You probably use categories, tags, or both to help organize your content, regardless of how niche-focused your blog is. Without these organizational structures, your content becomes nearly impossible to manage—it will, with time, aggravate you and your readers. Many times this is simply because there was not enough emphasis on planning for the organization of content, but even if you haven't been keeping your content organized, you can change that, right now.
Categories? Tags? What's the Deal Here?
I tend to focus more on categorical structures than tagging structures, but my reasoning for this is simply personal preference. There is no proven method to handling organization. However, even though I place emphasis on categories for structuring a site, I know that tagging is just as crucial. The true power is when a blogger can utilize both methods effectively.
Categories
Categories are primarily used to break up content into broadly identifiable selections. The appeal of categories is that no matter what organizational system you use, categories can be utilized as a simple single-level tier of organization, and while not being highly effective for finding specific information, it can help readers filter out somewhat irrelevant information.
Tags
Tagging has become extremely popular with the development of the web 2.0 phenomenon—which sites like del.icio.us, Flickr, and Technorati specifically took advantage of—but it has also provided bloggers with yet another simple, efficient organizational structure. The primary issue with tags is that they can be easily overused and, therefore, quickly rendered ineffective. If your site has a thousand or so tags, how can you possibly expect them to be usable within any realistic application.
Effective Organization
Correctly using both these systems requires serious planning—plenty of thought is needed to plan for not only tomorrow but years ahead. When first planning out your blog, you need to determine what content you are going to be focusing on. Also, consider any topics that you might be interested in writing about in the future as well. After this, you should then develop a categorical structure that encompasses each subject you wish to talk about—some sites have 5 categories, others have 50, it is really up to you.
I would normally suggest using subcategories as an effective way to organize things, but, unfortunately, WordPress has poorly implemented this feature—I have also noticed that many support requests end up unanswered when subcategories are involved. I don't understand why, but it is something to keep in mind (it also emphasizes the need for using tags).
After you have your categories scoped out, you can then proceed by determining a simple tagging structure for your site. There is little point in adding 10 different tags for one post. If you believe that only one or two posts will ever have the tag you are considering entering, you should pass on it. If you take the time to tag all your posts, it would be in your best interest to keep things clean. Avoid having several hundreds of tags within a few months of blogging. The less tags used, ironically enough, would be considered better, in my opinion.
If you are feeling experimental, consider organizing your tags into a logical method that contains subtagging built in. If you were, for example, running a worldwide sports blog, why not consider tagging a post about the Pittsburgh Steelers NFL football team as "nfl_steelers" and "nfl_news." Then, later on, when writing about the Houston Rockets NBA basketball team, you could try "nba_rockets" and "nba_draftpicks" and "nba_controversy" as the tags for that particular post. I use underscores to denote that a pseudo category precedes it. This, of course, can be made to look cleaner by using spaces (if your CMS supports spaces within tags), but I would still use underscores to break things up. It might not be pretty if it was displayed in a tag cloud, but this isn't about being pretty, it is about being organized.
You could also consider using categories to substitute for the first pseudo category: "NFL", "NBA", "NHL",and "MLB". But it is really up to you. The point is that your readers can easily sort through your content. Subcategories would be useful here, but, again, WordPress doesn't support well enough.
A Few Examples
A great real world example of utilizing a tagging system can be found at PopCrunch. The PopCrunch site uses tags in several ways, but one of the best methods is by having each tag correspond to an individual celebrity. In this way, tags play an integral and effective part of the site's navigation.
For another example, I could see tags being used as an effective method of navigation for a blog focused on video games. A tag could be assigned to represent each individual game title—users can, therefore, easily find all related content posted about a particular video game. If you get a bit creative with the categories, you can easily develop a great structure for a blog like this.
A serious improvement of WordPress's tagging system could be to implement tag groupings or sets. These groupings or sets could then be used as another tier of organization. As with my previous example, say you have a tag set for each of the following: PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360, Wii, etc. If you had this structure setup, a user could then filter a tag set or group of PlayStation 3 content, and then only content related to the PlayStation 3 version of GTA IV, assuming this user wanted to see information related to GTA IV, could be displayed. This is a really crude example, but it would be nice to see something like this build-in in the future.
Finish
Regardless of how you structure your site, hopefully this article has provided some insight on how to properly use categories and tags. I'm willing to bet that many of you have hundreds, if not thousands, of tags piling up within your CMS (I was included), but dedicating a few hours to organizing your site could be in you and your reader's best interest.
If you have a better, unique, or just plain crazy solution to organizing your site's content, let everyone know in the comments section!
Thousands of tags are just
Thousands of tags are just insane! I'm just to months into blogging, and I use just 26 tags in my blog. In long term, I see them going on to a hundred, but not more. Too much categorization just eats things up.
@Rajat
Hey Rajat :D
Well, you do got a grip on organization. Performancing has several hundreds (if not thousands) of tags. My personal blog has around 250. Jeff Chandler's blog has over a thousand I think he said.
Just insane.
Thanks for commenting!
Good thing del.icio.us and Flickr only have 100 tags each
If your site has a thousand or so tags, how can you possibly expect them to be usable within any realistic application.
You're focusing on entirely the wrong thing.
The issue with how usable your tags are isn't the number of them, but that they be reused in order to build connections. They should be used as promiscuously as possible; the entire point is that you'll use a search process to filter them later. Any number of tags large or small, if only used a few times each is not significantly different from just having used categories.
Post needs an update
This post needs an update, your link to popcrunch.com is broken.
@Su
If you have a thousand tags, how many times can you honestly expect to reuse all of them? I'm speaking in realistic and practical terms here.
