Overview #
Categories and Tags allow for ways to organize Post content
- They are meant to make navigation and browsing easier for the site user.
- Both are generally not used for static Pages.
- Categories, Tags, and Custom Taxonomies can be added to navigation menus.
Categories #
Categories are for broad classication of related topics
- Includes the hierarchical feature that allows for sub-categories.
- Categories are required for posts, and every new post is assigned the default “Uncategorized” category.
- usage recommendation — rename the “Uncategorized” category to something else, like “General”, or rename it to the main subject of your site, so that it won’t end up as an uncategorized post on the frontend.
- usage recommendation — Per post, one category, or at the most, one sub-category with its parent category
- SEO info — Search engines don’t care about categories, so it’s recommended to leave them off your sitemaps. But they should be indexed to be searchable to increase organic traffic.
- WordPress cpanel location — cpanel tabs > POSTS > CATEGORIES
Tags #
Tags are for context-related classification
- Uses keywords from the content of a post.
- Tags are not hierarchical, and there is no limit to how many to classify a post.
- Where Categories are required, Tags are optional.
- usage recommendation — Per post, a maximum of 10 tags
- SEO info — Tags have no real benefits to SEO, and it’s recommended to de-index tag archive pages, not make them searchable, to avoid duplicate content issues. Their advantage is helping readers navigate the site.
- WordPress cpanel location — cpanel tabs > POSTS > TAGS
Custom Taxonomies #
Custom taxonomies are user-created classifications
- Categories and Tags are the default WordPress taxonomies, but WordPress gives you the capability, through plugins, or special functions, to create your own taxonomy classification beyond Categories and Tags.
- You can make your Custom Taxonomy either hierarchical like categories, or non-hierarchical like tags.
- For example, if you have a movie site, you can create a taxonomy called Cast & Crew, make it hiearchical, create an Actors category, and sub-categories like Female Actors, Male Actors, Non-binary Actors, etc.
