One of the mistakes I made while starting off this blog was that I crated huge number of categories. One day I sat down with a piece of paper and decided, these are stuffs that I am gonna write on my blog, and these are my categories.
I ended up with a lot of categories and sub-categories. There are some categories that doesn’t even have a single post, to this day.
Here are the lessons
Making Good Use of Categories and Tags
Have a few categories only. Ten or lesser is good. Say you have 500 posts, and 10 categories, 50 posts per category is fine.
Make the categories broader so that you can accommodate more number of posts. A category named WordPress can include a larger share or posts than a category named WordPress Themes. How broad you wanna go depends on your Domain.
Do not go for sub-categories. Instead use Tags to sub-categorize the posts. For instance, Say WordPress is the main category. You can have tags like WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes, WordPress Hacks etc.
Tags may be plenty, 3 to 5 tags per post is healthy.
One post goes into one and only one category. There is no point in categorizing a post in many categories. Instead use Tags to group similar posts. For instance, posts about a WordPress plugin hack could go under the category WordPress and Tags as WordPress Plugins and WordPress Hacks.
If you use the All in One SEO Pack, and your tags contains keywords, make sure you check ‘Use Tags for META keywords’ in the All in One SEO Settings.
Good luck!
I am a WordPress product developer and creator of Image Attributes Pro. I am passionate about solving problems and travelling the world.
Back in 2008 when I was starting to blog on wordpress, I used to categorize a post into many categories, but obviously stopped doing that now. One good thing with WP is that even if you categorize in different categories, only one permalink (obviously that is what permalink is meant for)is formed. So, essentially those posts under multi categories are just for categorization purpose and nothing more, you don’t even experience the duplicate issues.
I still have 8 more categories that doesnt have a post even 😛
Thanks so much bro, I too had the same dilemma regarding tags and categories. In the initial days i didn’t even knew the difference between them!
Good tip, will certainly remember this for the future.
Sweet, never knew about tags mattering, now will use it.
I think I am reasonably organized with respect to the WP categories. But, tags! I have more than 700 tags already – many of them useless phrases – thanks to the clueless initial days
Btw, I like this ‘thesis-like’ theme. Thematic is it?
Yep, Thematic is the name, its a Framework actually.
Never worked with frameworks before, I am having a hard time editing this. Learning a lot anyway 🙂
Your new theme appears cool. Its very clean and easily accessible.
I was always confused on the use of Categories and Tags. Also, I heard that Tags were not used in SEO purposes, so I don’t use Tags. I use only categories. But, I think i must start using categories for ease-of-use to my readers.
I mean, I must start using “Tags” not “Categories” .. Small mistake on my part.
Got it. If you have enabled “Use Tags as META Keywords” in your SEO plugin, then you should use it for SEO
Indeed Valuable