Läsare frågar oss ofta vad som är bättre för sökmotorsoptimering: kategorier eller tags?
Du kanske inte är säker på vad kategorier och taggar i WordPress egentligen är och hur de skiljer sig åt. Att veta detta kan hjälpa dig att använda dem korrekt.
I den här artikeln kommer vi att förklara skillnaderna mellan kategorier och tags för att organisera ditt content och hur de kan påverka sökmotorsoptimeringens ranking.
Här är vad vi kommer att täcka i denna tutorial. Du kan använda länkarna under för att hoppa till den section du är intresserad av:
- 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
Vad är skillnaden mellan kategorier och tags?
Kategorier och tags är båda taxonomier i WordPress. De används för att gruppera dina posts på olika sätt.
Kategorier är avsedda att gruppera dina posts i stort. Tänk på dem som allmänna ämnen eller innehållsförteckningen för din WordPress site. Kategorierna är hierarkiska, vilket innebär att you kan skapa underkategorier.
Å andra sidan är taggar avsedda att beskriva specifika detaljer i dina poster. Tänk på dessa som din sites indexord. De låter dig mikrokategorisera ditt content. Tags är ej hierarkiska.
Till exempel är detta blogginlägg på WPBeginner i vår kategori ’Nybörjarguide’. Du kan se alla posterna i den här kategorin genom att gå till Blogg ” Beg inner Guide i vår navigation menu.
Detta post har också följande taggar: categories, categories vs tags, custom taxonomy, SEO, SEO best practices, sortera efter content, och taggar.
Du kommer inte att se dessa taggar displayed någonstans i artikeln. De hjälper dock användare att hitta artikeln vid relevanta sökningar på vår blogg.
En av de största skillnaderna mellan taggar och kategorier är att alla WordPress posts måste arkiveras under en kategori, men de behöver inte ha taggar.
Om du inte ger din post en kategori kommer WordPress automatiskt att tilldela den till standardkategorin. Denna kategori anropas ”Uncategorized”, men det är ofta bra att byta namn på kategorin ”Uncategorized” till något som gillar ”Other” eller ”Miscellaneous”.
Note: Som standard är det bara blogginlägg som har kategorier och tags i WordPress. Du kan dock lägga till kategorier och tags på dina pages i WordPress med hjälp av ett plugin.
Hur kan du add to kategorier och tags i WordPress?
I WordPress kan du add to kategorier och tags när du skapar eller editerar ett post. Du hittar dem på höger sida under ”Post settings”.
Du kan också gå till Posts ” Categories and Posts ” Tags för att add new categories and tags.
Om du vill veta mer om hur du lägger till kategorier och taggar kan du kontrollera våra förklaringar av Vad är en kategori? och Vad är en tagg? för hjälp och vägledning.
Hur många kategorier bör du ha i WordPress?
Det finns inget specifikt antal kategorier som du bör ha. I de flesta fall kommer du att vilja ha någonstans mellan 5 och 10 för att korrekt kategorisera dina poster och göra din site lätt att bläddra i.
Kategorier är avsedda att omfatta en stor grupp av posts. Du kan använda underkategorier och taggar för att dela in dina posts i mindre grupper.
Om du precis har startat en blogg behöver du inte oroa dig för att försöka komma på en perfekt lista med kategorier. Välj bara 3-5 breda kategorier och add to fler efter hand.
Måste du använda underkategorier i WordPress?
You don’t have to use subcategories, and many large blogs (including WPBeginner) don’t. Men underkategorier är till hjälp om du har en stor kategori med många poster som kan grupperas i mindre sections.
Du kan till exempel ha en kategori ”Recipes” som innehåller ett växande antal glutenfria recept.
Du kan lägga dessa posts i en egen underkategori så att det är lätt för läsarna att hitta dem. You skapar en new child category för ”Recipes” som anropas ”Gluten-Free” och flyttar dessa posts till den kategorin.
Använda kategorier i URL: erna för dina poster
Vissa webbplatser använder kategorinamnet i permalänkar (URL:er för poster), som du kan ställa in under Settings ” Permalinks.
Om så är fallet på din site, kommer din post initialt att ha en URL som gillar detta:
…/recept/gluten gratis-pannkakor/
När du har flyttat posten till en child kategori kommer den att ha en new URL:
…/recept/glutenfria/glutenfria-pannkakor/
Normalt kommer WordPress att försöka redirecta den gamla URL:en till den nya. Det är definitivt värt att kontrollera att dina links fortfarande fungerar. Om det behövs kan du skapa en 301 redirect från den gamla URL:en till den nya.
Ett annat alternativ är att behålla posten i parent category och även tilldela den till child category, men detta kan ha nackdelar.
Även om WPBeginners website har kategorier i URL:en rekommenderar vi alltid användare att använda en kortare URL-struktur som bara innehåller ”Post name”. Detta ger dig maximal flexibilitet att omorganisera content utan att behöva oroa dig för att sätta upp redirects.
Alla våra nya websites använder den moderna URL-strukturen ”Post name”. WPBeginner är över 10 år gammal, så den har en legacy URL-struktur. Att ändra URL-strukturen rekommenderas inte för sökmotorsoptimering, vilket är anledningen till att vi har klistrat fast oss vid den.
