Os leitores sempre nos perguntam o que é melhor para SEO: categorias ou tags?
Talvez você não tenha certeza do que realmente são as categorias e tags do WordPress e de como elas são diferentes. Saber isso pode ajudá-lo a usá-las corretamente.
Neste artigo, explicaremos as diferenças entre categorias e tags para organizar seu conteúdo e como elas podem afetar as classificações de SEO.
Veja o que será abordado neste tutorial. Você pode usar os links abaixo para ir para a seção de seu interesse:
- What’s the Difference Between Categories and Tags?
- How Can You Add Categories and Tags in WordPress?
- How Many WordPress Categories Should You Have?
- Using Categories in Your Post URLs
- Can I Assign One Post to Multiple Categories?
- Is There a Limit to How Many Tags a Post Can Have?
- Categories vs Tags: What’s Better for SEO?
- Can You Control How Categories and Tags Look in Search Results?
- Expert Guides on Categorizing WordPress Content
Qual é a diferença entre categorias e tags?
Categorias e tags são taxonomias do WordPress. Elas são usadas para agrupar suas postagens de diferentes maneiras.
As categorias têm o objetivo de agrupar amplamente suas postagens. Pense nelas como tópicos gerais ou como o índice de seu site WordPress. As categorias são hierárquicas, o que significa que você pode criar subcategorias.
Por outro lado, as tags têm o objetivo de descrever detalhes específicos de suas postagens. Pense nelas como as palavras de índice do seu site. Elas permitem que você micro-categorize seu conteúdo. As tags não são hierárquicas.
Por exemplo, esta postagem do blog no WPBeginner está em nossa categoria “Guia para iniciantes”. Você pode ver todas as postagens dessa categoria acessando Blog ” Beginners Guide em nosso menu de navegação.
Este post também tem as seguintes tags: categorias, categorias vs. tags, taxonomia personalizada, SEO, práticas recomendadas de SEO, classificação do conteúdo e tags.
Você não verá essas tags exibidas em nenhum lugar do artigo. No entanto, elas ajudam os usuários a encontrar este artigo em pesquisas relevantes em nosso blog.
Uma das maiores diferenças entre tags e categorias é que todas as postagens do WordPress devem ser arquivadas em uma categoria, mas não precisam ter tags.
Se você não atribuir uma categoria à sua postagem, o WordPress a atribuirá automaticamente à categoria padrão. Ela é chamada de “Sem categoria”, mas geralmente é útil renomear a categoria Sem categoria para algo como “Outros” ou “Diversos”.
Observação: Por padrão, somente as publicações do blog têm categorias e tags no WordPress. No entanto, você pode adicionar categorias e tags às suas páginas do WordPress usando um plug-in.
Como você pode adicionar categorias e tags no WordPress?
Você pode adicionar categorias e tags no WordPress ao criar ou editar uma postagem. Você as encontrará no lado direito, em “Configurações de postagem”.
Você também pode ir para Posts ” Categories and Posts ” Tags para adicionar novas categorias e tags.
Para saber mais sobre o processo de adição de categorias e tags, confira nossas explicações sobre O que é uma categoria? e O que é uma tag? para obter ajuda e orientação.
Quantas categorias do WordPress você deve ter?
Não há um número específico de categorias que você deva ter. Na maioria dos casos, você precisará de algo entre 5 e 10 para categorizar adequadamente suas publicações e facilitar a navegação no site.
As categorias destinam-se a abranger um grande grupo de publicações. Você pode usar subcategorias e tags para dividir suas postagens em grupos menores.
Se estiver apenas começando um blog, não se preocupe em tentar criar uma lista perfeita de categorias. Basta escolher de 3 a 5 categorias amplas e adicionar outras com o passar do tempo.
Você precisa usar subcategorias no WordPress?
Você não precisa usar subcategorias, e muitos blogs grandes (inclusive o WPBeginner) não o fazem. Entretanto, as subcategorias são úteis se você tiver uma categoria grande com muitas publicações que poderiam ser agrupadas em seções menores.
Por exemplo, você pode ter uma categoria “Receitas” que contenha um número crescente de receitas sem glúten.
Você pode colocar essas postagens em sua própria subcategoria para que seja fácil para os leitores encontrá-las. Você cria uma nova categoria secundária para “Receitas” chamada “Sem glúten” e move essas postagens para essa categoria.
