Since I have intentionally kept this blog focussed on my academic interests related to James, translation, exegesis, Greek, linguistics, etc., it pains me to interrupt those posts in order to celebrate…
- THIS 100th POST!
- FIRST TIME OVER 400 PAGE VIEWS IN A MONTH! (already on 20 August)
- FIRST TIME TO HAVE 5 INCOMING LINKS TO MY BLOG!
Thanks to…
To celebrate, I decided to educate myself about the difference between Tags and Categories so I could start using them better. Lee Aase at SMUG (Social Media University, Global) has a very clear explanation of Tags and Categories at his blog. He states…
- Categories are internally focused for your blog, to help users navigate and find posts on similar topics. Once a user has found your blog, categories provide organizational structure to help them discover what your blog is about and to navigate efficiently….
A post can belong to more than category, but generally you would want to limit the number of categories you have and how many categories are selected for each post.
- Tags, by contrast, are externally focused. They’re aimed at the people who haven’t yet found your blog (and the search engines that guide them.) So instead of trying to find the one or two labels that best describe your post (as you do with categories) you can and should apply multiple tags to a post, based on words others might use to describe your post…or words they might be searching on to find relevant content….
If you click on any of the tags at the bottom of this post, you will find a list of blog posts on WordPress.com that used that tag. This is really helpful to users exploring a topic, because they can easily find a group of relevant posts. And if you use several related word variations, you’re not requiring users to choose your exact tag (e.g. blogs vs. blogging) in order to find your post.
So, for example, I have started tagging every Scripture reference in my blog postings by book, chapter, and verse. But I only categorize Scripture references by book (although I use book and chapter for James since that is a major focus of this blog).
I still need to manage all my tags and categories better by going back and deleting poorly used categories and more thoroughly tagging previous posts. But I did go back and thoroughly tag and categorize all 20 of my August posts.
20 August, 2008 at 12:12 pm
First off, congrats on hitting 100!
And secondly, thanks for a useful post on tags and categories. I’m somewhat lazy about tags, but am usually diligent about categories (usually because I can’t stand to see “Uncategorized” on my posts). If only there were a better way to integrate the two!
20 August, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Hey Eric,
Thanks for stopping by. After my little self-education on tags and categories, it seems that categories are a bit more important to me, at least in terms of how useful my blog is. On the other hand, tags are more important for getting new viewers, although I’m not sure how much tags add that isn’t already in the search engine capabilities that troll the words in posts.
Hey, I did some real woodworking this last week after I fixed my Inca table saw. I’ll have to leave a comment on your blog about it.
20 August, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Thanks for your link. I’m glad you found my description of tags vs. categories helpful.
20 August, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Congratulations, the first years its always difficult to increase the page views, but on my blog I also noticed after a view years it increased. Mentioning similar blogs is sometimes a good idea for getting more background information about a subject.
20 August, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Congratulations. I suspect that you will be getting lots more incoming links as time moves on. You certainly deserve them.
20 August, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Thanks for stopping by, Eddie, and for your kind words.
21 August, 2008 at 8:58 am
congrats, lookin’ forward to hearing more from you! I’ve enjoyed reading about translation checking.