Wordpress Tags vs. Categories(looking to restructure things)
-
Just looking for some advice on this topic. I know it's much debated but it seems the consensus is that having some broad categories and more defined tags is optimal.
The issue with my site is that it is very broad in nature. We're profiling and interviewing all types of careers. The site is www.jobshadow.com for reference.
Up until now I haven't used Wordpress Tags at all. I've just been using categories(i.e. 9-5 type jobs, salaried jobs, hourly jobs, jobs in medicine, etc).
I've probably got way too many categories. They are being counted as links on every post page which pushes me way overboard on links per page.
-Just curious if anyone has any thoughts on best practices for my site.
-Also, none of the categories themselves are really pulling in any SEO traffic so switching those wouldn't be a big deal. Just looking for the best way to help users browse the site and the growing number of content.
And rom what I hear Tags can pull in some random/long tail traffic pretty easily if done right.
Look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Thanks for the help!
-
Is nesting a native function of wordpress? Is it when you create a new category inside of another category in the post options. I'm pretty sure that's how it works.
Yes, nesting of categories is native to WordPress. No plugins or anything required. I believe you control this in the Categories menu (sidebar)
Also, I think it's somewhat helpful letting people search by 'Jobs involving travel', 'Outdoor Jobs', etc. Are those good examples of tags? Or does that fall into something else?
Yep, tags can be anything that is not already a category, and more detailed than the categories. I would just try to keep them specific.
-Dan
-
Double good answer if I could. Thanks!
A couple more quick wet behind the ears question.
Is nesting a native function of wordpress? Is it when you create a new category inside of another category in the post options. I'm pretty sure that's how it works.
Also, I think it's somewhat helpful letting people search by 'Jobs involving travel', 'Outdoor Jobs', etc. Are those good examples of tags? Or does that fall into something else? They probably aren't category worthy, and definitely sub-category.
But I think it's still helpful navigation for a career seeker who doesn't know where to start(and thus how I ended up with 60+ categories:).
Thanks again for the help!
-
-As far as categories. With a site like mine would 15 ish categories be too many? Especially given that we've got some pretty random career interviews on the site.
- I think 15 is pretty good.
- You might want to consider nesting categories (this is one difference that separates them from tags).
- NOTE: If you're eliminating categories from the website to trim down, make sure to 301 redirect them to relevant pages so you don't en up with 404s.
-Also, in regards to tags. Should those be treated more like subcategories? But use tags.
- Generally not thought of as subcategories, because tags (unlike categories) have no hierarchy or relationship. I'd use the nesting suggestion from above if you want to make subcategories.
- Tags are like a label you just slap on a piece of content.
- Tags should NOT ever be the same as a category that already exists.
**The only way tags like that would provide value was if I have numerous interviews under the same tag right?(in some cases there are more than one interview of each career, different people with the same job etc). **
- Right, tags do have a bit more value if they are used on more than one article. But I wouldn't worry about that too much. As long as you're noindexing them for search engines, a typical tag cloud will usually highlight the most used tags to the reader, which is better for UX. Just label your articles with maybe 3-7 more detailed key words as your tags, noindex them, and you should be good!
-
Dan,
Thanks for the help as well. I've checked out your article, great stuff there thanks. I really like the excerpt idea too b/c with no following and no indexing the tags there's not much traffic to gain from that.
-As far as categories. With a site like mine would 15 ish categories be too many? Especially given that we've got some pretty random career interviews on the site.
-Also, in regards to tags. Should those be treated more like subcategories? But use tags. Because if I got so defined as to put tags like obstetrics, Gynecology, etc on the interview I have with an OB/GYN then they would just link right back to the same interview. i.e. not provide any value to the reader.
The only way tags like that would provide value was if I have numerous interviews under the same tag right?(in some cases there are more than one interview of each career, different people with the same job etc).
Anyway, starting to wrap my mind around all this. Thanks for the help!
Aaron
-
That advice looks pretty sound Jeremy, thank you!
Only thing I'd add, is you may want to consider showing excerpts of each article on the category page. This will bring in some more content (which is perhaps why those pages aren't bringing you traffic).
Also, you can check out my recent post on WordPress SEO, in case you missed it - might help illustrate some things even more.
I do think your categories could be condensed, and I do in general noindex tag archives (as Jeremy suggests) as a default starting point.
-Dan
-
Ok, great. Thanks for the advice. Will get to work on those changes, make perfect sense to me.
About the speed stuff, where are you testing from? I just ran the pingdom report and it loaded in under 2 seconds.
I just upgraded my hosting, before that it was slow at about 9 seconds. We've got it cached to the gills, pretty static content, so it shouldn't take too long.
-
One category per industry...so category=medical, which would include doctors, pa's, nurses, medical billing, etc.
Get the Yoast SEO plugin and in the settings there's an option to no-index the tag pages. Do that and it'll solve the duplicate content issue. For me it's more about user experience...I personally like and use tag clouds when browsing.
IMO, people worry too much about 'how many keywords', etc. I like to design for the user, then go back after I create the page and figure out if I've used enough keywords...as far as tags go I wouldn't worry about what you're using the title and just make it natural, but that's just me.
Also, I'm not sure if you're making $ from the site yet or not, but I'd look at getting another host. Your site is kind of slow from where I'm at and people bounce fast these days.
-
Thanks Jeremy. A couple follow up thoughts.
-Do you think it'd best just to have one category per career/job? Or several?
-Also, will adding tags to these interviews cause duplicate content? And should the tags be different from the words in the Title tags?
Thanks again for the help!
