How Important Are WordPress Categories and Tags? How Should I Use Them?

How You Use Your WordPress Categories and Tags MATTERS!

If you’ve read my post on SEO for a WordPress blog, you know that your categories matter!

If you’ve got a cluster-cluck of categories that make no sense to the title of your blog, you might have a problem, Houston!

The categories of your website should ideally fit the name of the blog as a whole.

You don’t need a million of them, you just need them to make sense to the blog topic as a whole.

Your site navigation is a whopping #4 on Google’s top ranking factors for a site.

If you’ve got a jambalaya of categories on your site that make no sense to the rest of the site as a whole, you may want to consider narrowing yourself down a bit.  (but don’t delete anything for the love of Pete, just don’t feature them).   Choose only the most important ones relevant to the site!

Related article: What Does Good SEO on a WordPress Blog Look Like?

So How Should You Be Doing This?

Categories at the TOP OF THE SITE, Please!!

Ideally, your categories should be AT THE TOP of the website in navigation bar so when when a reader lands on the page its the first thing they see.

You can also stick your categories in the side bars of the website but its a little harder to navigate if they are ONLY there.

You can add a “Contact Me” and “About Me” page and whatever else you want at the top (please be selective), but your categories should be one of the first thing a reader sees when they land on your site because it tells them what you’re about and where to go.

Categories should be directly related to the focus of the website as a whole.

Yes, I said that a few times but I wanna make sure its sinking in 😉

If you’re site is about weight loss – recipes and fitness are a good fit for categories on your site.

You could also sub-categorize, WordPress calls the main category a parent and you can have sub categories off that parent category.

You can order your menu at the top of your navigation anyway you want using the by going to your WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > Menus and changing the order they appear at the top there.

How Do I Get My Categories at the Top?

Robin has a video on how to get your categories to the top of your website. (see below)

This is probably one of her most-viewed videos because it’s important that your top menu reflect good site navigation!

Keep Categories to a Minimum!

Listen, you don’t need 500 thousand blog categories!

If you’re sticking with your blog focus, this shouldn’t be an issue.

Do not make a bunch of categories feeling like you need to fill them either.

Write within 2-3 categories for awhile, build them and then branch off from there.

What the Heck are Tags for?

Tags are not useless.  

I’ve heard this said in some blogging circles and it’s just not true.

Tags are a very powerful little SEO tool if you know how to use them correctly.

Tags are like an index in the back of a book.

You should tag your pages with a word OR words that make sense to the content.

If you have a group of posts such as “omelet recipes” but your category for those posts is “breakfast recipes” – what should you do?

You don’t have to create a new category for it…

You should give all those omelet recipes the SAME TAG!

This will then create a “tag page” that will group all those posts on the same page in WordPress.

This is why I love WordPress for blogging.

You can then interlink to all your omelet recipes easily for the reader by interlinking to the tag page.

Related article: A Simple Way to Increase Pageviews with Interlinking

HEAR WHAT I’M SAYING PLEASE!!!

–>>> You don’t want a jambalaya of categories on your site! 

Too many categories confuses the reader, it’s hard to organize and it will make your blog a bot-crawling cluster-cluck (you like that word huh?)

There’s a better way to organize and WordPress practically does it all for you!

We discuss cool tips like the one in this video in our SEO and Keyword course. 

Think About Your User’s Experience!

The user experience is a BIG DEAL to the reader as well as the search engine bot crawling your site.

The foundation of your WordPress blog needs to be laid out in a way that makes sense.

WordPress categories and tags help you do this in a way that is fast and functional.

Related Article: Increase Traffic and Pageviews with Interlinking