Uso de categorias nos URLs de suas postagens
Alguns sites usam o nome da categoria em permalinks (URLs de postagem), que você pode configurar em Settings ” Permalinks.
Se esse for o caso em seu site, sua postagem terá inicialmente um URL mais ou menos assim:
.../receitas/panquecas sem glúten/
Depois de mover a postagem para uma categoria secundária, ela terá um novo URL:
.../recipes/gluten-free/gluten-free-pancakes/
Normalmente, o WordPress tentará redirecionar o URL antigo para o novo. Vale a pena verificar se seus links ainda estão funcionando. Se necessário, você pode criar um redirecionamento 301 do URL antigo para o novo.
Outra opção é manter a postagem na categoria principal e também atribuí-la à categoria secundária, mas isso pode ter desvantagens.
Embora o site do WPBeginner tenha categorias no URL, sempre recomendamos que os usuários usem uma estrutura de URL mais curta que contenha apenas “Nome do post”. Isso lhe dará o máximo de flexibilidade para reorganizar o conteúdo sem se preocupar com a configuração de redirecionamentos.
Todos os nossos novos sites usam a moderna estrutura de URL “Nome do post”. O WPBeginner tem mais de 10 anos, portanto, tem uma estrutura de URL antiga. A alteração da estrutura de URL não é recomendada para SEO, e é por isso que continuamos com ela.
Posso atribuir um post a várias categorias?
O WordPress permite que você coloque uma postagem em várias categorias. Podem ser várias categorias principais ou uma categoria principal mais uma subcategoria ou subcategorias.
Ter várias categorias não beneficiará seu SEO. Você só deve atribuir posts a várias categorias se isso fizer mais sentido para seus leitores.
É possível que ter sua postagem em várias categorias possa causar alguns problemas de SEO devido à duplicação de conteúdo.
Se você usar várias categorias, tente evitar colocar uma postagem em duas ou mais categorias principais (pai). Cada post deve se encaixar em uma categoria principal.
Há um limite para o número de tags que uma postagem pode ter?
O próprio WordPress não tem nenhum limite para o número de tags que você pode ter em cada post. Você pode potencialmente atribuir 1.000 ou mais tags a uma postagem!
No entanto, definitivamente não recomendamos isso.
O objetivo das tags é ajudar a vincular postagens relacionadas. Pense nelas como uma seção de índice em um livro. Cada tag é como uma palavra-chave no índice.
As tags são úteis para os usuários que pesquisam seu site. Alguns plug-ins que exibem posts relacionados usam tags para ajudá-los a descobrir quais tópicos dos posts estão relacionados.
Sugerimos que você se limite a um máximo de 10 tags por publicação.
Categorias versus tags: O que é melhor para SEO?
Há alguma vantagem de SEO do WordPress em usar categorias em vez de tags ou vice-versa?
A resposta curta é não.
As categorias e as tags têm finalidades diferentes. Você precisa usar categorias, mas não precisa usar tags se não quiser. Entretanto, recomendamos o uso adequado de ambas para ajudar os leitores a navegar em seu site.
Em última análise, você deve projetar seu site pensando nos usuários. Todos os mecanismos de pesquisa querem mostrar aos usuários o conteúdo que será mais útil para eles.
Isso significa que organizar seu conteúdo para melhor usabilidade também o ajudará a obter melhores classificações de SEO.
Você pode controlar a aparência das categorias e tags nos resultados de pesquisa?
Você pode personalizar a maneira como suas categorias e tags aparecem nas páginas de resultados dos mecanismos de pesquisa usando o All in One SEO (AIOSEO), o melhor plug-in de SEO para WordPress do mercado.
Primeiro, instale e ative o plug-in All in One SEO Premium ou o plug-in gratuito AIOSEO. Para obter mais detalhes, consulte nosso guia passo a passo sobre como instalar um plug-in do WordPress.
Após a ativação, você deve navegar até All in One SEO ” Search Appearance (Aparência da pesquisa ) e clicar na guia “Taxonomies” (Taxonomias) para configurar a aparência da pesquisa para categorias e tags.
As configurações padrão funcionarão para a maioria dos sites, mas você pode personalizá-las de várias maneiras.
