Continuing this week's discussion on categories and tags, Dan Smith - Know More Media staff writer and Vice President of Publishing - has some advice for keeping them consistent and clean.
Besides helping with organic search traffic and tag search traffic, good categories and tags keep readers on your blog longer. If I read an article or a post I like on a random blog or website, I immediately go to site’s topics or categories list to see what other interesting things the site offers. You control this list on your blog—it is us to you to make this list relevant and helpful to your readers. We have authors in our network who do this very well. For a few real examples of excellent categories and tags on a blog, take a look at Michelle Dunn’s BizCreditPolicy.com, Joseph Carrabis’ BizMediaScience.com, and Alex Ion’s BizToolbelt.com, to name a few.
A few keys that stick out to me:
Consistency with Capitalization and Spelling. You need to spell your categories and tags the same way every time, using the same capitalization. If you create an “ice-cream” category, and spell it 3 different ways for 3 different posts (ie. ice-cream, Ice cream, Ice-cream), you will create 3 separate categories! Unfortunately, I’ve seen this type of thing done many times. Use the exact same spelling and capitalization every time. Keep them clean.
Personally, I like to capitalize the beginning of my categories and tags—I think it makes them look more official and helps them stand out from each other. I think capitalizing them makes them more “clickable.”
Concise and Relevant. Categories and tags should be 1-3 words each. And if you exceed 30-40 categories on a blog, you’ve gone too far—that’s just too many categories for a reader to wade through. Keep your readers in mind. What is the most logical way to categorize your blog topic into 30-40 pieces?
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