Should i use Categories or Tags ?
-
Hi
My blog is http://www.dota2club.com/
and i am not sure should i use Categories as tags or normally tags like most ?
And how much are important tags generally ?
Right now you can see that i am using Categories as tags , is this ok ?
Thank you !!!!
-
"Agents" Thanks very much for the answer and appreciate the help...
I think in the case of this site, since it is a very simple blog, swapping the tags and categories won't completely break the site or the SEO.
But for the sake of preventing any misunderstanding in general, categories and tags are fundamentally quite different. Many people do swap their use, and get away with doing so because the sites are simple.
First, refer to the "Categories vs. Tags" section in my post on the Moz blog
To reiterate the basic differences here:
Categories
- Can have a hierarchy (be nested as parents and children)
- Are used best as a "menu" - like if the entire website is a blog, the categories are designed to fit into your main menus - this is built right into the wordpress functionality. This menu can be the main menu at the top, or in the sidebar
- A category archive can be the homepage
- 5-8 categories (the main buckets of topics on your blog) is best. If you want more, you can nest them
- Categories always existed, from the beginning of wordpress
- When used in this proper fashion, the category archives should be indexed by engines.
Tags
- Tags have NO hierarchy (they can't be nested)
- They are not to be used in the menu of a site - the main menu or sidebar menu. You see them a lot as a "tag cloud" in the sidebar or at the bottom of posts. They work better as this type of navigation, if users want to find articles similar in a much more specific way.
- A tag archive can NOT be the homepage
- You can use as many tags as you want, but they should not be the same as categories. They should be more detailed than categories.
- Tags didn't always exist from the beginning of wordpress, they were added after.
- When used in this best practice way, I always advice to NOT index tags (at least at first). Tag pages will be thin, almost duplicate and of little use to the searcher. MUCH better landing on a category archive or better yet a post its self.
-Dan
-
Thank you very much :))))
-
In my mind, categories and tags are kind of the same thing. Some people like to use categories for major groups, and tags for more fine tuned grouping within a larger category.
The main benefit of categories and tags are that they provide easier navigation to your older entries. If you don't have those, then the old posts can end up buried, 7 or 8 hops from the homepage, and they start to lose their ranking power.
If you go overboard and add lots of categories and tags, you end up creating excess pages on your site, which have very similar content, which tends to water down your ranking power.
I would recommend just sticking with tags, since it seems you're already setup with that. They work fine as 'categories'.
Also, one 'pro tip', would be to try to look for ways to link your new posts to your old posts. Like here, you have a post on dota maps - http://www.dota2club.com/dota-6-74c-ai-v2-7-fun-map-download/ - maybe you have older posts on a similar topic? Adding relevant internal links would definitely give your older posts a boost.
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
-
If I use links intag instead of "ahref" tag can Google read links inside div tag?
Hi All, Need a suggestion on it. For buttons, I am using links in tag instead of "ahref". Do you know that can Google read links inside "div" tag? Does it pass rank juice? It will be great if you can provide any reference if possible.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pujan.bikroy0 -
Heading Tags (Specifically H2) being used within images
Hello, Mozzers I have a question regarding placement of heading tags. I have seen this asked a few times on the forum but some are from a couple years ago so wanted to get a more up to date answer regarding this. We want to add H2 tags across our site but our two options are to wrap images we are using as navigation on the top of the page, these are directly below our pages H1 tag and actually make sense. Example H1 title: Vehicles Images are specific brand logo with H2 being wrapped to pull the img alt: "Ford Vehicles" "Checvy vehicles" etc. The wrap would look something like this: I appreciate your time, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirin443550 -
Should I use **tags or h1/h2 tags for article titles on my homepage**
I recently had an seo consultant recommend using tags instead of h1/h2 tags for article titles on the homepage of my news website and category landing pages. I've only seen this done a handful of times on news/editorial websites. For example: http://www.muscleandfitness.com/ Can anyone weigh in on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blankslatedumbo0 -
How to 301 redirect old wordpress category?
Hi All, In order to avoid duplication errors we've decided to redirect old categories (merge some categories).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
In the past we have been very generous with the number of categories we assigned each post. One category needs to be redirected back to blog home (removed completely) while a couple others should be merged. Afterwords we will re-categorize some of the old posts. What is the proper way to do so?
We are not technical, Is there a plugin that can assist? Thanks0 -
Does it make sense to buy a domain to be used in a year or so?
Hi guys We all know domain age is a big win in domain authority, although I am thinking - does it make sense to buy a domain to be used later on for one of our future product lines? We can publish some content on it, link it from a few sites, however use it heavily after a year? All help will be much appreciated! Lily
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wspwsp0 -
How are PDF image alt tags and "subject" field in document properties used for search
Hello, 1. Does google use image alt tags? According to this 2011 document, the answer is no, but I have seen others claiming yes- has google since begun using alt tags for images within PDFs? http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pdfs-in-google-search-results.html I am trying to decide if it is worth updating existing PDFs with alt tags for images for the purpose of SEO. 2. How does Google use the "Subject" field in document properties for a PDF? Should it be used as a description field for the document, similar to a meta description? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | winstoncho0 -
Need help in Title tags
Hi I have word press site and it has 24 pages and the main keywords is Stairlifts there are various kind and type of stairlifts and all the 24 page has the title tag stairslifts , i have tried to make each unique but i cannot avoid using the keyword stairslift. Will that have a negative impact if my main keyword is stairlifts. My target page for stairlifts is the home page. Any suggestions please Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conversiontactics0 -
Organising Blog categories for SEO and usability.
Hello! I'm a professional photographer and have used categories in an old blog to separate my work. (weddings, portraits, etc.) I'm starting an new blog and everything was imported, except categories so as i started rewriting them, I noticed the 'personalised URL. So I was thinking of re-writing my categories based on types of jobs and location. For example: *North Wales -wedding photography -portrait photography -commercial photography *Cheshire -wedding photography -portrait photography -commercial photography and so on... Or do you think it's best to just have shoot style categories? What do you guys think? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IoanSaid0