Por exemplo, alguns usuários preferem impedir que os mecanismos de pesquisa indexem suas listagens de arquivos de categorias e tags. Isso pode ajudar a evitar problemas de conteúdo duplicado e incentiva os mecanismos de pesquisa a priorizar seus posts e páginas reais.
Na seção Categorias, basta mudar a opção “Mostrar na pesquisa” para “Não”.
Em seguida, role para baixo até a seção Tags e faça a mesma coisa.
Certifique-se de clicar no botão “Salvar alterações” na parte superior ou inferior da página para armazenar suas configurações. Os mecanismos de pesquisa não indexarão mais suas páginas de arquivo de categorias e tags.
Guias especializados sobre categorização de conteúdo do WordPress
Agora que você sabe como as categorias e as tags afetam o SEO, talvez queira ver outros guias relacionados à categorização do conteúdo do WordPress:
- Como adicionar categorias e tags a páginas do WordPress
- Como adicionar categorias e tags à biblioteca de mídia do WordPress
- Como mesclar e editar em massa categorias e tags no WordPress
- Como adicionar categorias e subcategorias no WordPress
- Como mostrar/ocultar categorias no WordPress (guia definitivo)
- Como renomear corretamente as categorias no WordPress (guia para iniciantes)
- Como alterar, mover e excluir corretamente as categorias do WordPress
- Como marcar automaticamente seus posts do WordPress e economizar tempo
- Como exibir as tags mais populares no WordPress
- Como definir o número máximo de tags para publicações do WordPress
- Como criar taxonomias personalizadas no WordPress
Esperamos que este artigo tenha ajudado você a entender as categorias versus tags e as práticas recomendadas de SEO para classificar seu conteúdo. Você também pode gostar de nosso guia sobre como rastrear a análise de categorias e tags do WordPress e de nossas escolhas de especialistas sobre as melhores ferramentas de pesquisa de palavras-chave para SEO.
Se você gostou deste artigo, inscreva-se em nosso canal do YouTube para receber tutoriais em vídeo sobre o WordPress. Você também pode nos encontrar no Twitter e no Facebook.
Syed Balkhi says
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Dex Antikua says
Wow
simple and clear.Worked for me instantly.
Thank you.
Farouq Adegboyega says
When I change my tag to a subcategory, won’t the permalinks change (causing confusion). And how do I go about it. Thank You.
Gemma says
Is there any SEO benefit to displaying tags on a post? I’m aware of the SEO benefits concerning categories and of tagging each post, but I don’t know if it’s worth displaying a post’s tags *on the page*.
Utkarsh Singh says
In the section “Is there a limit to tags we can assign…” Shouldn’t the sentence “Again think of tags as the index or your book.” Should be index *of* book?
WPBeginner Support says
Thanks, fixed it
Administrador
Armaghan says
Thanks for the informative post!
I usually face a problem, like if I post an article, with a permalink xyz.com/post-title. One link is the one i mentioned, second link is through the category I choose, 3 link is from the tag I created, 4 link is from the archives page.
So for every post, i end up creating more than 4 links.
Is it normal? Or is it duplicate content?
What is the way to make amends.
Thanks!
Linda says
What are your thoughts about having your category name also be a tag name? We’ve had WordPress template(s) created and some have a news field/area. We have our posts (which are news) listed by category, i.e. Arts & Humanities, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences. If you’re department is in Arts & Humanities (i.e. art department, theatre department, etc), we would like the arts and humanities news to display on those site. The developer didn’t make news to pull from categories; they made it to pull from tags. Their answer to the issue is to make the category names to also be tag name. I don’t believe that’s a good practice but am having a hard time finding “new” articles/guides ect. that talk about it and, of course, the developers are saying what I’m finding is 2 years old and out of date.
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Linda,
You can have a tag with the same name as the category.
Administrador
Jeffrey says
In wordpress tag section of a blog article, is it a problem if I use the same 10 tag words for 50 aritcles?
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Jeffery,
Yes, it could be a potentially problematic situation. Several tag archive pages on your site will have identical or similar content. This may cause duplicate content issue, which may affect your site’s SEO.
Administrador
Efkan says
In my example, I am about to write about my travels, so I will create Travel (Category) + Name of Place (Sub) and add Tags … at least one of the tags should vary, I guess, in order to avoid duplicate content issue, is that right?
