So you have started a blog, you have been posting religiously and are now left to wonder what else you can possibly do to optimize your blog for the most exposure across the Internet. Or, perhaps you are ready to get your blog going and want to make sure that you take the right steps to build it correctly from the beginning.
Either way, one of the things you definitely want to educate yourself on are Categories and Tags for your blog. Questions appear all the time on best practices for setting up Categories and Tags within a blog. Using these correctly can prove to be effective building blocks for optimizing your blog site and improving its usability.
If you have not started your blog yet, then you may want to start with our How Do I Set Up a Blog Site? post to make sure you are on the right track.
To better understand this process we need to first gain an understanding of what these two elements actually are.
What is a blog Category?
A blog category is a name that describes a set of posts. A great way of describing categories is to look at your dresser at home. You probably have sections of your dresser divided up into groups, where one drawer is dedicated to your socks, and another to t-shirts. Organizing this dresser and defining each drawer easily allows you to find what you are looking for. The same works with a Blog Category.
What is a blog Tag?
A tag is a name that describes an element to a category. Back to the idea of a dresser, you may have a drawer or Category labeled for socks. But what kind of socks? You may divide up your Category or drawer into smaller divisions, like black socks, white socks, tall socks, or short socks. Each of the new divisions would be considered a tag.
Enough with Furniture and Clothing examples, how can I use this for my Real Estate Blog!
There are no universal sets of Categories and Tags for every blog. As your blog matures so will your Categories and Tags. It is great to have a solid foundation when your blog goes live, but do not be afraid if a new category is needed or you decided another tag is more appropriate. With that said, while creating these tags, keep the search engines in mind. When your Blog is being evaluated, search engines typically discover your blog upon keywords that are embedded in the text. Having Categories and Tags that may come up frequently in your posts will be very beneficial in how that post gets evaluated and ranked.
How many Categories and Tags can I have?
You can have an unlimited amount of Categories and Tags. Generally speaking, 8-12 Categories are recommended. The number of tags are typically decided by the vagueness of your Categories. Some Blogs call for more, some call for less. Over all we suggest that a blog site would never need more than 50 Tags.
Individual Blog posts can have anywhere from 1-3 categories, they can also include an unlimited amount of tags that are relevant to the post.
Example:
Here is how a residential real estate professional may want to develop their blog’s Categories and Tags.
IowaRealEstateBlog.com (Fictional)
Categories:
Real Estate (Should ultimately be assigned to every post)
Buying
Selling
Foreclosure
Market Trends
Real Estate Tips
Market News
Residential
Commercial
Tags:
Cedar Rapids
Iowa City
Single Family Home
Condo
Multi-Family
Land
Office Space
Price Reduction
New Listing
Sold
We recommend referring back to our post about Choosing the Best Keywords for Your Real Estate Blog as you may find some useful, effective tags and categories in the keywords you are already using for SEO. Hopefully these tips helped to explain categories and tags in a way that you can find useful and effective for your blog site. If you are still not sure about your blog’s categories or tags and would like a professional to look at them for you, please feel free to email us the following information:
Blog Url:
Categories:
Tags:
Check back for more great, simple tips to maximize the potential of your real estate website and/or blog.