WordPress Training: Adding categories and tags to your posts
Categories and tags make it easier for people to find your content. If you aren’t sure what they are check out our WordPress Elements video all about them. In short categories are like the sections of a menu, or indeed, newspaper while tags are more like the ingredients of a particular dish.
Let’s say I write a lot about cameras. I might create a camera category, or even make categories for different types of camera: video cameras, SLR cameras, point-and-shoot cameras, for instance. When I’m writing a post, I head to the categories pane and select the categories I’ve set up to apply to that post. If I don’t have any, or they don’t quite fit, I can click here on “Add New Category” and tap out a new one. If your category is more like a sub-category say, I’m making it a particular type of camera I can assign a Parent Category for it. So here I’ve added “Point-and-Shoot” under my cameras parent category. Now I click “Add” and that’s good to go.
Tags are a bit more precise, and specific to a particular post. I can add as many as I like, and the main idea is to create keywords that describe what’s in the post. After each tag, I leave a comma. I can also choose from my most commonly used tags if I want to keep things consistent. Here I’m writing about a rangefinder camera made by Leica, so I add the tags “rangefinder”, “leica”, “m-series” and so on. Now, when my readers come to my blog the can see a list of categories to click through to, grouping all posts together. And they can also use a tag-cloud or the tags featured in my posts “meta-data” to find other, similar content by tag. Tags also make it easier for other WordPress.com users to find my posts via the tag surfer, or even WordPress.com, so they can be a great way of helping people to find what you’ve written. That’s tags and categories.
About the Author
Andy Johnson has been on the Internet since the its dawn(ie his first computer program was recorded on cassette tape) and his first hard drive cost about as much his current MacBook. His first byline was in 1993 for a local newspaper rag he eventually helmed, and his last “real job” was at a computer start up which ended when it ended. Throughout it all he’s freelanced and blogged. Now he is mesmerized by Search Engine Optimization forever trying to “rise to the top” for the right reasons. He’s been married to his wife Julia for as long as he can remember and has two lovely, wonderful children. He looks forward to sharing the latest in the technical best for all the online entrepreneurs.