For example, if I write 10 Blogposts within one single place, then the posts will have same Categories and almost same Tags, except that one or two defining the specific content ….. 1. (Travel>Bali, Tag: Travel, Indonesia, Bali, Surfing) 2. (Travel>Bali, Tag: Travel, Indonesia, Bali, Cooking)
Am I thinking right?
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Efkan,
You should use tags based on the content you are writing. If you feel there is a new tag needed, then add it.
Habiba says
That was a very helpful post! Thank you so much. I wasn’t sure if I should create subcategories on my blog so I created them in the beginning but didn’t use them. I had planned to use the materials I use vor my crafts as subcategories
Create
-Wood
-Wool
-Paper
-…
But then I would have to click the top categories and the subcategory and then I was afraid of this counting as duplicate content. I think I understood this article of yours in that way that I can easily do so and won’t harm my SEO.
Prateek Anand says
My website has too many tags and categories indexed in Google. I have decided to remove all those after reading your article.
Thank You!
Malvyn says
Is there any plugin so a user can follow any tags? Then with the shortcode or a widget, logged-in users can see most recent posts from the tags they followed..
Jasper Verelst says
Cool I get the difference now
Juhi says
Thanks a lot! I started a blog 4months back and now I feel i m learning basics! Thanks for your help.
Heloisa says
Hey man, this post fits exactly to what I’m looking for. I’ve been searching about tags and categories for a long time and lots of articles says a lot of interesting things, but this besides explaining the concepts also teaches how to use these concepts in a practical way.
Congratulations and thanks a lot!
Michael Zorko says
Can I get some thoughts from you on this. I am launching a travel blog with multiple authors. I attempted to add custom posts and taxonomies – for whatever reason this is not going to work – so I need to do everything by category – this is my dilemma. Every story needs a story type and a location – here is an example of by category tree
Deals
Events
Tours
Locations
– United States
– Illinois
– Chicago
The question is, can I choose Events, then also choose my location – united-states/Illinois/Chicago
Thoughts?
Ralph Nyadzi says
Extremely helpful article. Many thanks.
Ken Pierce says
When I merged my sites blog and its original core content into one presentation I had more than thirty categories and numerous posts were set up into a few categories each. I didn’t like it and felt it was confusing to the reader who I wanted to engage and retain so I slowly but surely removed the duplicate categorizations first. Then each of the remaining categories were examined to see if the articles fit there best or somewhere else. The end result was a sleeker and more fluid site (at least to my view) and while I still have 17 categories overall, its better than more than 30.
What I am getting at is that we tend to repeat ourselves sometimes in a category label. I am actually thinking of merging my concert reviews and event reviews into one category next but that is a when time allows sort of project since there are hundreds of posts to amend. Great article.
Bill Mc says
I’m developing a site for a new art gallery. To filter portfolios I would want to have categories like: Painting, Glass, Ceramics, etc. I also want to have the ability to filter by artist name (Jane Jones, Jim Smith, etc) Would you recommend have the name be a tag or does it make more sense to have each artist as a category. Or should the Artists be the categories with Glass (for example) being a tag? This is making my head hurt!
Greg says
Very good article! I think a lot of people tend to forget they are not writing just for SEO value, but also for the reader. I like how you explained the tags vs categories. Good Job!
Kelly says
I have a quick question about adding names in the tags. Let’s say I want to add Oprah: Do I type Oprah Winfrey, Oprah, Winfrey, or just type Oprah Winfrey once? Do I do first name and last name comma? Or do I add all of the iterations (first name only, last name only?) Thank you! Similarly, If I want to post elderly caregiver. Do I post elderly, caregiver, and then elderly caregiver as well? Or as long as the words are there once it doesn’t matter? Thank you!
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Kelly,
The best way to deal with this is to think about what makes more sense and what your users will most likely search for. We believe that adding more descriptive tags allows you to use less tags and cover more proper forms of those words and phrases. You can use variations too if they also make sense.
Administrador
Jim says
Thanks for the great article. I’m confused about when it is smart to use noindex, follow for category and tag archive pages. I display excerpts on these pages but I worry about the duplicate content hurting SEO. It seems like letting search engines index only the one whole blog post is ideal.
