Using categories and tags effectively on your blog

Michael Martin from Pro Blog Design has a helpful guest post at ProBlogger on the effective use of categories and tags on your blog.

I tell clients to treat categories like the index of chapters to a book, but I like Michael’s analogy of files going in the appropriate file drawer – there are only so many drawers in the file cabinet, so each category must cast a wide blanket.

Michael’s keys to categories, with a few comments from me.

• The number of categories should be small. Resist the temptation to add new categories because a long list of them will not be read or browsed by anyone and so, is of no use.
• Each post goes into one category. The categories are a way of giving a post permanent storage, just as the drawers do. You cannot put one piece of paper into two drawers, and in the same way, a single post should go into a single category. Not sure I agree as no category name is perfect. Users may be looking in one category and pick up a helpful post that’s also filed in a second category.
• Categories are navigation elements. Your categories should be factored into your site’s architecture and navigation, and displayed appropriately. Agreed. But all too often I see categories buried below useless features in a blog’s navigation bar.
• Categories in URLs. A category represents the traditional folder system of a HTML website. Using permalinks with category names included is a good way of displaying the tiered architecture of a web site. I’ve also found it helps slightly for search engine optimization.

Here’s Michael’s keys to tags.

• Don’t use tags the same as categories, they are meant to complement categories.
• Use the same tags over and over again. The tagging system is useless when the tags you use vary. For instance, if you have a series of posts on writing articles, you could tag them as ‘journalism,’ ‘writing,’ ‘copywriting,’ or a hundred other variations.
• Tags do not need to be displayed in the sidebar. Tagging is not a part of your navigational structure, and so it does not necessarily have to be displayed in the sidebar. Why not simply list a post’s tags at the end of the post? The contextualisation will make them much more valuable to readers, and could even be used to replace ‘Related Posts,’ plugins and such.
• If you do use your tags in your sidebar, then use the tag cloud. A list of categories is very easily recognised because it is in a list. A list of tags will be clearly recognised as such if it is in a cloud. The cloud works because it fits a lot of information into a small space, and is easy to scan over.

Used well, Michael nails a huge benefit of tags – better searching. “Let’s say I’m interested in posts about FeedBurner. Am I more likely to get good results by searching and having every post that has ever mentioned FeedBurner returned to me, or by clicking a tag and only seeing the posts which have been specifically tagged as discussing FeedBurner?”