Also, I did point out the fact that the tags should be reused. That was the entire point of the post. If you are going to use tags, USE them. Don't just tag something for the sake of tagging it. Make them useful. If, for example, you have 100 posts on your blog, and you have 400 tags, I must say that your tagging system is fairly ineffective. If you have 100 posts and have 25 tags, I believe that system to be more usable and efficient.
Also, how can you expect to display 1,000 tags to a user? It just isn't going to happen. In that case, the search functionality better be grand.
I do agree with you though that systems designed to harness tagging can benefit from having plenty of tags to work with, but very few bloggers actually follow through with this.
Also, I wanted to point this out because Performancing itself has this very same organizational problem. This was the inspiration of this post. We are working hard to rectify this issue though.
So, this is just all from personal experience.
Some blogs forgo the use of tags altogether (at least from what I can see): XFEP.com, for example.
@Phil
Thanks for pointing that out. That was actually my fault. All fixed. :)
To add to this. One of the
To add to this. One of the most important reasons I believe people should use tag is to build links to related content. I believe that this is truly one of the areas where tags shine. It is, in many regards, a more effective system to linking to other content with an automated system.
Keep that in mind when assigning tags as well.
ProBlogger also has a post similar to this one that I just found on Google: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/09/27/using-categories-and-tags-effectively-on-your-blog/
This is obviously going to end up as "agree to disagree"
[But I've already typed all this out, so... And yes, I'm engaging in a certain amount of idealism; tags are a lovely idea and I'm sick of seeing them abused and then complained about for not working in some way they aren't supposed to.]
If you have a thousand tags, how many times can you honestly expect to reuse all of them?
Not my problem. It's also not the problem of the tags. You're still arguing against the concept by holding up an example of misuse and calling it failure. You understand that they should be reused, etc. That means if they aren't, then the user is doin it rong. It's not impractical, it's work, and you need to decide whether you're willing to invest the effort. The fact that most people don't does not invalidate the intended purpose, nor is it a reason to suggest the number be kept small; it is a reason however to suggest they skip them altogether and maybe just consider categories instead. Don't confuse impracticality with "I don't feel like doing it." (And yes, I do try to talk most of my clients out of using tags. I also have one whose per-post tag count is regularly in the double-digits.)
[...] 100 posts [...] 400 tags, I must say that your tagging system is fairly ineffective. If you have 100 posts and have 25 tags, I believe that system to be more usable and efficient.
That makes absolutely no sense. It's flat out impossible for you to make that claim with the information above. Again: the efficacy of either of these examples lies mostly in the overlap of the tagging, which you are not revealing, and not in a simple count of the tags themselves.
Also, how can you expect to display 1,000 tags to a user?
You don't. That's silly. Tag clouds are are almost always a waste of everybody's time, including the poor computer that spent cycles building it. Sometimes—rarely—a pre-filtered list or cloud(most common, most recent, etc.) can be justified, but generally speaking tags are not very interesting or even useful en masse. Which is not to claim I've never ended up building one; sometimes it's not worth the fight.
(Bonus points: where's the "everything" tag cloud for Flickr? Delicious? Magnolia? Exactly.)
It just isn't going to happen. In that case, the search functionality better be grand.
Yes, it better be, such as supporting intersections, exclusions and the like. And if not, that's isn't because of the tags themselves, it's because of the search system. That may also be a valid reason not to use them, but don't make the mistake of transferring the blame. Your suggestion of "sub-tags" betrays this precisely. There is no such thing as a sub-tag; we usually call those sub...categories. Unless "nba_controversy" becomes a very common topic(Tags can always be refactored, but now we're back to this being work.), it probably shouldn't even exist but instead be findable as the intersection of the separate tags "nba" and "controversy."
Some blogs forgo the use of tags altogether
Good! I'll go one better and say that most blogs should forgo them.
Good! I'll go one better and
Good! I'll go one better and say that most blogs should forgo them.
Well, there is something I agree with. Most blogs will never truly harness them anyways. :D
Thanks for the credit
Thanks for the photo credit. As for tags, I'm a let it all go sort of guy. Looking back at a cloud of 100's of tags that's emerged over time is really instructive, to the owner of the tag a well as a viewer. I think it's wrong to pre-determine the categories. Now, if you could devise categories for tags after the fact (oops, two layers, as well as an iterative information design) you could have the best of both worlds.
Disagree with tags
> There is little point in adding 10 different tags for one post.
James, you make a big mistake by using 'tag' as a synonym for 'sub-category' and/or content structure element. Instead tags are tags like in 'price tag'. Content wise a tag (and also a rel=tag link) has the meaning of adding a 'content tag' to the article. The article must be relevant for the single tag (and vice versa).
Example: Comparing 25 blogging systems
Category: Software, CMS
Tags: 'List of all the 25 blogging systems' because the article is relevant for every single one
That a tag search engine is available inside a CMS is nice but does not mean that tags offer a content structure by definition!
If you are tagging right then the tag list will work well as an abstract for the whole single article.
Both is Good
Personally, I use both tags & category in my blog.. but I do not have certain method or procedure on using them.. Normally I tag them with revelancy to my post. Likewise with category.. But for me, most of my tags & category are mostly the same.. Don't know how much that will help me though.. Have to look more into this..
category vs. tag
Muhammad Riduan Ramli: A category is a content divider (structure) and a tag is a content description (~definition). Examples:
shop category: shirt
shop tag: price 10$, t-shirt, 100% cotton, XL, stock number, unisex
category: mood
tag: happy
The standard is to have tag as a synonym for keyword.
As delicious.com never had categories they invented 'bundles' (of tags) as a workaround. A very bad workaround in my eyes because of the 'structure vs. description' argument.
bilginin adresi bilginin tek kaynağı
Good! I'll go one better and say that most blogs should forgo them.
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