Should i use Categories or Tags ?

[wolfinjo]

Hi

My blog is http://www.dota2club.com/

and i am not sure should i use Categories as tags or normally tags like most ?

And how much are important tags generally ?

Right now you can see that i am using Categories as tags , is this ok ?

Thank you !!!!

[AgentsofValue]

In my mind, categories and tags are kind of the same thing.  Some people like to use categories for major groups, and tags for more fine tuned grouping within a larger category.

The main benefit of categories and tags are that they provide easier navigation to your older entries.  If you don't have those, then the old posts can end up buried, 7 or 8 hops from the homepage, and they start to lose their ranking power.

If you go overboard and add lots of categories and tags, you end up creating excess pages on your site, which have very similar content, which tends to water down your ranking power.

I would recommend just sticking with tags, since it seems you're already setup with that.  They work fine as 'categories'.

Also, one 'pro tip', would be to try to look for ways to link your new posts to your old posts.  Like here, you have a post on dota maps - http://www.dota2club.com/dota-6-74c-ai-v2-7-fun-map-download/  - maybe you have older posts on a similar topic?  Adding relevant internal links would definitely give your older posts a boost.

[wolfinjo]

Thank you very much :))))

[evolvingSEO]

"Agents" Thanks very much for the answer and appreciate the help...

I think in the case of this site, since it is a very simple blog, swapping the tags and categories won't completely break the site or the SEO.

But for the sake of preventing any misunderstanding in general, categories and tags are fundamentally quite different. Many people do swap their use, and get away with doing so because the sites are simple.

First, refer to the "Categories vs. Tags" section in my post on the Moz blog

To reiterate the basic differences here:

Categories

• Can have a hierarchy (be nested as parents and children)
• Are used best as a "menu" - like if the entire website is a blog, the categories are designed to fit into your main menus - this is built right into the wordpress functionality. This menu can be the main menu at the top, or in the sidebar
• A category archive can be the homepage
• 5-8 categories (the main buckets of topics on your blog) is best. If you want more, you can nest them
• Categories always existed, from the beginning of wordpress
• When used in this proper fashion, the category archives should be indexed by engines.

Tags

• Tags have NO hierarchy (they can't be nested)
• They are not to be used in the menu of a site - the main menu or sidebar menu. You see them a lot as a "tag cloud" in the sidebar or at the bottom of posts. They work better as this type of navigation, if users want to find articles similar in a much more specific way.
• A tag archive can NOT be the homepage
• You can use as many tags as you want, but they should not be the same as categories. They should be more detailed than categories.
• Tags didn't always exist from the beginning of wordpress, they were added after.
• When used in this best practice way, I always advice to NOT index tags (at least at first). Tag pages will be thin, almost duplicate and of little use to the searcher. MUCH better landing on a category archive or better yet a post its self.

-Dan