There seems to be a little confusion in some minds about how to use categories and tags and their relationship to keywords. Perhaps we can clear the air just a little.
The idea behind both categories and tags is to enable users to find related content easily and should be planned from day one as part of your content development. Categories and tags are simply a method of sorting your data – in this case, web pages.
Categories: categories should be a relatively broad filing system. Depending on your niche and the scope of cover, you should try to limit the number of categories to between ten and twenty. The danger often is to either have to few or to have to many. I see some sites, particularly those ‘celebrity’ type sites that have literally hundreds of categories. They use the celebrities name as a category – off course that will lead to an infinite number of categories.
The better approach perhaps could be to categorize the celebrities field, for example, stage, screen, TV, music, fashion, sport and so on.
Tags: tags are way of defining information in more targeted manner. If I again use celebrities as an example, you can be more specific using tags such as comedy, horror, football, golf and so on. You can be a lot more generous with tags and a lot more refined although there is one argument that suggests using single words only when tagging.
A page on David Beckham would be under the category of sport and tagged with football, along with any other relevant information. If the page is about David Beckham aftershave, then you could include aftershave, or even more specific ‘Beckham’s aftershave’.
For some sites, you can insert keywords into your categories quite easily. In others, it can be more difficult. The same can be said for tags although if you are limiting yourself to single word tags then it can be difficult.
If you are relying on your categories and tags for keywords then there is a problem with your overall approach. They can be used to reinforce your keywords and can often be a great way of focusing your content, however they are both simply filing systems designed to make the search for content easier for your visitors.
That last is the most important. By using to many (or to few) categories you can make the search for relevant content to difficult. Each page should only appear in one or at most two categories. Tags should be used to then refine the content further. Try to approach the overall design of your categories from a users perspective – think like a user and you will most likely provide them with what they want.
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