and tags. Really helped formulise the issues in my mind and cleared up a few things, also Im beginning to see why people favour Yoast rather than all in one seo. great work thank you, I shall share within my community.
Thanks for this nice article Syed bro. I ahve a question that relates to this thing.
I am using Yoast SEO plugin which employs item scope and such schema n breadcrumbs by which my Google representation of URLs changes to something like this
Subject => Post Title
URL => domain.com › Writings › NEWS
Is it good for SEO or bad?
One thing I noticed is if the keyword is in my url then it is not being displayed by this method.
What do you suggest?
A well elaborated article about a very big misconception. Thanks for guiding us in a beautiful way.
I have seen articles that say to no index the tags to prevent duplicate content. Based on this article, should I conclude that may be a bad idea?
Brian as the article states, you are more than welcome to noindex, follow the tags or any other taxonomy. However, we don’t think it makes a huge difference unless ofcourse you have full-post content on all of your archive pages (which is not a good idea to begin with).
Thanks for a great article. I use both Categories and Tags and it looks like I am doing it right! But always room for improvement!
Thanks for this awesome explanation. Well, actually I will still go maintaining one category per post. WHY? Simply because even Matt Cutts already made an explanation out of it. It is better to make that way than using multiple number of categories. And yes it is true that using multiple categories is simply making multiple copies of your articles.
Nonetheless, I don’t believe that it has a huge impact if you have been doing it before and just retained it. Google has so many factors to consider the ranking. That is just one… so there is not much to worry about if you are not able to rework on your categories.
Yup. Like we say in the article, you shouldn’t have to use multiple categories. If you find yourself doing that, then your categories need restructuring. You can have multiple categories under the condition that the other category is a sub-category of your parent category.
My strategy behind categories and tags is common sense. Categories should group the posts into certain data sets and tags should act as filters or short catchy headings to further define nature of your posts and or tempt/attract users to click on them to read more.
Categories should have proper meta tags and reflect the nature of posts. Tags on other hand should have noindex attribute to them, that should be mandatory to people who like to add tons of tags. This shall save them hassle of cleaning up their mess in the long run.
Well explained WPB!
i uses Category with custom permalink to sort out the topics on my blogs.
Like this one:
http://www.wpbeginner.com/topic/wp-tutorials/
well, personally I also like to use tags
due to short permalink 
Remember, these tags and categories are not for you. They are for your users. Make your decisions wisely.
is it ok to convert category into tag?
i recently did this…
Yes it is totally ok to do that. Just make sure that you 301 redirect your category urls to that tag url.
Oh no.. i didnt do this … let me google… can u tell me method how i can do this?
I Think using tag is better overall
This is an excellent article – the best that I’ve read on the topic. Thank you for using clear and hype-free language to explain this complicated topic