-
Personally, I think the way you have categories set up is good, broken down by broad category (ie. finance). Though I'm not sure that 9 to 5 type jobs fits in with that. There's got to be a category that each of those jobs could fit in. Overall, I think that the categories you're using works out well for your site. The way I think of tags is like free keywords that do not need text around them...more specifically for your site, for the ob/gyn article I'd use the tags: obstetricics, gynecology, ob/gyn, medical.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to remove skip links, main navigation, sidebars as h2 tags in wordpress genesis
Our website CMS is wordpress. Due to the Genesis Framework; below 4 phrases tuned into h2 tags: Skip links, Header Right, Main navigation and Footer. How to remove these?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Subdomains vs. Subfolders vs. New Site
Hello geniuses!!! Here's my Friday puzzle: We have a plastic surgery client who already has a website that's performing fairly well and is driving in leads. She is going to be offering a highly specialized skincare program for cancer patients, and wants a new logo, new website and new promo materials all for this new skincare program. So here's the thing - my gut reaction says NO NEW WEBSITE! NO SUBDOMAIN! because of everything I've read about moving things on and off subdomains, etc (I just studied this: http://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday). And, why wouldn't we want to use the authority of her current site, right? While she doesn't necessarily have a high authority domain - we're not talking WebMD, here - she does have some authority that we've built over time. But, because this is a pretty separate product from her general plastic surgery practice, what would you guys do? Since we'll be creating a logo and skincare "look and feel" for this product, and there will likely be a lot of information involved with it, I don't think we'll be able to just create one page. Is it smart to: a) build a separate site in a subfolder of her current site? (plasticsurgerypractice.com/skincare) b) build a subdomain? (skincare.plasticsurgerypractice.com) c) build her a new site (plasticsurgeryskincare.com)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RachelEm0 -
PageSpeed Vs Page Size
Hi, We all know that Google doesnt like slow loading pages, fair enough! However, for one of my websites, user interactivity is key to its success. Now each of my pages are fairly large sized (ranges in the order or 1.8 to 2.5 MB) because it has a lot of pictures, css and at times some Java script elements. However, I have tried to ensure that the code is optimized - for example html minified and compressed, caching enables, images optimized and served through CDN, etc. In spite of high page size, my GTMetrix PageSpeed score is 93+ for most pages. However, the number of requests served is 100+ and page loading time is 4.5s + as per GTMetrix and Pingdom. My question is - should this matter from an SEO perspective. Is google likely to penalize me for high loading time even though I am serving highly optimized pages? I really dont want to cut down on the user interactiveness of my website unless I have to from an SEO perspective. Please suggest. Here is my homepage, just as to give you an idea of what i am talking about: www.dealwithautism.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ashishb010 -
Extensions Vs Non Extensions
Hello, I'm a big fan of clean urls. However i'm curious as to what you guys do, to remove them in a friendly way which doesn't cause confusion. Standard URLS
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Whittie
http://www.example.com/example1.html
http://www.example.com/example2.html
http://www.example.com/example3.html
http://www.example.com/example4.php
http://www.example.com/example5.php What looks better (in my eyes)
http://www.example.com/example1/
http://www.example.com/example2/
http://www.example.com/example3/
http://www.example.com/example4/
http://www.example.com/example5/ Do you keep extensions throughout your website, avoiding any sort of confusion and page duplication; OR Put a canonical link pointing to the extension-less version of each page, with the anticipation of this version indexing into Google and other Search Engines. OR 301 Each page which has an extension to an extension-less version, and remove all linking to ".html" site wide causing errors within software like Dreamweaver, but working properly. OR Another way? Please emphasise I'm sorry if this is a little vague and I appreciate any angles on this, I quite like clean url's but unsure a hassle-less way to create it. Thanks for any advice in advance0 -
Using WP All Import csv import plugin for wordpress to daily update products on large ecommerce site. Category naming and other issues.
We have just got an automated solution working to upload about 4000 products daily to our site. We get a CSV file from the wholesalers server each day and the way they have named products and categories is not ideal. Although most of the products remain the same (don't need to be over written) Some will go out of stock or prices may change etc. Problem is we have no control over the csv file so we need to keep the catagories they have given us. Might be able to create new catgories and have products listed under multiple categories? If anyone has used wp all import or has knoledge in this area please let me know. I have plenty more questions but this should start the ball rolling! Thanks in advance mozzers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | weebro0 -
Optimal ratio of different categories of link
Hello, I know this probably depends on market sector, etc., but are there broad guidelines on the optimal ratio of different types of links - blogs, directory links, citations, etc. I'm working for a tourism business and see nearly all of their links are from directories - both generic and tourism specific. I'm thinking about re-balancing that with guest blogs, PR work, etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
tags inside <a>tags - is this bad?</a>
Hi, I'm currently redesigning my website, and in many places, I've now decided to make links a little bit more obvious for the user, using tags within a <a>tag in order to make the entire block of text clickable. I was just wondering if this could have a negative impact in the search engines. My gut feeling is no, since I'm actually improving usability, but I guess it could have an impact on how Google looks at the anchor text? An example of the HTML is as follows: </a> <a></a> <a></a> [Cristal Night Club Hotels <address>1045 5th Street
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mjk26
Miami Beach, FL33139</address> 6.4 miles from Miami Dade County Auditorium](http://localhost:8080/frontend/venue-hotels/cristal-night-club-hotels/301022 "Hotels near Cristal Night Club") Thanks for your thoughts and comments, Best wishes Mike0 -
Meta description Tag who should it be used and what should it describe?
Hi when using the meta description tag how is it best used? what should it describe? should it describe the topic or the services offered i.e should it be a sales message for the services. For example: a page that promotes the benefits of acupuncture whilst pregnant should it describe the page content or the service provided? i.e. acupuncture for pregnancy in Chester or acupuncture can benefit pregnancy because.... thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bristolweb0