How many times have you been to a blog trying to find an article you’ve read in the past, and had a hard time finding it?
One way to make it easier for readers to find your articles, and for search engines to understand where they fit, is to have a solid, logical category and tag structure. A great blogger will take the time up front to plan out the blog’s categories, and determine some simple guidelines for tagging articles. This advance thought gives cohesion to the content on the blog and provides an easy structure to follow for both readers and search engines.
Many blogs seem to add categories to their design almost as an afterthought. Categories will have different scopes at the tame level. Often some categories will be too narrow and others too broad all within the same structure. This leads to confusion and results in reduced exposure in search engine results pages, as well as fewer repeat visitors, who will prefer to find their information at a blog that is more accessible.
In the past, there was not a lot that could be done about this. Before there was tagging, all we had to work with was categories, and in some cases, like blogger.com, they did not even offer those until very late in the game. Today, however, virtually every popular blogging platform offers both categories and tags as a part of it’s core program code.
The trick now, is to learn how to use these two features together in a way that makes sense and leads readers and search engines, both, to your content through a logical path. First we need to understand the differences between categories and tags.
Both categories and tags are forms of taxonomy. Taxonomy is literally “the science of classification”. originally, the word related specifically to classifying living organisms, but recently has been generalized by most people into simply classifying things in a hierarchial structure. In otherwords it is a set vocabulary to describe things and their relationship to other things within the vocabulary.
The two factors that are important in designing your blog’s taxonomy are scope and semantics. By correctly applying these two factors to your category and tag structure, you can significanlty improve your chances for success as a blogger.
By scope, I mean that your tags and categories must have an appropriate level of context for your blog’s topical theme. As an example I will use various contexts for the idea of “history”, to demonstrate how the scope of this topic can change.
Fist if you had a general educational blog that covered all fields of academic research, Humanities would be a category and History would be a subcategory of history. Topics such as American History, Military History, Abraham Lincoln, Herodian Jeruselem and The Industrial Revolution would be tags used with articles in the History category.
If you had a General History blog, American History, The Middle Ages, Ancient Greece, Military History would be categories. Topics like The Civil War, US President, Abraham Lincoln, Viet Nam and Cotton Gin would be tags used on articles in the American History Category.
If you had an American History blog, US Presidents, America at War, Civil Rights, US Cities, US States and The Industrial Revolution would all be categories. Topics like General Patton, WWII, Viet Nam, M1 Abrams, M-16 and Air Force would be tags used with articles under the Amercia at War category.
As you look over these examples, the thing to remember is that categories are broad sweeping groups of information that gather a wide range of closely related topcis together. Tags are specific information identifiers that separate this same information. This system adds a rich and meaningful semantic overview of the information on your blog. It allows people to quickly find the information they are looking for and provides search engines with clues as to how it fits together.
Do you have any questions about how your blog would implement a good taxonomy system? Are you already using your categories and tags this way? Do you disagree? I’d love to hear from you, the comments are open. 
Dane Morgan is a blogger and a marketer who combines these two passions at his blog. Whether you are a blogger who wnats to market your blog or a marketer who wants to deploy blogging elements in your business, Dane’s Marketing Blog can help you on your way.
nice, really nice!
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