Categories and tags are the key features of a WordPress site. You can easily group articles according to their content type and add tags with the ease of a reader. A blog post can be assigned two or more categories, but you can add as many tags to it. There can be sub-categories, but there are no sub-tags. Only flat-single tags are attached to the article. In this article, I will discuss how you can use categories and tags more effectively in WordPress.
Use Categories & Tags More Effectively
Categories are available in nested form; which means you can create a child category under a parent category. They group different articles and help you to locate your desired posts. Following are the few efficient ways through which categories can work best on your site:
- For a reader, it is necessary to group similar content under one category. So, being a blog owner, you should provide this ease. It helps readers come across more related articles from which they might get help. E.g. in “wordpress.org/documentation/categories/plugins”, ‘plugins’ is the category which is easy to locate for a reader. Along with that, it contains all the articles related to this niche.
- I have just mentioned about the nested property of categories. So, making several child categories for one parent category even helps the reader. Through this, the reader can go for a more refined search for content. E.g. in “wordpress.org/documentation/categories/plugins/EDD”, ‘plugins’ is the parent category and ‘EDD’ is its child category which is nested within the ‘Plugins’.
- Usually, you choose one or two categories for a single article, but it is helpful if you limit the number of categories to a minimum. This helps the reader to identify desired content. It also assists them to locate only at one place instead of several locations.
- A blog owner should keep a record of the categories. If you want to know about the site stats w.r.t. Categories you can easily get it.
- It’s best not to create additional categories because it lessens the effectiveness. A reader gets confused while locating the desired content.
- It is important to nest the child category under parent category with the same content of information. Otherwise, this eliminates the reason for creating categories.
Efficient Use of Tags
Likewise, tags are also the essential feature of WordPress site which can be utilized in an efficient way. It can be combined with categories to give a working environment for the reader. Their combination helps the blog owner to organize the articles. It contributes to describing the content of the article clearly. Following are the few ways of using tags effectively:
- Unlike categories, tags are a flat-structured feature. Categories can be in a hierarchical structure, but tags cannot be divided further. Tags usually describe the summary of content in a few words which has to be exact.
- Categories are used to group and organize your articles on the front-end. Tags are used to organize your content on the back-end. Tags allows you to connect your article to the description which is referred to categories on the front-end.
- Tags helps the blog owner to visualize the content in a proper way. So that when anyone visits the site he might see the appropriate use of categories and tags in an absolute way.
These were the few basic ways of using tags and categories in an efficient way on your WordPress site.
Conclusion
Perhaps I have mentioned many possible ways of using categories and tags in an effective manner but still there are a lot more. In my opinion, you should try this once. This will help the readers to visit your site again and again to locate their desired content.