Anyone who creates a website or creates a blog often trusts the free web application WordPress. By means of this you can manage all contents easily and clearly. The program provides you with various tools for this purpose. For example, it is possible to arrange the contents into categories in a user-friendly way or Keywords that ensure a high degree of transparency and clarity. The distinction and ultimately the definition itself between keywords (tags) and categories is always a sensitive issue for WordPress users, which can even mutate into a real challenge. In fact, if you look at it closely, you have to face a veritable jumble of questions ...
WordPress: Categories and keywords - the open questions
Even the distinction between keywords and categories is not easy for many users. But in view of further explicit and especially thematically complex questions, the distinguishing features almost inevitably move into the background. Rather, when working with WordPress, the question will vehemently occupy you, whether there is generally an optimal number of categories? Or whether you can classify a post in several categories at once? In practice, the question often arises whether there is a certain limit of keywords to be used per article? And what is the recommended number? In this context, meta keywords also come into focus. Because many users of WordPress are not sure whether Keywords of this kind are also to be considered as keywords? And last but not least, the connection between search engine optimization (SEO) and the benefits of keywords or categories must not be neglected. Here, it is important to identify any benefits in terms of SEO. The following article sheds light on this question and shows you how to use keywords and categories correctly and advantageously in WordPress.
The difference between keywords and categories
To be able to use keywords or categories correctly and in a goal-oriented manner, you must internalize the fundamental difference between keywords and categories. At first glance, however, both terms have a clear common ground. Keywords as well as categories basically serve the purpose of optimising user-friendliness on your website. Especially a blog or a news section reserved for current news usually becomes confusing as the number of contents or posts increases. However, to help your readers find the desired areas quickly and call up the corresponding articles, keywords and categories are used. By categorising the contents, you provide the reader with a table of contents in which the respective articles and contributions are sorted according to your specifications. In other words, the categories basically represent the chapter headings of a website as generic terms. Categories are basically hierarchically structured, which allows you to create explicit subcategories. On the other hand, keywords are used to represent content even more finely and in greater detail. They are quasi used for micro-categorization and in their entirety form the keyword index of a website or blog. Tags are not hierarchically structured, therefore no above or below tags can be formed.
Classification into categories is a must with WordPress
For example, if a blog is about cars, some of the related categories could be "VW", "Audi", "BMW", "sports car" or "luxury limousines". However, these terms should not then be interpreted as keywords at the same time. Instead, you should use individual models such as "Audi A4" and "VW Touareg" or topic-specific terms such as "diesel engine" and "exhaust" as keywords. Basically, contributions or articles must always be assigned to a specific category. If you should not make this sorting, WordPress reacts almost patriarchal and arranges the respective contribution automatically into the category "General". But WordPress allows you to rename this category at any time. Keywords, on the other hand, are not subject to this obligation of fixed assignment or classification; their use is basically voluntary. In order to improve the user-friendliness of your website created with WordPress, you should not refrain from using keywords.
Categories should never be used inflationary
You do not have to consider limitations neither for categories nor for keywords. However, over time it has become clear that a division into five to seven categories is usually a sensible option. In the case of comparatively extensive company websites, the number of categories should of course be increased in accordance with the content specifications. Otherwise, the blog or website visitor should not be overwhelmed with content and categories. It is a fact that a visitor will avoid your website or blog in the future, if it is unclear and thus also lacks user guidance. Therefore, you should always keep content and categories within manageable limits so that visitors to your site can find their way around. If you're creating a new website or just starting a blogging career, it's quite sufficient to define only two or three categories at first and then focus on organic growth. If the number of posts increases and with it the number of topics, you can always add more categories.
Categories should always be bindingly defined in advance
When selecting or naming the categories, however, you should proceed with extreme care from the beginning. While you can change a category or name later to suit your needs, you run the risk that Google will penalise you for changing it. This concerns "dead links" on your website. These occur because the category name (slug) is also used as part of the URL. If you subsequently change categories, you can only avoid these "dead links" and the associated punishment by Google if you create so-called "redirects". This in turn requires explicit knowledge and an enormous amount of effort. In contrast, you can always create subcategories with virtually no additional effort. However, you should also proceed carefully here. Subcategories really only make sense if you have to prepare a large number of articles on a comparatively large number of topics in a user-friendly way. If the choice of topics is rather limited, you should rather use keywords.
Targeted use of keywords increases the usability tremendously
Of course you can also sort an article into several categories. However, assigning an article to different categories only makes sense if it really serves user-friendliness. Otherwise it is rather advisable that you create the categories in such a way that a contribution or article can be clearly sorted into only one category. As mentioned before, you should not use categories in an inflationary way. Instead of creating several categories in which to place one and the same post, it is better to create corresponding keywords. There are no limits to this; you can create as many tags as you like and assign them to your texts or posts. But even here it makes sense if you always keep usability in mind. The keywords should be used for a better orientation for the reader and not additionally confuse him. Websites of average size can handle about 25 to 30 keywords, but each individual contribution should not be tagged with more than three to five tags. Otherwise you run the risk of irritation and confusion for the user.
Keywords cannot be used as meta-keywords
Meta tags with this name are still frequently used today. This is mainly due to the former status of meta-keywords. By means of these you could give the search engines a decisive help to make your website visible or findable. Do not be fooled by the "glorious past" of meta-keywords and do not equate meta-keywords with keywords. Some WordPress users still assign as many keywords as possible to an article, because they equate them with meta-keywords. However, this is not only superfluous, but can even have a detrimental effect on the ranking. This is because Google has not been taking meta-keywords into account for some time now. So even if you use a special SEO plugin that turns keywords into meta-keywords, the benefit is more or less zero. From an SEO point of view, it is important to have a healthy mix of categories and keywords. Google will reward you with a good ranking exactly when the visitors of your blog or website get a real added value and a coherent usability. If keywords and categories are created in a target-oriented way and together ensure an ideal user guidance, Google will usually reward your efforts accordingly.
