Sorting content can get tricky, especially if you generate a lot of it and if your blog/website is diverse. Also, in using categories and tags there are different SEO concerns, best practices to use, and optimal solutions for each type – tags and categories. There may be concerns and misunderstandings over the interchangeability of categories versus tags, and the list of questions can continue on and on. What we’re going to try to do in this article is consider your SEO concerns as the cornerstone that should be central to your choice of tags and categories and we’ll try to give you a better idea of how to use each one and also clarify some of the WordPress nomenclature.
First off, I’ve made a short video explaining the differences between categories and tags. If you prefer to read instead of listen and watch then a written explanation can be found below the video.
How are tags and categories different?
Categories, as the name might suggest, is broader groups for your posts. Imagine your entire list of content and try to find groupings that are general enough, without being too broad. Say you have a pop culture blog – you’ll want to differentiate between different media categories; for instance, create categories for movies, games, music and literature. If your website or blog deals with movies exclusively, then you can go in more detail about the types of movies you create content on: drama, action, comedy, etc.
A good idea is to look at the broad spectrum of your posts and then create categories that are useful in your particular field.
Now, the main difference between a tag and a category is that you’ll have to categorize a post, while the tags for each one will not be mandatory. Also, you can rename a category and when looking at the url of a post you’ll see something like:
https://wplearninglab.com/category/security/
If, on the other hand, you were looking at a tag categorized post you’ll display something along the lines of:
https://wplearninglab.com/tag/htaccess/
The optimal number of WordPress categories
The rule here is that you want each category to be specific and to allow the content to neatly slip into each one. You can organize and create new categories if the need be. If you consider the people that search your content, you want them to find exactly what they expect in a category, while tags will abbreviate even more the amount of results in a search.
You can also think of adding subcategories when you have a number of themes/types of content for a category; let’s say that on your movies website the comedy category can have both TV series as well as feature movies. You might want to create this distinction if the amount of posts is large enough. In any case, subcategories are useful when a category by itself might generate/host too much content that is not neatly encapsulated by it.
Another thing. You don’t have to feel the need to use subcategories at all. This is especially true if you’re constantly assigning content to more than one category. In that case it might be better to merge the two. In SEO terms you might get a penalization for duplicated content.
Overall, there is no actual SEO benefit in having multiple categories unless the content itself demands it, so use your best judgment. In the same vein, tagging instead of super-categorizing might be what you need to do to avoid duplication. Finally, think about the user experience first – make things as simple for them as possible.