Should I use noindex, follow to avoid SEO problems? Or, am I missing some reason why I should let the bots index the category and tag pages?
guido goldkuhle says
Thank you for the post. The very answers I was looking for.
Vivek Darji says
Can i use Long Tail Keyword In Tag? Better or not?
samuel says
Hello thank you for these tips.
I would like to ask about the good URL of a single post for SEO. Which one is better:
example.com/category-name/single-post-slug
or
example.com/single-post-slug
I’ve been searching for this answer and you might like to help me with this one. Originally, I used the second permalink on my website . But later on, to hit the keyword on the URL, I decided to put the category-name on the URL of a single post.
Thank you in advance.
Christopher Scott says
I’ve been struggling with this topic for a while now and found this post to be very helpful. Specifically, the categories versus sub-categories area. Thank you for sharing.
Madhu says
Hi, thanks for your awesome posts.
My blog has a category named Smartphones subcategories as Android Phones Windows Phones & iPhone.
What i want is, my posta in iPhone or Android, also appear in my category archive “Smartphones” as when someone visits Smartphones category, they can see all posts in one place related with smartphones.
What i do is, when i publish a post in Android or iPhone or Windows Phone, i also add this to Smartphones.
Is this a good way. Or i should do something else. Or I should Use Windows Phone, iPhone & Android Phones as tags?
Any help will be appreciated
Anvar says
I think using both categories: main category ‘S’martphones’ along with sub subcategory Android Phones & iPhone might help. Then your posts in these categories would also appear in smartphone category.
Madhu says
Hi, thanks for your awesome posts.
I need a help.
My blog’s category named Smartphones has subcategories as Android Phones, Windows Phones & iPhone.
What i want is, my post in iPhone or Android, also appear in my category archive “Smartphones” as when someone visits Smartphones category, they can see all posts in one place related with smartphones.
What i do is, when i publish a post in Android, i also add this to Smartphones. When I publish a post in Windows Phone, i also add this to Smartphones.
Is this a good way. Or i should do something else. Or I should Use Windows Phone, iPhone & Android Phones as tags?
Any help will be appreciated
Tony Mooney says
This is an excellent article, well done. I have a question which may help me when using tags.
My wife is looking to build a website for cooking. We understand using categories such as hors d’oeuvre, starters, main course, desert, cakes.
When considering adding a tag(s) to highlight topics within a category must the tag be unique, for example: There are many cakes that can be described as Chocolate Cake. There could be 50 pages/blogs with a type of chocolate cake being described. What are the implications of using the tag ‘chocolate cake’ or ‘chocolate’ on each page/blog within the same category or across other categories.
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Tony,
You can assign the same tag to as many posts as you like. You can add more tags to describe what kind of chocolate cake it is.
Administrador
Jeremy Morris says
Hello, great article! Very helpful as I’m trying to sort out how to categorize and tag my blog.
I downloaded your Ultimate WordPress Toolkit. Are the widgets on the side, that say “I need Help With”, with all the icons, are those custom? Or are you using a special plugin you’d like to tell me about? =)
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Jeremy,
Yes, those are custom widgets. You can learn more about our site’s design in our announcement post WPBeginner v5 – New site design and what’s next?
Administrador
Jeremy Morris says
Awesome! Thank you so much for the link!
Mangi says
Should tag be short or long?
Please advice if the following implementation is correct.
For e.g
Category : Yoga
Sub Category : Yoga classes
Tag : Yoga Classes in Newyork
WPBeginner Support says
Depends on what works best for your site. You can use phrases to combine different keywords for better SEO visibility.
Administrador
Hasan says
İt was helpfull, thank you mate
chittara says
very useful..thanks a ot
Rohit Dhawan says
Wow amazed to have such a brilliant information on this website. I am beginner right now and i guess now i have to do bookmark this page because in future this website gonna help me a lot. Explained very well and to the point. I am working on my own website this days and will soon i will take my website to the next level. If anybody can help me to teach me ow seo work then this would be a great help for me and i will be thank full of that person.
WPBeginner Support says
Hey Rohit, please take a look at our Ultimate WordPress SEO guide for beginners.
Administrador
Nate says
Great article!
