Hey, it’s Tyree from Website Muscle. We are going through our top 10 must-dos for good blog posts, and we’re onto number nine — Categories and Tags.
If you have done any blogging, you’re probably familiar with these. But categories and tags are really nice ways to segment the content of your blog posts based on subject matter, theme, or keywords.
The main purpose behind categories and tags is user experience, which is important to keep in mind. We want to organize the content so that it’s easy to access for our readers, and they can find what content they’re interested in.
Get Cozy with Categories
Categories are usually more broad, general topics. They can include a number of different posts.
Do not select all the categories when you’re publishing your blog post! It should not apply to all your categories, and that defeats the purpose of organizing your content. We usually recommend one or two, and no more than two categories per post.
(Also, please uncheck “Uncategorized”. That should not be one of your categories.)
Category Audit
Every once in a while we recommend going back and doing an audit of your blog and seeing how many post fall under each category. Sometimes the categories that you think will be really valuable are not relevant anymore.
Make sure that you’re updating your blog categories regularly. If you only find one or two posts in a category, you might want to consider merging it with another category. You can also create subcategories within a general category for more specific sorting.
All About Tags
Tags are more specific than categories. They’re more like keywords. Think of them as the index words in the back of a book for reference. If you’re interested in a very specific word or topic, you can get to that through tags.
Nowadays, blog tags work more like hashtags on Twitter or Facebook. Users can click on a tag and see all the posts that use that same tag.
In other words, use as many tags as you want. Just make them relevant to the subject matter.
Remember, use categories sparingly. We should be really intentional and make sure that the categories actually have posts in them, and select no more than two per post. And then again, tags, you can do as many as you want to. Just make that they’re valuable.
Our “Blog Writing Guide” eBook has 10 tips for developing blog posts for your business. Get the inside scoop for free by downloading it here.
Happy blogging!
