Categories vs Tags in Wordpress - Seeking help in Laymans Terms and specific instructions on how to do what I need
I'm doing some SEO work on my own Wordpress website to improve my chances of it popping up in search results and recently posted a question here where I got some very useful tips and information.
Per the information I've been given, I'm currently looking at Categories vs Tags as suggested by an expert in my other question.
My problem is that I don't fully understand the help article that I've been pointed to.
Can anyone explain the differences between the two to me in layman's terms, as well as perhaps include a screenshot or two of what I'm supposed to be changing and where, in Wordpress?
My wordpress skills are fairly basic so please don't assume too much knowledge - what I'm after is specific directions as to what to change and in what areas of Wordpress I'm supposed to be making those changes.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Regards, Andrew
Per the information I've been given, I'm currently looking at Categories vs Tags as suggested by an expert in my other question.
I suggest you change this in WP to use /tag/page or /category/page https://en.support.wordpress.com/posts/categories-vs-tags/
My problem is that I don't fully understand the help article that I've been pointed to.
Can anyone explain the differences between the two to me in layman's terms, as well as perhaps include a screenshot or two of what I'm supposed to be changing and where, in Wordpress?
My wordpress skills are fairly basic so please don't assume too much knowledge - what I'm after is specific directions as to what to change and in what areas of Wordpress I'm supposed to be making those changes.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Regards, Andrew
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ASKER
Thank you Chinmay, that was exactly the type of explanation I needed.
Now I understand what the help article I looked at is talking about :)
Regards, Andrew
Now I understand what the help article I looked at is talking about :)
Regards, Andrew
What I was referring to in the other question really was the taxonomy/url structure. Wordpress gives you options to use categories and/or tags with page names.
CATEGORIES:
consulting
security
servers
networking
Windows
TAGS:
virus
spyware
domains
backup
training
software
If you chose to set up WP for sitename/category/tag/page
example.com - home page
example.com/security - main security page that will contain posts for everything with the category of 'security'.
example.com/security/virus
example.com/security/virus
You will want to get this all planned out to allow everything to line up correctly. There is no rule to go by except to be consistent. If you don't have enough information to use /category/tag/pagename, then just use categories.
If you do end up changing your taxonomy, then either use a plug in or update your htaccess/web.config to manage 301 redirects from the old to the new.
CATEGORIES:
consulting
security
servers
networking
Windows
TAGS:
virus
spyware
domains
backup
training
software
If you chose to set up WP for sitename/category/tag/page
example.com - home page
example.com/security - main security page that will contain posts for everything with the category of 'security'.
example.com/security/virus
example.com/security/virus
You will want to get this all planned out to allow everything to line up correctly. There is no rule to go by except to be consistent. If you don't have enough information to use /category/tag/pagename, then just use categories.
If you do end up changing your taxonomy, then either use a plug in or update your htaccess/web.config to manage 301 redirects from the old to the new.
ASKER
Thanks for the additional information, Scott.
I plan to go over all my posts once I tidy up the categories - I recall setting them up yonks ago without really knowing what I was doing and the web guys I've hired to re-do the site for me professionally obviously just followed my lead and didn't change anything, despite telling me that SEO work was included in the (rather high) cost of redesigning the site. That horse has long since bolted so too late to do anything about it now.
I'm thinking of reducing the categories and inserting appropriate Tags by revisiting all of my previous posts. This will take a bit of work, but I'm hoping the effort will prove worth it.
Thanks also for the link to your answer in the other question on EE. Useful info there that I'll take on board.
I plan to go over all my posts once I tidy up the categories - I recall setting them up yonks ago without really knowing what I was doing and the web guys I've hired to re-do the site for me professionally obviously just followed my lead and didn't change anything, despite telling me that SEO work was included in the (rather high) cost of redesigning the site. That horse has long since bolted so too late to do anything about it now.
I'm thinking of reducing the categories and inserting appropriate Tags by revisiting all of my previous posts. This will take a bit of work, but I'm hoping the effort will prove worth it.
Thanks also for the link to your answer in the other question on EE. Useful info there that I'll take on board.
category a
- category a.1
- category a.2
category b
It can also be easily listed if anyone is interested in your categories.
Tags, you usually do on the fly, short words describing what the post is about:
cooking, travel, etc etc
Both can be found using links or search. In the end, if you consistently use both responsibly, anyone interesting in one of your subjects (be it a category or a tag), they should be easy to find all post regarding this topic.