Writing blog content for your WordPress website is great for helping educate and entertain your readers. It also helps boost your search engine rankings which expands your online presence, allowing you to grow your business. But all this content is most helpful to readers when it is properly organized. That’s where categories and tags come in.
Do you know the difference between categories and tags in WordPress? Let’s talk about the difference between the two and why it’s a good idea to categorize and tag all of your WordPress blog posts.
Categories and Tags in WordPress
Categories are the main topic areas that your blog will address. Although they are relatively broad, all of your individual blog posts should be able to fit nicely in one category. For example, if you are writing a life coaching blog your categories may include relationships, career, spirituality and health. Each of your posts should go into one of these broad categories.
As you create more content, you may choose to create subcategories. Subcategories allow you to further organize your content. Subcategories for the health category mentioned above may include nutrition, yoga and running.
If you are starting a new blog, it’s a good idea to take some time to brainstorm the 5-7 primary topics that you will be writing about. These topics will become your categories for all of your future blog posts.
Tags are different than categories but just as important when it comes to organizing your content. While blog posts should go into only one category, these same posts should have multiple tags. Tags are keywords that give your readers an idea of what will be specifically addressed in your post.
Using the example above, a life coach may write a post about the benefits of superfoods in a healthy diet. The coach could choose to put the post in the health category and the nutrition subcategory, with the tags superfoods, leafy greens and acai. This method of organization makes it easy for the reader to find the content they’re looking for.
Why should you use categories and tags in WordPress?
The primary reason your posts should be categorized and tagged is to help your reader find the information they want. Organized blog posts that are in logical categories and tagged with logical keywords make finding content easy on the reader.
And a better experience for the reader means some good things for your business. For one, it helps you to establish authority and trust as a knowledgeable website under your given business topic. It also encourages readers to stay on your site longer which is known to help improve your search engine rankings.
Have you been using categories and tags in your posts?
If not, you can always go back and create categories and tags for old posts. At ACA Web Consulting, we help clients create blog content and organize it in a way that appeals to both readers and search engines. If you need help getting your blog in order, contact us today for a consultation.