Kan jag tilldela en post till flera kategorier?
WordPress låter dig placera en post i flera kategorier. Det kan vara flera överordnade kategorier eller en överordnad kategori plus en underkategori eller underkategorier.
Att ha flera kategorier kommer inte att gynna din sökmotorsoptimering. Du bör bara tilldela poster till flera kategorier om det är mest meningsfullt för dina läsare.
Det är möjligt att om du har ditt post i flera kategorier kan det orsaka vissa sökmotorsoptimeringsproblem på grund av duplicerat innehåll.
Om du använder flera kategorier, försök då att undvika att placera ett post i två eller flera huvudkategorier (parent). Varje post bör rymmas inom en huvudkategori.
Finns det en limit för hur många taggar ett post kan ha?
WordPress själv har ingen limit på antalet taggar du kan ha på varje post. Du kan potentiellt tilldela 1 000 eller fler taggar till ett post!
Vi rekommenderar dock definitivt inte det.
Syftet med tags är att hjälpa till att länka samman relaterade inlägg. Tänk på dem som en index section i en bok. Varje tagg gillar ett keyword i indexet.
Tags är till hjälp för användare som söker på din site. Vissa tillägg som visar relaterade inlägg använder taggar för att hjälpa dem att räkna ut vilka ämnen som är relaterade till posterna.
Vi föreslår att du normalt klistrar på högst 10 tags per post.
Kategorier vs Tags: Vad är bäst för sökmotorsoptimering?
Finns det några WordPress sökmotorsoptimering fördelar med att använda kategorier över taggar eller vice versa?
Det korta svaret är nej.
Kategorier och taggar har båda olika syften. Du måste använda kategorier, men du behöver inte använda taggar om du inte vill. Vi rekommenderar dock att du använder båda på rätt sätt för att hjälpa läsarna att navigera på din site.
I slutändan bör du utforma din site med användarna i åtanke. All search engines vill visa användarna det content som är mest användbart för dem.
Det innebär att om du organiserar ditt content för bästa möjliga användbarhet kommer det också att hjälpa dig att få bättre sökmotorsoptimering.
Can You Control How Categories and Tags Look in Search Results?
Du kan customize hur dina kategorier och tillägg visas på sökmotorernas resultatsidor genom att använda All in One SEO (AIOSEO), det bästa SEO-pluginet för WordPress på marknaden.
Först installerar och aktiverar du antingen All in One SEO Premium eller det gratis pluginet AIOSEO. För mer detaljer, se vår Step-by-Step guide om hur du installerar ett plugin för WordPress.
Efter aktivering måste du navigera till All in One SEO ” Search Appearance och klicka på tabben ’Taxonomies’ för att konfigurera search appearance för kategorier och taggar.
Standardinställningarna fungerar för de flesta websites, men du kan customize dem på många sätt.
Vissa användare föredrar till exempel att hindra search engines från att indexera deras kategori och tagged archive listningar. Detta kan hjälpa till att förhindra problem med duplicerat content och uppmuntrar search engines att prioritera dina faktiska posts och pages.
I avsnittet Categories byter du helt enkelt alternativet ”Visa i Search” till ”Nej”.
Därefter ska du rulla ner till Tags section och göra samma sak.
Se till att du klickar på knappen ”Save Changes” högst upp eller längst ner på sidan för att lagra dina inställningar. Search engines kommer inte längre att indexera dina categories och tagged archive pages.
Expertguider för kategorisering av WordPress content
Nu när du vet hur kategorier och taggar påverkar sökmotorsoptimering kanske du gillar att se några andra guider relaterade till kategorisering av WordPress content:
- Så här addar du kategorier och tags för pages i WordPress
- Så här addar du kategorier och tags till mediabiblioteket i WordPress
- Hur man slår samman och massredigerar kategorier och tags i WordPress
- Så här addar du kategorier och underkategorier i WordPress
- Hur man visar / döljer kategorier i WordPress (Ultimate Guide)
- Så här byter du namn på kategorier i WordPress på rätt sätt (Beginner’s Guide)
- Så här ändrar, flyttar och borttar du WordPress-kategorier på rätt sätt
- Hur du automatiskt taggar dina WordPress-poster och sparar tid
- Så här visar du de mest populära taggarna i WordPress
- Hur man ställer in maximalt antal taggar för WordPress Posts
- Så här skapar du customize taxonomies i WordPress
Vi hoppas att den här artikeln hjälpte dig att förstå kategorier vs tags och sökmotorsoptimeringens bästa praxis för att sortera ditt content. Du kanske också gillar vår guide om hur man spårar WordPress kategori- och tagged-analys och våra expertval för de bästa sökordsoptimeringsverktygen för SEO.
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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
Administratör
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.
Administratör
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.
Administratör
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.
Administratör
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.
Administratör
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?
Administratör
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.
Administratör
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.
Administratör
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.
Administratör
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.
Administratör
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.
Administratör
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.
Administratör
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.
Administratör
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!!