Comments on: Why Tags Are Better Than Categories

By: Chicago Printing

Chicago Printing — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 18:59:26 +0000

Thanks for the advice. I have take this one on a note so I can have a reference soon. and one thing more that tags are better than categories, they are also useful in SEO rather than categories.

By: Scott Saunders

Scott Saunders — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 22:29:00 +0000

Thanks for the tip. Being new to WP and blogging in general, I just thought categories were the way to go. I will definitely start tapping into tags instead.

By: Northville Real Estate Blog

Northville Real Estate Blog — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 22:34:27 +0000

Categories are better if there is just one writer, if there are multiple writers than tags are more useful in my humble opinion

By: ATHENA

ATHENA — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 22:54:23 +0000

I realized this problem after i blogged for the first month. I think I was lucky to change it right then. I used to treat categories as they were tags… soon after i found it messing up my tag cloud (personally i love tag clouds, i think they act like a charm on a blog, only when they look nice tho)
so i decided to start using my tags well. I used the simple tags plugin like many others. and use the wordpress “tag cloud” template tag to make limits on it so tht it doesnt show all of my tags but only the most used ones! =)
Thx for this post, it makes me feel I did it the right way

By: goldfries

goldfries — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:40:47 +0000

I think that whether or not a category would be useful or useless or somewhere in between, really depends on your blog.

I think a personal blog would probably rack up too many categories. I’ve seen blogs with a super huge list of categories and it quite doesn’t make sense already.

On the other hand, on my site the categories are exactly what I write about so it’s all fine and dandy. People would know where to click to find the article they need.

That being said, I’m also looking into implementing tag clouds to add value to the site.

By: TefemodoWhisse

TefemodoWhisse — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 21:56:04 +0000

Very nice!!

By: Dave S.

Dave S. — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 02:13:02 +0000

Interesting article.

I’m not a fan of tag clouds. I find they usually take up too much room and they look cluttered.

Does the wordpress search take tags into account? For example, if I type in a search term that is also a tag, will the search display posts that have that tag?

Thank you for sharing your knowledge on your blog.

By: Edouard Stenger, France

Edouard Stenger, France — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:37:38 +0000

Nice article, as usual !

I stopped a year ago using categories and switched to tags as they enable me to target directly the exact subject of my blog.

Example : instead of putting an article in the energy category, I can tell exactly if it coal, renewables, nuclear or oil…

Keep up the good work !

By: redwall_hp

redwall_hp — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:35:31 +0000

@Michael, I use date-based permalinks, so no I didn’t run into any URL issues. I was using Google Sitmaps at the time (it broke with WP2.3, and I never re-downloaded it ) and I just regenerated the map and Google seemed to update their indexes within a couple days. And people rarely link to category permalinks.

@Icheb, Google *does* penalize you for duplicate content. If the exact same content is on the web in two locations, only one is going to rank well in Google.

By: Slevi

Slevi — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:27:40 +0000

There are definitely blogs out there on stuff other than blogging and lost socks . As David said his blog for example about science, myself I tend to write on the interests within my life which are mainly health, entertainment and tech.

So if you look for it there’s definitely more to be found than writing about just blogging and those darn socks always getting lost!