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
-
Wordpress pages posts
Say you have a WordPress website with reviews and lists. Would you use "post" or "page" type for them? Is there any SEO advantage in using pages/subpages instead of posts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fabx1 -
M.ExampleSite vs mobile.ExampleSite vs ExampleSite.com
Hi, I have a call with a potential client tomorrow where all I know is that they are wigged-out about canonicalization, indexing and architecture for their three sites: m.ExampleSite.com mobile.ExampleSite.com ExampleSite.com The sites are pretty large... 350k for the mobiles and 5 million for the main site. They're a retailer with endless products. They're main site is not mobile-responsive, which is evidently why they have the m and mobile sites. Why two, I don't know. This is how they currently hand this: What would you suggest they do about this? The most comprehensive fix would be making the main site mobile responsive and 301 the old mobile sub domains to the main site. That's probably too much work for them. So, what more would you suggest and why? Your thoughts? Best... Mike P.S., Beneath my hand-drawn portrait avatar above it says "Staff" at this moment, which I am not. Some kind of bug I guess.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
H1 tag on website logo problem?
Currently my website is having H1 tag on website logo and also h2 tag on post title. I think for seo it is good to use H1 to my post title and H2 to website logo?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MasonBaker0 -
Constructing the perfect META Title - Ranking vs CTR vs Search Volume
Hello Mozzers! I want to discuss the science behind the perfect META Title in terms of three factors: 1. Ranking 2. CTR 3. Search Volume Hypothetical scenario: A furniture company "Boogie Beds" wants to optimise their META Title tag for their "Cane Beds" ecommerce webpage. 1. The keywords "Cane Beds' has a search volume of 10,000 2. The keywords " Cane Beds For Sale" has a search volume of 250 3. The keywords "Buy Cane Beds" has a search volume of 25 One of Boogie Beds SEO's suggests a META Title "Buy Cane Beds For Sale Online | Boogie Beds" to target and rank for all three keywords and capture long tail searches. The other Boogie Bed SEO says no! The META Title should be "Cane Beds For Sale | Boogie Beds" to target the most important two competitive keywords and sacrifice the "Buy" keyword for the other two Which SEO would you agree more with, considering 1. Ranking ability 2. Click through rates 3. Long tail search volume 4. Keyword dilution Much appreciated! MozAddict
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozAddict1 -
Avoiding keyword cannibalisation in Wordpress Structure
Hi all, I've been planning the WordPress structure for a client for a long time, and soon need to get started. I keep coming back to this problem / question, whereby there will be a static Page with a name like "Christmas Collection", but there also has to be a Category called "Christmas" to accomodate new content. Is this likely to cause serious keyword cannabalisation? It's a non-ecommerce site To elaborate we need to have the following static Pages: christmas collection easter collection halloween Collection and each of these Page's will be populated with related Posts (based on category ID) after the Page's content. And these corresponding Categories need to be similarly named. As there's no apparent relation between Pages and Categories, I keep coming back to the concern that having a Page named "Christmas Collection" and a Category called "Christmas" is a big SEO NO NO. Any thoughts, opinions, workarounds much appreciated! Regards, c
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | councilflat0 -
Canonical URL Tag Usage
Hi there, I have a .co.uk website and a .ie website, which have the exact same content on both, should I put a canonical tag on both websites, on every page? Kind Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Wordpress or Joomla? Discussion
Hi All I'm about to start on a new project where I've been having lots of discussions with the developers involved on the merits of both wordpress and joomla. I'm experienced with wordpress but haven't really done too much with Joomla. I've found some general info on Joomla online, most issues seems to be around duplicate content, but can't seem to find too much else. Therefore I thought I'd throw it out there for discussion as I'd love to hear from those of you who have used both CMS's and the drawbacks/ pitfalls or plus points in both. The project is based around a non transactional site, offering a service, but no product. There's lots of thought leadership type content planned, either through interviews, surveys, articles, video etc, and some linkbait etc. Lot of content will also be newsworthy so keep Google news etc in the back of your mind too. Lots of social integration too... Looking forward to hearing what you might have to say Mozzers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PerchDigital1 -
Website Restructure - Good or Bad for SEO?
Due to the fact that we aren't in the #1 position, (dropped from #5 to page 2 - You have to love Devs and IT), our heads have hired a SEO Audit/Consultant company to review everything we are doing. I would like to post some of the things they are telling us to do, in which I don't 100% agree with and would like some other professional feedback. Especially since their site isn't marketed very well. http://www.trupanionpetinsurance.com Disclaimer: (this site was a complete nightmare when I started a year and a half ago. Yes, there are many issues that still need to be addressed.) Website Restructure I agree we totally need to restructure our website. I have no idea what the previous SEO guy was thinking. The new SEO company is telling us that the structure is a big part of SEO. I don't believe so, but besides a little loss in 301 juice, is there any other downfalls? Are there any real benefits? Similar question asked the other day (and answered by me): http://www.seomoz.org/q/don-t-want-to-lose-page-rank-what-s-the-best-way-to-restructure-a-url-other-than-a-301-redirect
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Trupanion1