However, we use tags and categories in a different way. Here are the main differences:<\/p>
1. Broad vs specific<\/h3>
The main distinction between categories and tags is the size of the topic they cover. Categories group broad topics of your posts while tags describe a specific detail in your content.<\/p>
To make it clear, let’s say you have a food blog. The categories you have might be Culinary Trip, Recipes, Tips, and Food News.<\/p>
If you have an article titled “The Most Delicious Beef Wellington Recipe”, this article will be included in the Recipes category. And you can use beef, Gordon Ramsay, pastry, etc. as the tags.<\/p>
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Pro Tip<\/h4>\n
It is not advisable to use something as “Gordon Ramsay” for your category since it doesn’t cover a broad topic of your blog posts. Unless you plan to create a lot of content discussing him, his name should stay a tag, not a category.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/p>
2. Necessary vs optional<\/h3>
Another difference between these two taxonomies is how mandatory they are for your post. Categories are necessary, while tags are optional.<\/p>
If you don’t assign a category to a post, WordPress will automatically set it to the default category, which is Uncategorized.<\/p>
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Pro Tip<\/h4>\n
The default category name can be changed by accessing Settings -> Writing<\/strong> from your dashboard admin.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/p> Lastly, categories and tags have different hierarchical relationships. Categories are hierarchical, which means that you can put child categories or subcategories to the parent.<\/p> For example: under the Recipes category, you can add more subcategories such as Appetizer, Main Course, Desserts, and Diet Food Plan.<\/p> Under Diet Food Plan, you can include other subcategories such as Low Carbs Food, Low Sugar Food, and Low Fat Food.<\/p> Unlike categories, tags don’t have a parent-child relationship. Each tag you add is a standalone item that has no level.<\/p> Besides the three differences above, categories and tags also produce a different permalink. You need to use a custom permalink structure to see the difference. Once the custom permalink structure is enabled, your base prefix will look like:<\/p> http:\/\/examplewebsite.com\/category\/recipes\/<\/strong><\/p> or<\/p> http:\/\/examplewebsite.com\/tags\/recipes\/<\/strong><\/p> Although these two taxonomies are different in their practical uses, you can use both of them in your posts. A post may have one or two categories and numerous tags.<\/p> Adding tags to your post is fairly easy. However, remember that only posts can have tags.<\/p> There are two ways to add tags in WordPress. First, you can add the tags for new blog posts. To do so, follow the steps below.<\/p> Secondly, you can add tags for already existing posts. This also helps you to improve your SEO because you can add a slug<\/a> for your tags.<\/p> Using tags in WordPress not only arranges your posts but also improves your site’s usability and accessibility. Therefore, tags create a better user experience.<\/p> Additionally, creating a tag cloud widget will improve your user experience even further.<\/p> Tag cloud widget helps you to show all the tags you’ve set. With a 1-click action, visitors can skim through your tags and find their favorite subject.<\/p> Your website may be very common in your niche. But, with a tag cloud, visitors can find interesting subjects that they can’t find in your competitors’ sites quickly.<\/p> Moreover, you can also set a larger font size for more popular tags.<\/p> Follow these simple steps to add the tag cloud widget:<\/p> Adding a tag cloud in WordPress 5.9 involves different steps as this WordPress version uses a block editor<\/a> for the entire site:<\/p> Toggle the Show post counts<\/strong> to show the tag count on the page and adjust the Number of tags <\/strong>slider to set the maximum number of tags to display.<\/p> Sometimes, you may want to exclude a tag from the tag cloud regardless of its popularity. To exclude a tag, follow the steps below:<\/p> \n\n\n While tags create a better user experience organizing your content, optimized hosting further improves your website by ensuring faster loading times and better overall performance. Consider opting for a managed WordPress host<\/a> while choosing a platform for your new project.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/p> WordPress tags are also significant for your SEO. When you do it right, a well-managed taxonomy like tags will improve your SEO ranking.<\/p> But you have to keep in mind, that tags could also be harmful to your SEO.<\/p> WordPress comes with built-in SEO features to deal with search engines. These predetermined features guide all search engines to index the posts, pages, categories, and tags in your site and store the information to its database.<\/p> However, some faults in using tags will harm this indexing process.<\/p> First, sometimes people create a similar name for a tag and a category. This will make two identical tag and category pages<\/a>. If you have “Recipes” both as a tag and a category, search engines might get confused which one should rank first.<\/p> The similar duplication issue may happen for single or plural nouns you use as your tags. “Recipes” or “Recipe” is similar. You need to choose one and consistently use it as your tag.<\/p> Moreover, tag pages have no unique content on its own. They only have the posts’ excerpts while the unique content is written in the individual post pages. That’s why search engines prefer to crawl through different post pages rather than tag pages.<\/p> Keep in mind that WordPress automatically creates a tag page once you set a new tag. In the next section, you will learn how to use tag pages to help user navigation without damaging your SEO.<\/p> The best method to overcome tag pages’ and SEO problems is by using the noindex WordPress tag. By doing this, you tell search engines to ignore your tag pages while crawling data.<\/p>3. Parent-child relationship vs standalone entity<\/h3>
How to add tags in WordPress<\/h2>
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![\"Add](\"\/tutorials\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/01\/Add-WordPress-Tags-for-new-post.png\")
<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
![\"Add](\"\/tutorials\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/01\/Add-WordPress-Tags-for-existing-post.png\")
<\/li>\n<\/ol>How to display tag cloud in WordPress<\/h2>
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![\"Show](\"\/tutorials\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/01\/Show-WordPress-tags-in-Tag-Cloud-Widget.png\")
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![\"Adding](\"\/tutorials\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/02\/add-tag-cloud-in-wordpress.png\")
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![\"Modifying](\"\/tutorials\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/02\/wordpress-tag-cloud.png\")
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Pro Tip<\/h4>\n
WordPress tags and SEO<\/h2>
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hostinger.com\/tutorials\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/06\/New-WP_in-text-banner-1024x300.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>Noindex WordPress tag archive pages<\/h2>