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Tags & Categories

Tags and categories are great tools for organizing your blog posts but the big question are … what in the heck are they? And how do I use them?

Over the weekend while speaking to a group of authors in Amarillo, TX, those questions came up. Since they were a bigger topic than we could cover right at the end of the meeting, I promised them a blog post about it.

Categories and tags are all about grouping your information into collections of similar items. That way, if a person is reading a blog post about one particular subject, they can quickly get a listing of other posts you’ve written on a similar subject. For example, after reading this post with its tag of Blogging (see below in the section on tagging,) you could click on the tag “Blogging” in the list at the top or bottom of this article to see all my posts about blogging.

Once you get past the initial learning curve, the concept of categories and tags is fairly intuitive. But even then, sometimes you have to stop and think about whether you want to use a category or a tag because, oddly enough, they are very similar. So let’s start with categories and then hit tags.

A quick note about WordPress and Blogger: WordPress uses both tags and categories. Blogger just uses labels, which are basically the same as tags but act as both categories and tags. If you’re a Blogger user, skim through the section on categories and focus on tags.

Categories – The Filing Cabinet Drawer

As you build your list of categories, think of them like filing cabinet drawers in which you organize your posts. You only need a few to cover all the major topics of your blog. On this blog, I use the following eight categories:

  • Best Practices – for concepts that are generally considered by industry experts to be good ideas to follow
  • Cool Tools – just as they are in my live presentations, these are online resources and programs which will be very useful to you (just as they are to me)
  • How it Works – explanations of technologies or concepts and how they work (but not necessarily how to use them … see Tutorials below)
  • In the News – news items that impact small business websites
  • Reviews – reviews of products and/or services
  • Spotlight – interviews with people regarding their experiences online
  • Tips & Tricks – quick bits of advice for your website or using online tools (this one blurs the line with Best Practices)
  • Tutorials – step by step explanations for how to get something done

Every blog post I create fits into one of those. Over time I may add more, but if I do it won’t be many.  This blog post could fit into several of these: Best Practices, How it Works, or even Tips & Tricks. But I think I’ll file this under How it Works.

When I think of categories, I think of my big topics for 15 Minute Mondays. What is the one thing that your blog is about? Take that and divide it up into a few major subheadings. As an example, let’s take an author who writes non-fiction book about arthritis. That author might have categories like Exercise, Medical Breakthroughs, Holistic Remedies, Diet, Prevention, etc. A small business like a community theater could have categories like Upcoming Shows, Reviews, Actor Spotlights, News, etc.

Each post you make should fall into one category. You might put one in two (for example, a diet and exercise program that relieve arthritis could easily fit in both Diet and Exercise,) but normally you will just use one category per post.

Tags – The Writing on the Folders

Tags differ from categories for several reasons. First, every post could (maybe should) have multiple tags. Second, you may only start out with a few tags, but you’ll grow to have many (possibly creating new ones all the time.) While your categories are major subheadings, your tags are finer resolutions that complement your categories rather than compete with them.

I currently use nearly seventy tags. I’d list them here, but it’s probably easier for you just look over at my tag cloud and see them (look over in the right-hand column.) But that number grows with every blog post. I reuse tags constantly, but I’m never averse to adding a new one.

Tags associate your blog posts together even when they fit into multiple categories. My most commonly used tag is Blogging. I use it on every post that has to do with blogging, including this one. Since this post also mentions WordPress and Blogger, I’ll use those tags, too. I’ll also be creating two new tags: Tagging and Categories. Those will only exist on this post for now, but I might very well discuss these topics again at another time.  For this post I won’t be using my 2nd and 3rd most common tags: Marketing and Facebook.  I’m not really talking about marketing and other than mentioning the tag, I haven’t mentioned Facebook at all.

Let’s look at some examples.  For our author friend, tags might include the name of every arthritis medicine on the market along with things like Fast Acting, Long Lasting, Severe Side Effects, No Side Effects, Over the Counter, Massage Therapy … the list goes on and on. The community theater might have tags like the names of the playwrights who authored each play the troop performs, Kid Friendly, Adult Themes, Comedy, Drama, Musical, Historical, etc.

Apple with tags like Red, Sweet, Tree Grown, and JuiceableI use tags sort of like descriptors. Let’s take a non-blogging example. If you were talking about food, you might have categories like Fruits, Vegetables, Grains, Protein, and Dairy. An apple would fall into the Fruits category while it might have tags like Sweet, Red, Tree Grown, and Juiceable. Grapes are also Sweet, Red, and Juiceable, but they would have a tag of Vine Grown. Unless they’re green grapes and then they’d have a tag of Green in place of Red. Salmon, on the other hand, would fall into the category of Protein and have tags like Fish, Pink, Smoked (if appropriate,) etc. Brisket would also be a Protein and might share the Smoked tag with salmon but would also have tags like Beef and BBQ.

The Quick Takeaway

Categories and tags are all about linking similar blog posts together. If a person reads one of your posts about a specific topic and enjoys it, they might want to see more.  Throw tags onto your posts as descriptors to help people find similar posts. Use categories to group the big subjects together just like you might file them in a filing cabinet.

How are you using your categories and blogs?

 

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