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.