Tags vs Categories

WordPress features both tags and categories, which on the whole, tends to confuse new users (it certainly did with me, and still does to some extent), so here’s my overview on how and when to use them.

First Simplify

Tags and Categories are nothing more than Keywords. Each post must be attached to at least one category but the use of tags is entirely optional.

In the words of WordPress Support, once upon a time, WordPress only allowed categories to be used. This allowed for a broad grouping of post topics, but when you wanted to describe a post in more specific terms, more categories were required leading to very long category lists. So we now have tags, as well.

So think of Categories as chapter headings and chapter sub-headings (i.e., they can be hierarchal – more on this later) while Tags are nothing more than keywords within the text.

Misleading Category Hierarchies!

Category A
  Category AB
  Category AC

Category X

Suppose that you have a parent category, ‘Category A’ and a child category, ‘Category AB’. If you placed a post in ‘Category AB’ would you expect the post to also show in ‘Category A’? If you would expect the post to also show in ‘Category A’, you think the way of WordPress because that’s how it works.

Conclusion

Remember, at the end of the day, both Categories and Tags, once processed by WordPress, end up on your web pages as nothing more than Keywords for search engines to process.