Tags vs. Categories? What should I use?

[Shalin.TJ]

I'm starting with a blog (self-hosted wordpress) and I'm thinking of the following content structure so that the readers are easily able to locate relevant content:

Background:

It's a blog which gives people relevant info about government jobs. To start with we will just be publishing information about these jobs but over a period of time also intend to post content that helps readers prepare for these jobs. In other words, right now it's just about detailed job notifications but in the coming months, we shall also post about preparation-related information.

Typically, each of the job notifications can be bifurcated like:

• Jobs basis industry

• Banking

• Railways

• Clinical, etc.

• Jobs basis company

• ABC co.

• DEF co.

• XYZ co. etc.

• Jobs basis State / City

• City 1

• City 2, etc.

• Jobs basis educational qualification

• Graduation

• Post-Graduation, etc.

Now, I'm seriously confused how should I structure this data from the perspective of Categories & Tags such that it's reader as well as SEO-friendly. Do note that each of the government jobs post ideally falls in a couple of above mentioned categories.

Thanks..

[trung.ngo]

Hi Shalin,

Good news: you can do both! Assuming that it would allow you to segment content in a meaningful way for users. If tags won't make things better for users, I'd just go with categories for the sake of simplicity. But if it is useful for users, I'd do the following:

Use categories as the primary method of organizing content, then leverage tags to provide further definition. But, here's the catch: as others have correctly noted, tag pages have the potential to produce thin content, so I'd recommend applying a noindex meta tag to all tag pages, as well as excluding it in the robots.txt file. If you're using one of the popular CMS platforms, like Wordpress, this should be fairly easy to do.

This method provides the best of both worlds. You provide more ways for users to filter down to content they'd like to see and it's SEO-friendly because the tag pages--which may produce thin, duplicative content--are excluded from the index and crawl, and, therefore, should not present any SEO issues.

[Christy-Correll]

Hi there, you've received some solid advice. I'd also check out this class post by Dan Shure, which explains the difference between different types of WordPress pages, and spells out best-practices for WordPress SEO - http://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success.

Christy

[David-Kley]

While the tagging system is nice, it can be a killer for seo. Tag pages generally have thin content, and a lot of links i.e. bad for Googel guidelines. If you want to help your users, and still use the tagging system, set the tagging pages to "no-index"

As to the categories URL's I would add them. Think of your site like a book, and your categories like the chapters. Setting your site up with categories also allows you to potentially have another focus keyword in your URL, and helps users navigate your site easier

[Shalin.TJ]

Thanks for the reply..

I get it what you are trying to put across. In fact, prior to posting the question above, I did read a lot about categories and tags as taxonomies and how they ought to be used. But the question is still the same? In the scenario I mentioned above, what's the ideal way to categorise content?

[irvingw]

I would refrain from using tag pages. Google does not like thin content pages and tag pages are typically just a set of links to other posts. Also, I have seen too many sites with too many unintended tags.  Category pages give you a lot more flexibility in terms of adding unique content and making them into pages worthy of ranking. Plus, category pages are in a controlled environment and there will not be any categories being accidentally formed.