Using WordPress Tags & Categories Effectively

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1 Using WordPress Tags & Categories Effectively

2 About Me

3 Professionally 5 years in SEO & WordPress 4 years at marketing agencies Started CBDM 18 months ago

4 CBDM Mission Statement Bring enterprise-level SEO to small and medium businesses through smart and efficient strategies that drive measurable results and meaningful return on investment.

5 Personally What I m about Sixers Cycling Running Craft beer

6 What Are Categories & Tags?

7 What Are Categories/Tags? Method for organizing blog posts Only apply to WP posts Do not apply to WP pages

8 Clarifying Terminology Web pages Web page: A page on a website WP post: A blog post on a WP site WordPress posts WP page: A page on a WP site WordPress pages

9 Categories vs. Tags Categories are more general Tags are more specific Use them accordingly!

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11 Building A Category & Tag Structure

12 Building Structure Build a category & tag hierarchy in advance Don t make up categories or tags willy-nilly Add categories & tags as needed Use 1-2 categories & 1-5 tags per post

13 Example Category/Tag Structure Don t duplicate the same Category: SEO Analytics category/tag Tag: Technical SEO Google Analytics Tag: Video SEO Google Search Console Tag: Local SEO Bing Webmaster Tools Build as many categories/tags as you logically need to Use sub-categories if you want

14 More Examples Category: Cakes Construction Tag: Red Velvet Cake Modular Tag: Vanilla Cake Residential Tag: Chocolate Cake Commercial???

15 Categories & Tags For SEO

16 Keyword Stuffing Stuffing keywords into categories & tags WILL NOT do anything for your SEO. Don t do it!

17 Bad vs. Good

18 Google My Business GMB Google My Business listing GMB UTM tag Google My Business UTM Google My Business UTM tags Google My Business UTM link

19 C&T Pages Pages created for all categories/tags No static content (all dynamic) Pages show the most recent posts in that category/tag

20 C&T Page Benefits WP Page WP Post #1 Create internal links Help search engines crawl sites Prevent island pages WP Post #2 WP Post #6 Tag Page WP Post #5 WP Post #3 WP Post #4

21 Category Page C&T Page Drawbacks Post #4 (newest) Most content is dynamic Post #3 Very little unique content Post #2 Won t get much organic traffic Post #1 (oldest)

22 Category Page What To Do? Post #4 (newest) Thin content isn t ideal Post #3 Noindex category/tag pages Post #2 Won t appear in search results Post #1 (oldest)

23 What Is Noindexing? <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> HTML tag for search engines Don t show this content in search results Apply to all category & tag pages

24 How To: Noindex Yoast makes it easy Search Appearance > Taxonomies Show C/T in search results? No

25 Why Noindex? SEO Keywords Not all pages valuable Show top pages to search engines Avoid keyword cannibalization SEO Services Page SEO Category Page

26 Check Traffic Google Analytics > Acquisition > Channels > Organic Search Primary Dimension: Landing Page Enter /category /tag to the search bar

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28 Alternative: Optimizing C&T Pages

29 Optimizing Add optimized text Increases content quality No longer thin content

30 Category Page Optimizing Post #4 (newest) No sorting/filtering functionality Can t order/group content Chronological order not a great user Post #3 Post #2 experience Post #1 (oldest)

31 Summary

32 Summary Category & tag pages help search engines crawl & index content Use categories & tags methodically Build a predetermined structure for Pages are not beneficial for driving traffic themselves maximum benefit Noindex category & tag pages with Yoast Don t keyword stuff categories or tags Optimizing is possible but not ideal

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34 Thank You