When it comes to building the perfect WordPress websites, experts like Peter Brittain say there are a lot of things to think about. You have to try and create engaging, interesting content, draw visitors in, and make your site show up on Google. Doing one or two of these things isn’t too difficult, but trying to do all three at the same time can be almost impossible.
There are a lot of different things that you can do to help yourself achieve the perfect website. Learning how to use every part of the WordPress platform to optimise your content for search engines is essential. When it comes to doing this sort of thing, learning how to use categories and tags effectively is something that a lot of people don’t do.
What are categories and tags?
When you create new content in WordPress, you can label it in a number of ways. You can place it underneath an existing page, you can add it to a series, or you can simply label it by date and time. However, you can also add it to a category and add tags to it.
Categories:
WordPress categories provide a way for you to sort your content into different groups, according to their themes, topics, and what they are about. This makes it easier for both search crawlers to find their way around your website, and for readers to find more posts that they are interested in. You can display categories in a number of places, including above or below your posts. You can also add multiple categories to the same post.
Tags:
Tags give even more information about the content of your post. They basically connect related posts even more than categories. You should tag everything relevant about your post, while you usually only add one or two main categories. Categories are general, but tags are specific to your post or parts of your post.
How can I use categories and tags for SEO best practices?
When it comes to building a WordPress website, SEO is essential. Think about the following when it comes to using tags and categories to make sure that you are getting the most out of them:
- Where possible, try and use high quality keywords in your tags and category labels. These will define what your website is about, so make them as relevant as possible.
- Don’t make author categories – they are made automatically whenever you create a post!
- Don’t use singular and plural forms of the same tag for the same post. Choose the most relevant one.
- Don’t use categories and tags with the same name.
- Make your category names simple and descriptive.
- Most importantly, don’t ignore categories and tags!!
If you are able to do the majority of these things, then you should find that your website starts ranking higher in search engines like Google. People will have an easier time navigating your website, and your visitor number should start to trend upwards.