Reading your article has made it obvious that I have royally stuffed up my ‘book’
Any advice on the correct way to start again with categories & tags on an established blog with a couple of hundred posts?
Btw i only use post title rather than category/title in each posts URL does that help me or work against me when making the above changes?
Regards
Nate
Mike Chamberlain says
2016 and I can tell you that from my experience using ANY tags or categories in blog posts causes significant issues with Google and duplicate content. It took me forever to figure out what was wrong with my 10 year old website that was not ranking well. It was because I was getting penalized from Google for duplicate content, duplicate tags etc. Once I removed them, guess what? I am back in business. Wish I knew this two years ago!
StoverPiX says
Great article. Thanks for the essential 2016 update Mike.
Aroos says
You answered my question. Very well written article. Thank you.
I also decided to remove my tags from google index. Just looking through your site, the simple and clean design and awesome content now I understand why you rank well for google.
raghavendra says
thank you so much for posting this article , and describing in details
Anil says
Thanks a ton..was useful
Dennis Fleming says
Great article, thank you. You made it perfectly clear and easy to understand!
Vikram Sarin says
Hi,
My permalink structure is – example.com/product-category/categoryname.
Is this better compared to example.com/categoryname from SEO perspective? If yes, then how do I get rid of ‘product-category’ from the urls?
Thanks
Ola says
I’m very grateful on this topic, I finally understand how posts are in general. I didn’t know this quite long that all i need is about clarification on categories as like table of contents. I was so much confused how post are organised for visitors. THANKS SO MUCH.
WPBeginner Support says
We are glad you found it helpful. Don’t forget to join us on Twitter for more WordPress tips and tutorials.
Administrador
Pierre says
Thank you for clearly explaining the difference between categories and tags!
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Pierre, glad you found it helpful
Don’t forget to join us on Twitter for more WordPress tips and tutorials.
Administrador
Emeline says
I have a quick question. Does it add value to the readers to show the categories below posts? Or is it best to be hidden?
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Emeline,
It depends on how users interact with your website. You can test it out and see if it helps your users find more content and increases your page views.
Shoaib ahmad says
Best information..i have one question if my blog is about technology and my titel is top 10 best solor pannels then what is my categories and tags.?
Satya Sahu says
Hi
I have a small doubt regarding to navigate users to my posts. I had written two posts related to iOS. One is belong to news category and other one is tutorial category but i have used same tag for the two posts. So i want to navigate the user to different categories( news, tutorial) with tags i used in my posts without showing two category posts.
Michael Romano says
Great article, very informative. One possible typo though. When you said, “Categories are hierarchical, so you can sub-categories,” did you mean to say, “Categories are hierarchical, so you can sub-categorize?”
vijaykumar says
Hi! my question is should i force to index i mean fetch as google for categories it is bad practice or good ……? i have seen in google some sites have got the results like this http://www.example.com/tag/wordpress it it good as you said we should not index but i need more clarity please explain this.
WPBeginner Support says
You should let Google index your tags and category pages if you are only showing excerpts on the archives. If you are showing full posts on those pages and a tag or category has only one post, then this could cause duplicate content penalty.
Administrador
Vishnu says
Hello sir ,
My blog have not get much visitors , just 5 views only .
dont know why i didnt get any visitors ?
Kindly reply .
Thankyou
Alban says
Hi, nice post. For example if I had a website and my domain is example.com… my 1 category is called dog-traning….the post permalink it is 10 ten best dog training tips…
1) Is my category confusing google, and will it hurt to rank that particular post.
2)Since my keywords (dog training) are already in the domain, do I have a over-optimized permalink in keyword sense?
Please some help
WPBeginner Support says
You should use different variations of dog training using alternate keywords.
Administrador
Alban says
Yes but will my category dog-traning will delute the keywords, will it create duplicate content?
WPBeginner Support says
Yes, if the category and your homepage has near identical content. Search engines may also consider it as keyword stuffing and may penalize your site by giving it low ranking on those keywords.
akmal says
I am regular reader of your blog and no doubt it all stuff is awesome. The best thing about your sharing and posting is that you always provide content that is helpful for both the newbie and experts. Looking for more stuff and tutorials.
