Choose Blog Categories And Tags – Step 9
Step 9: Choose Blog Categories and Tags
Categories
Nearly all blogs have categories and or tags as a means of organizing and classifying blog content. Categories are high-level general classifications of your blog’s content. Business blogs should have categories, and at some point, you’ll need to decide what they are. Most business blogs seem to divide their content into the following general categories:
- Company news and announcements
- Tips or information on specific product/service lines, with one category for each particular product or service
- Customer success stories
- Relevant industry news and opinion
A business blog doesn’t need a lot of categories. Even for specific products or services, you only would want categories for the ones that warrant it. When you see what kind of traffic and comment activity your blog gets for certain categories, you will have a greater understanding of how your business is perceived. You can leverage your knowledge of that perception in the market to strengthen and build on your position.
Another reason to keep your initial list of categories small is to give it room to grow over time. Significant events (for good or ill) may occur in the future and might warrant their own categories. New products and services will go online and might need their own categories. You really shouldn’t remove any categories, but if you have to, make sure to have your web people redirect the old addresses to relevant new ones. It’s very likely you’ll add some new categories down the road.
Tags
Tags are a more recent method for labeling blog posts. Tags are more specific and granular than categories. One of the primary tenets of book The Cluetrain Manifesto is that hyperlinks subvert hierarchies. It is true: in physical media a hierarchical system is critical to finding what you want in the material. But on the internet, where everything is only a click or a search away, hierarchies are less valuable.
In fact, with tags, things can be quite disorganized and messy, and people can still find what they need. You can think of categories as quasi-hierarchical, but tags are “bottom up” rather than “top down”. That doesn’t mean you should put any forethought into tags on your blog. Because every tag is a hyperlink to the other posts with the same tag, each tag acts like a little doorway to grouped information.
Related Post
Related posts:
- Easy Ways How to Choose Topic for Your Blog?
- Determine Blog Platform Integration – Step 7
- Determine the Business Blog’s Policies – Step 6
- Determine the Authors of Your Business Blog – Step 5
- Determine the Purpose & Goals of Your Business Blog – Step 4
Category: Blogging Guide
