3 Using Tags and Categories

Fri, Jan 1, 2016 at 12:00 am by Jerry Rivard

Note: This is part of a short series of posts describing how to use this blog. You should delete the series before going live with the blog.

Tags and categories are similar but different. The main functional differences are:

  • Categories can have a hierarchy (sub-categories, sub-sub-categories, …) and Tags cannot.
  • Your theme currently has links to Categories, but not to Tags. (That can be changed.)

Generally, you use Categories for broad groupings of your posts and Tags for more specific ones. For example, you might have Categories like ‘Furniture’ and ‘Musical Instruments’, and Tags like ‘sofa’, ‘rolltop desk’, ‘grand piano’, and ‘cello’. Or maybe a Category ‘Furniture’ with sub-categories like ‘Sofas’ and ‘Chairs’ and tags like “Stickley” (or the other way around).

Whatever you decide to use for Categories and Tags, always try to include the terms you think your customers will search for. You can try various things for now and see how you like them. Google won’t start indexing your pages until there are links to them.

Here’s a page I found in a quick Google search. I didn’t read it in great detail, but what I read looked good.


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