Wordpress Tags vs. Categories(looking to restructure things)

[astahl11]

Just looking for some advice on this topic.  I know it's much debated but it seems the consensus is that having some broad categories and more defined tags is optimal.

The issue with my site is that it is very broad in nature.  We're profiling and interviewing all types of careers.  The site is www.jobshadow.com for reference.

Up until now I haven't used Wordpress Tags at all.  I've just been using categories(i.e. 9-5 type jobs, salaried jobs, hourly jobs, jobs in medicine, etc).

I've probably got way too many categories.  They are being counted as links on every post page which pushes me way overboard on links per page.

-Just curious if anyone has any thoughts on best practices for my site.

-Also, none of the categories themselves are really pulling in any SEO traffic so switching those wouldn't be a big deal.  Just looking for the best way to help users browse the site and the growing number of content.

And rom what I hear Tags can pull in some random/long tail traffic pretty easily if done right.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Thanks for the help!

[evolvingSEO]

Is nesting a native function of wordpress?  Is it when you create a new category inside of another category in the post options.  I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

Yes, nesting of categories is native to WordPress. No plugins or anything required. I believe you control this in the Categories menu (sidebar)

Also, I think it's somewhat helpful letting people search by 'Jobs involving travel', 'Outdoor Jobs', etc.  Are those good examples of tags?  Or does that fall into something else?

Yep, tags can be anything that is not already a category, and more detailed than the categories. I would just try to keep them specific.

-Dan

[astahl11]

Double good answer if I could.  Thanks!

A couple more quick wet behind the ears question.

Is nesting a native function of wordpress?  Is it when you create a new category inside of another category in the post options.  I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

Also, I think it's somewhat helpful letting people search by 'Jobs involving travel', 'Outdoor Jobs', etc.  Are those good examples of tags?  Or does that fall into something else?  They probably aren't category worthy, and definitely sub-category.

But I think it's still helpful navigation for a career seeker who doesn't know where to start(and thus how I ended up with 60+ categories:).

Thanks again for the help!

[evolvingSEO]

-As far as categories.   With a site like mine would 15 ish categories be too many?  Especially given that we've got some pretty random career interviews on the site.

• I think 15 is pretty good.
• You might want to consider nesting categories (this is one difference that separates them from tags).
• NOTE: If you're eliminating categories from the website to trim down, make sure to 301 redirect them to relevant pages so you don't en up with 404s.

-Also, in regards to tags.  Should those be treated more like subcategories? But use tags.

• Generally not thought of as subcategories, because tags (unlike categories) have no hierarchy or relationship. I'd use the nesting suggestion from above if you want to make subcategories.
• Tags are like a label you just slap on a piece of content.
• Tags should NOT ever be the same as a category that already exists.

**The only way tags like that would provide value was if I have numerous interviews under the same tag right?(in some cases there are more than one interview of each career, different people with the same job etc). **

• Right, tags do have a bit more value if they are used on more than one article. But I wouldn't worry about that too much. As long as you're noindexing them for search engines, a typical tag cloud will usually highlight the most used tags to the reader, which is better for UX. Just label your articles with maybe 3-7 more detailed key words as your tags, noindex them, and you should be good!

[astahl11]

Dan,

Thanks for the help as well.  I've checked out your article, great stuff there thanks.  I really like the excerpt idea too b/c with no following and no indexing the tags there's not much traffic to gain from that.

-As far as categories.   With a site like mine would 15 ish categories be too many?  Especially given that we've got some pretty random career interviews on the site.

-Also, in regards to tags.  Should those be treated more like subcategories? But use tags.  Because if I got so defined as to put tags like obstetrics, Gynecology, etc on the interview I have with an OB/GYN then they would just link right back to the same interview.  i.e. not provide any value to the reader.

The only way tags like that would provide value was if I have numerous interviews under the same tag right?(in some cases there are more than one interview of each career, different people with the same job etc).

Anyway, starting to wrap my mind around all this.  Thanks for the help!

Aaron

[evolvingSEO]

That advice looks pretty sound Jeremy, thank you!

Only thing I'd add, is you may want to consider showing excerpts of each article on the category page. This will bring in some more content (which is perhaps why those pages aren't bringing you traffic).

Also, you can check out my recent post on WordPress SEO, in case you missed it - might help illustrate some things even more.

I do think your categories could be condensed, and I do in general noindex tag archives (as Jeremy suggests) as a default starting point.

-Dan

[astahl11]

Ok, great.  Thanks for the advice.  Will get to work on those changes, make perfect sense to me.

About the speed stuff, where are you testing from?  I just ran the pingdom report and it loaded in under 2 seconds.

I just upgraded my hosting, before that it was slow at about 9 seconds.  We've got it cached to the gills, pretty static content, so it shouldn't take too long.

[jgower]

One category per industry...so category=medical, which would include doctors, pa's, nurses, medical billing, etc.

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Get the Yoast SEO plugin and in the settings there's an option to no-index the tag pages.  Do that and it'll solve the duplicate content issue.  For me it's more about user experience...I personally like and use tag clouds when browsing.

IMO, people worry too much about 'how many keywords', etc. I like to design for the user, then go back after I create the page and figure out if I've used enough keywords...as far as tags go I wouldn't worry about what you're using the title and just make it natural, but that's just me.

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Also, I'm not sure if you're making $ from the site yet or not, but I'd look at getting another host.  Your site is kind of slow from where I'm at and people bounce fast these days.

[astahl11]

Thanks Jeremy.  A couple follow up thoughts.

-Do you think it'd best just to have one category per career/job?  Or several?

-Also, will adding tags to these interviews cause duplicate content?  And should the tags be different from the words in the Title tags?

Thanks again for the help!

[jgower]

Personally, I think the way you have categories set up is good, broken down by broad category (ie. finance).  Though I'm not sure that 9 to 5 type jobs fits in with that.  There's got to be a category that each of those jobs could fit in.  Overall, I think that the categories you're using works out well for your site.  The way I think of tags is like free keywords that do not need text around them...more specifically for your site, for the ob/gyn article I'd use the tags: obstetricics, gynecology, ob/gyn, medical.