Boost SEO: How To Use Categories And Tags In Your Blog

Creating and maintaining a well thought out category and tagging system when blogging offers many opportunities for increased user engagement and traffic generation. Such a system becomes the skeleton of your blog, clueing in both readers and search engines to its structure and content – which, in turn, improves the user experience and boosts traffic to your site.

Don’t just create categories and tags ad hoc as your blog develops—you could miss out on a ton of benefits that come with the proper use of tags and categories. Be sure to take the time to use these two elements correctly in order to boost your blog’s SEO, increase your blog’s "stickiness," lower your bounce rate, and provide an overall better experience for your readers.

Can you have too many tags or categories on a blog post?
The use of tags and categories is confusing for new and veteran bloggers alike. So, what is the optimal number of categories and tags per blog post? There is not a one-size-fits-all optimal number of categories to be used—it all depends on the complexity of your blog. Because categories are meant to encompass broad topics or a group of posts, you should not use them liberally. With categories, less is more. If you’re just starting out (which means you do not have many posts), use fewer categories. Of course, there’s no point of having numerous categories with one or two posts. On the other hand, if you have a robust blog with dozens to hundreds of posts, use more categories and consider using subcategories and tags.

Always start with generic or broad categories and then work your way down with subcategories as your blog grows. Generally, a blog should have five to 10 categories, each focusing on broad topics. The maximum number of categories should be about 15. Ultimately, you will find that your blog will evolve and there’s no way that you can create all the right categories. Your main focus should be mainly about making the user experience better.

Best Practices for Using Categories
1. Visualize how all your topics and subtopics are related and then create an appropriate blog structure that takes into account the readers.
2. Make sure every blog post belongs to at least one category.

3. Use subcategories for complicated topics.
4. Make category names clear, descriptive and meaningful.
5. Capitalize your category titles. This is common practice that you should also follow.
6. Consolidate categories. Too many categories with few posts can make you look like an authority on nothing.
7. Don't create a category for one-time use.
8. Avoid using more than one category for the majority of your posts.

Best Practices for Using Tags
1. Ensure your readers can find what they’re looking for by clicking on your tags.
2. Use tags liberally. Try to apply tags to more than one post.
3. Ensure the tags are clear and descriptive.
4. Avoid capitalizing the tags.
5. Avoid creating tags that only apply to one post—the purpose of tags is to link posts together.
6. Avoid using tags that are simply duplicates of your categories.
7. Avoid excessive use of tags. While you’re free to use tags liberally, don’t overdo it.
8. Consider deleting tags that are too generic or redundant.

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