If you are a professional service firm marketer, you know your firm’s blog is often one of the most heavily frequented sections of your website. A good blog can help you stay top-of-mind with clients and prospects, increase referrals, and build brand loyalty overall. Your blog should be rich with content, and that content should be easy to find by your site visitors. But Categories and Tags, two basic blog functionalities that really help your blog’s usability, are often misused, overused, or ignored completely. By following a few simple steps, you can improve your blog significantly and enhance your visitors’ experience considerably.
Best Practices for Defining Categories
Always start by defining your categories. Think of categories as your main topics, like the chapters in a book or main sections of a newspaper. If your blog focuses on one specific subject, you may not need categories, as all your posts will reside under that single umbrella. However, most service firms have a main blog where all of their content resides. Thus, categories are essential to help readers find what interests them most.
For professional service firms, categories often let users select top-level topics like “Articles,” “Culture,” “Events,” “News,” as the engineering firm Sanborn Head does on their blog:
Law firms often target their Services/Practices to help site visitors hone in on content meaningful to them. If you go this route, be sure you limit your list to just the areas you will blog about regularly. Rich May includes top practice areas with case studies and firm news:
When choosing categories, it’s important to limit the number. Less is more. I recommend ten at most, and fewer if possible. Select categories carefully. Make sure they are topics that you will write about regularly, not sporadically, and definitely not one-offs. Try to think like your visitors: What are they interested in? How will they search for topics on your site? Remember, every time you add a category, users can click to read more posts within that category. Don’t disappoint them by returning only one post (which happens when you go overboard adding categories).
Each blog post should be assigned to one category. You can assign a post to more than one category, but try not to do that too often. Users get frustrated if the same post shows up under lots of category headings.
Categories should be obvious — don’t try to be clever. Think road sign, not nail polish name. Also, keep category names as consistent as possible in terms of capitalization (I prefer capitalizing each word, it just looks nicer.)
The Importance of Tags
There are several types of tags used on websites, which can make the term confusing. When administering sites, you can (typically) add “Meta Tags,” “Title Tags,” “Header Tags,” and “Blog Post Tags.” In this article, I am referring to blog post tags; however, for information about all types of tags, this article is a good resource.
Post tags are used for more granular classifications than categories. Think of them more like a book’s index; tags should help visitors find information that your blog often covers. Tags can be single words or phrases. If you use words like News, Events, Awards, etc. for category headings, then tags might include the major industries you serve and the main services you offer. Tags can be used for topics such as Conferences, Projects, People, Recognition, and any other subject that may be relevant to multiple blog posts. Altieri’s blog allows users easy access to tags:
While posts should ideally be assigned to one category, you can assign multiple tags to each post. Again, don’t go too crazy. I’ve read it’s best not to exceed fifteen categories and tags combined to avoid Google flagging a post as spam. Fifteen seems very high to me; two or three is fine.
A few no-nos:
- Don’t create a tag that is a duplicate of a category. There is no point in doing so, and it’s confusing.
- Don’t create a tag that is similar to an existing tag (such as “awards” and “honors”). Again, it just adds complexity and is not helpful.
- Be very careful not to create a plural version of an existing tag (we see this happen a lot!)
- Don’t create a tag that is too specific and will only apply to one post. A good rule of thumb — if you want to add a new tag for a post you are writing, can you apply it to at least two other existing posts on your blog? If not, you probably should not add it.
Related Content
Tags can help you avoid the dreaded problem of web pages with “dead ends.” When a reader comes to the end of one of your blog articles, it’s important to offer something of interest to keep them engaged. Blogs can be programmed to show related stories automatically, based on similar tags. Most of us know how tempting it is to click on a pair of sneakers that “You May Also Like…” and the same applies to blog content. Don’t just show a headline; make sure to include a photo for each blog post whenever possible. Mirick does a great job of enticing readers to click on related articles, shown at the bottom of each post:
Categories, Tags & SEO
Categories and tags can improve your search return rankings. We recommend that you focus on what your site visitors will benefit from most, and avoid trying to second-guess Google. One tip: If your clients are primarily regional, you may want to include local town and city names as tags, but only when they make sense. For example, if a post is about an A/E/C project in a town you work in regularly, include that town’s name as a tag. Visitors may be interested in reading posts about work you’ve done in their area, so adding location names is logical as well as helpful in terms of SEO.
One Last Note
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that not all blogs allow the administrator to add categories and tags. If your website is built on WordPress, categories and tags are a given, but other CMSs do not offer them out of the box. IMHO, all modern blogs should include categories and tags. If your site is relatively new and you can’t easily add categories and tags, consider contacting your website developer.
Resources
How Important Are Tags for SEO?
Categories vs. Tags
Best Practices For Using Categories And Tags In WordPress
Categories vs Tags – SEO Best Practices for Sorting your Content
Vanessa’s article first appeared in SMPS Boston’s Outlook, July.
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