Khyrberos says
(I’m aware this bit of “necroposting” will likely go unanswered, but here goes:)
Thanks for this post; it was really quite useful; answering lots of the questions associated with this tool. I am curious, however, about the inter-play between Categories, Tags, and *Titles*; most especially Categories and Titles. I.e., I have a variety of posts under the general heading of “Design”, so I figured I should make a “Design” Category for them. However, those said posts are quite varied and have Titles that can be quite esoteric; since the the Title is “the thing you see”, it behooves me to put something about “Design” in the Title as well… But now I have, in a way, defeated the purpose of having a Category.
Thoughts?
WPBeginner Support says
If you think an article should be filed under Design, then you should do that. Having keywords in Title that people actually use to search for similar content, will certainly help your SEO.
Administrador
Khyrberos says
(Wow, thanks for the (rapid) reply!)
Ok, so you’re saying that”s no problem, that (hypothetically) a blogpost named “Design – blah blah blah” *inside* a “Design” Category (i.e. both in Title & Category) is no big deal & in fact, may be useful for SEO purposes? Seems… redundant, but you’re the expert. : )
John Alexander says
This article does a great job of describing how to think about Categories and Tags in relation to your blog posts, so I’ll refer back to it. If you think of your blog as a book, and each post as a chapter, then Categories are the general sections of your book, and the Tags are like the Index in the back of the book, that helps users find specific things quickly.
Since a Category simply tells users and search engines what broad topic an article covers, it’s fine if the keyword appears in both the Title of the article and the Category. So you may have a category “Design” and an article called “Top Web Design Trends of 2016.” This wouldn’t be a problem for SEO unless the majority of your articles and categories were all focused on the same keyword. If you’re in doubt about the frequency you’re using a word, have a friend (who doesn’t work on your site) read your post and see if the writing sounds awkward to them. If it seems like you’re using terms a natural number of times, then you should be fine.
So, again, Categories and Tags are organizational elements, and have less to do with the SEO value of individual articles. They can have an impact, but your Categories aren’t generally the make-or-break factor. So make them useful for people!
Khyrberos says
@John Alexander: Thanks for your insightful response.
I think I may have done a poor job communicating the meat of my question. I am not so concerned about the interaction between Categories and *Tags* (in relation to SEO & general blog organization); rather I am concerned about the interaction between Categories and *Titles* (in relation to SEO & general blog organization). Perhaps I can better illustrate with a personal, related example.
Currently I’m treating my blog somewhat as an extension of my computer’s file-system, which is organized thusly (if we take the sub-folder of “Pictures”): at first just a massive pile of ‘every picture ever’, with each picture named pretty descriptively for what it was (i.e. “20100520 – Summer Reunion Party in California with Jones Family – Picture 1” … “Starcraft – Concept Art -Protoss – Archon – Picture3” … etc). I began to realize there were some common groupings that I could create Folders for inside the greater Pictures folder (i.e. “Family Pictures” or “2010 Pictures”, “Starcraft” or “Concept Art” or a sub-sub-folder “Protoss” or “Units”); at which point, the files therein would no longer need the long, descriptive title (i.e. all the pictures in the “2010” folder would not need that in their title to describe them; in fact it would be redundant & waste space)
So in a way, that’s what I’m looking at here. My blog exists as a series of posts (i.e. files) within a series of Categories (i.e. folders). I currently harbor a wide range of topics & concentrations within my blog, but as time goes on & I begin to get more ideas within the same ‘topic’, I go ahead & make a Category for them (say, “Design” or “Writing”). At which point, it would make sense (for all the aforementioned reasons above) to edit the Title of the Post, removing the (now-Categoried) term(s).
However, I’m finding that that presents other problems (some not necessarily present in my file-system organization); for one, this can change the Title of the Post so drastically as to be unnecessarily confusing or oblique; sometimes that keyword is nearly the whole Title; etc. Unlike my file system (where 1: the folder is obvious and 2: I’m only concerned about my own navigation), my blog suffers from a need to allow *others* to navigate.
Hence my question: ‘Is there a certain protocol/expectation/procedure for the naming of Posts and the naming of Categories? e.g. Does it look bad to have a Post that starts with the name of the Category it’s in (redundancy)? Or does it look worse to have half-written/unclear Post Titles and just hope the reader can see the Categories? Etc.’
Michele says
Really enjoyed this article. It was very easy to understand and answered all of my questions. Thank for the great info!!