I had been meaning to organize my filing drawer for years now. What a mess it has been. Picture a stack of envelopes pushed into a drawer and shaken vigorously.
I finally got my butt up and began the dreaded chore. I started by putting all my bills into a BILLS folder, all my receipts when into a RECEIPTS folder, and all of my contracts went into a CONTRACTS folder. I then tagged each document with a post-it note. Each bill got a post-it with ‘bill’ written on it. Each receipt got a post-it with ‘receipt’ written on it. Once I was done, each document was in a folder and also had a post-it stuck to it. How’s that for organized?
I know what you’re thinking. This guy is nuts and is wasting his time with these silly post-it notes that aren’t very helpful. Well sadly enoough, most people follow this exact silly behavior with their blogs. No, really, they do! WordPress provides Categories and Tags to organized your blogs. Most bloggers don’t understand the intended use of these 2 items enough to use fully harness it’s power. I’m here to help you.
Think of Categories as the manila folders (BILLS, RECEIPTS, TAXES, etc) and think of Tags as the
post-it notes. Put all your bills in the ‘Bills’ folder but put a different tag on the post-it note. Maybe some of the tags will say: ‘Phone’, ‘Water’, ‘Alimony’, etc. Do the same with your blog posts. All your posts should go in a Category, and each post should also be tagged with words that help complement the category name.
Tags are very helpful for a many reasons:
- They help with site navigation and can be used in a very similar style as the common ‘Related Posts’ links you see in blogs.
- When used properly, it can almost replace the Search function on your site.
- They help with SEO, allowing you load additional keywords into your blog. You also get an archive section for your posts organized by tags; again, nice for SEO.
Simple enough? Go through your blog and see how many times you’ve done any of this silliness. I bet you’re guilty of it too.
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