Most of WordPress users are confused about categories & tags. even I was confused when I started using WordPress. Categories & Tags both are different and both can be used to optimize our blog for Search Engine.First of all what is Categories and tags.
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Categories In WordPress:
According to WordPress, Categories provide a helpful way to group related posts together, and to quickly tell readers what a post is about. Categories also make it easier for people to find your content. Categories are similar to, but broader than, tags. For more information on the differences between categories and tags please check out this support doc.
Tags In WordPress:
According to WordPress,Tags provide a useful way to group related posts together and to quickly tell readers what a post is about. Tags also make it easier for people to find your content. Tags are similar to, but more specific than, categories. The use of tags is completely optional.
Your posts will appear in the Topics listings of any tags or categories you use. Therefore, assigning tags and categories to your post increases the chance that other WordPress.com users will see your content. It is similar as that we are adding labels on blogspot blogs. That’s why we limit the number of tags that can be used on a public tag listing. Five to 15 tags (or categories, or a combination of the two) is a good number to add to each of your posts. The more tags you use, the less likely it is that your post will be selected for inclusion in the topics listings.In other words, Both tags and categories are merely a method to organize your website.
According to me, you can have limited categories according to your site niche, however you can have unlimited tags for your niche.Suppose You are adding computer as category and you don’t have any categories about Hardware & software. You can add tags of hardware and software instead, so while posting about software topics, you can manually choose the main categories as Computer and tag as software.
Categories vs Tags: What’s better for SEO?
If you are using categories or tag, there is no changes in your WordPress SEO. Both can be used to improve SEO together.Google spiders look at tags and categories on your page in the same exact way.It is better to create sitemap in WordPress either using Categories or tags.
So if you are including tags along with categories in your sitemap, I would recommend you to use one out of both, as it will cause duplicate content problem and lowering down your blog rank.
