We Know Media, We Know Code, We Know Design
Organize Your Content with Categories and Tags, Editorial Decisions, Not Technical, on a background of organized candy

Blog Categories and Tags are Editorial Decisions, Not Technical

In WordPress, categories and tags are mostly editorial decisions. Technical factors are relevant, but it’s mostly about how you want to organize your content. Here I explain how and why.

First, let me define a term.

Taxonomy

The method of classifying content and data in WordPress.

When you use a taxonomy, you’re grouping similar things together. Categories and tags are default taxonomies.

Here are a few other details you should know about taxonomies:

  • Categories and tags are very similar except for one major difference: categories are hierarchical, tags are not.
  • By default, taxonomies apply only to posts and not to pages.

What Happens When You Publish Taxonomies?

Before you use taxonomies, you should understand what happens when you do.

Important: You Create a New Page for Every Taxonomy You Add

WordPress themes typically make a navigation page for every category and tag. On these taxonomy pages, WordPress lists all the posts for that taxonomy with links to each post. Since these pages are usually controlled by the theme and other settings, you should learn specifically how your site publishes taxonomies.

The structure of taxonomy pages is important. They usually consist of:

  • H1 Heading with the Taxonomy Name (important for Search Engine Optimization, SEO)
  • Optional Description of the Taxonomy in an HTML paragraph
  • List of posts in the taxonomy. Each item in the list often has
    • an H2 headline with the post title (important for SEO)
    • excerpt of the post
    • link to the post (important for SEO and user navigation)
Example of category navigation page with taxonomy name in the main H1 headline and list of blog posts.
Example of category navigation page with taxonomy name in the main H1 headline and a list of blog posts.

So when you create a category (or tag), you create a new page for that category (or tag). Here’s how these pages are important.

User Navigation

Categories and tag pages are ways for readers to navigate the content of your blog. When you want to publish taxonomies, make sure your site has links to these pages. This depends on the theme, so review how your site displays these links. It usually easy to add these links.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Taxonomy pages can be found by search engines. The structure of headlines and text on these pages can help SEO.

This is a pretty good reason to use taxonomies. And when you do, use them to organize content for better user navigation. The SEO benefit will follow.

Behind-the-Scenes SEO

Most WordPress sites use an SEO plugin like Yoast, RankMath or All in One SEO. These plugins can publish semi-hidden sitemaps for search engines. These sitemaps usually publish links to the taxonomy pages. Even if your site doesn’t have public links, Google and Bing can still find them through these sitemaps.


Do Users and SEO Benefit from Classified Content on Your Site?

Don’t use taxonomies until you answer this question with yes.

When you start a blog, you might have one to three posts. All posts appear on the main blog page. A separate category page won’t help people find content.

As you add more posts, you’ll have to decide when you have enough posts to use taxonomies to help users navigate your content.

In any case, don’t publish taxonomies just because somebody said you should. Publish them only after you organize them for users. Generally, that means you shouldn’t use them until you have 30 or more posts. Then you have a good sample of content to guide your decisions.

Couple navigating website on a laptop.

BTW: Don’t Rename Taxonomies Willy-Nilly

Don’t depend on changing or deleting taxonomies along the way. When you do, search engines will find 404 errors on your site, and that’s not good for SEO. When you do change taxonomy names, make sure to implement 301 redirects from the old pages.


How to Use Categories and Tags

Here are my general guidelines.

Use Your Editorial Judgement

It’s up to you to apply taxonomies to your content, on your site, for your readers. General info or technical details can’t replace your knowledge of your content.

A site covering news and events for a major city could work well with hundreds of taxonomies. A niche site publishing one post a month about the same topic might not need any.

Only somebody who knows your content should decide how to use taxonomies. That’s you or whomever you hire to read and organize your posts.

Use a Small Number of Taxonomies

Most articles suggest using a small number of categories. For many sites, that’s a good way to start. Add more when it fits the content you have.

Some sites say you shouldn’t use the hierarchy of categories. I say use them if it fits your content and how you want to organize it.

Categories are Usually the Way to Start

Categories are suitable for most blogs. Start with categories. Use tags if you have good reason.

Tags

If you want, tags could function like categories (except for the hieracrchy). Since categories are already available, you might use tags for specific mentions within your posts. See the next section for an example.

Category-Tag Example

For a flower website, categories might include buying, growing, pruning, fertilizing. This is how most sites use categories. It’s a good approach.

Then tags could include flower varieties mentioned in posts. If a post about fertilizers mentions roses and carnations, the category would be fertilizing, and the tags would be roses and carnations.

Avoid Orphan Taxonomies

Taxonomy pages with one or a few posts look empty, the posts look orphaned. If you add a new taxonomy, make sure you have or will create more posts for it.

Option: Use Taxonomies but Don’t Publish Them

You can use any taxonomy for your own purpose and turn off all public links. They don’t have to be public or indexable by search engines.

For instance, you can use tags for all posts that have a video. It’s then possible to change the page design automatically for posts with a tag like “video” while keeping a standard design for all other posts. Or use a tag for all posts that are particularly short or long.

IMPORTANT: Just make sure you turn off all publicly available pages, menus, and sitemaps that have links to taxonomies used like this.

Taxonomies are Customizable

For completeness, I mention that taxonomies can be renamed and new taxonomies can be created. For conciseness, I say don’t bother with custom taxonomies until you understand the default ones.


How Major SEO Websites Use Taxonomies

Good SEO is the result of a lot of small things, including taxonomy pages. So I surveyed some big-name SEO websites. They’re more likely to “do it right” for SEO, and maybe we can take some lessons from them.

Don’t take any of these examples as a rule for you. Their resources and the complexity of the content are greater than most sites. They have thousands of posts and a group of experts to write and organize. Use these to understand how taxonomies can work.

Here’s what I found.

Moz

Moz.com has 37 categories, and they apply two or three per post. It appears they don’t use subcategories nor tags.

Search Engine Journal

Search Engine Journal has 62 categories including two levels of subcategories. The main menu is organized with categories; that is, they applied taxonomies as the main organization for users. It appears they do not apply more than one category per post. The site does not appear to publish tags.

Search Engine Land

Search Engine Land has 77 categories including two levels of subcategories. They explicitly tell search engines not to index tags. They use categories in user navigation on category pages.

Incidentally, they renamed “category” to “library”. Their XML sitemap still has the name “category-sitemap.xml”.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs does not publish sitemaps in their robots.txt file, which is not typical of most websites; they probably submit sitemaps to search engines other ways. (BTW, Google suggests publishing sitemaps in the robots.txt file.) It appears they use around 14 categories without subcategories and assign one category per post. This is a loose estimate based on a review of the blog page. They use categories in navigation below the fold on the blog page. It appears they don’t use tags.

Yoast

The blog at Yoast.com uses tags without a hierarchy the way other sites use categories. They have 70 different tags and assign multiple tags to some posts. It appears the sites does not use categories.


Conclusion

The tech of WordPress categories and tags (taxonomies) is fairly simple. The most important point to remember is that you create a new navigation page for every taxonomy you add.

You have to do your own organizing if you use taxonomies. General info or technical details can’t replace your knowledge of your content. Apply taxonomies to organize your content for your users. SEO benefits, if any, will follow.


Image Credit: Set of delicious jelly and caramel sweets arranged in lines by type
Photo by Karolina Kaboompics