There are tags, taggging of tags, categories, bookmarks, bookmarking categories and on and on and on and on…What does this all mean !#$@?
An easy way to remember the difference between tags vs categories is to think of categories as broad subjects such as those you would find in a table of contents(macro indexing) whilst tags are those identifiers which are similar to the index of a book(micro indexing). Categories are broad, tags are narrow in subject.
For the purposes of real estate blogging , categories can be, for example:
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- “Buyers”
- “Sellers”,
- “Investment properties” ,
- “Schools”
- “Willow Glen” or other “Neighborhood” that you frequently farm
- “Foreclosures and REOs”
- “Short Sales”
Tags on the other hand would be more specific:
- “1031 exchanges”
- “123 Main St”
- “94110″
- “Single Family Home”
- “Condo”
- “Multi-Family”
- “New Listings”
- Tags vs Categories in Real Estate
Put yourself in your buyer’s and seller’s shoes and design the category and tag structure so that it is easiest for your buyers and sellers to find information on your site.
From a search engine standpoint, it is good not to confuse the search engines with so many categories and tags. Try to wrap the post into a single category with multiple tags.
If you are writing about the latest real estate statistics for a certain neighborhood, you can categorize it under 1 or 2 categories .
Category 1 could be “Palo Alto Home Stats”
Tags could be “street name” , “spectacular view”, and ” less than 2 million”
Quick Tips & FAQs:
(1)Tags or Categories ?
When in doubt, remember , use Categories for broad subjects such as “Schools” and tags to describe the micro level such as “Name of School” or “API Scores”
(2)Do I have to tag every post ?
NO. Tags are optional, but each post must have a category selected otherwise, it will default to “Uncategorized”
(3)How many tags and categories should I have ?
There are no hard and fast rules, but start small and grow the list as needed. For example, start with less than 10 categories and less than 20 tags. Then branch out from there. As your posts grow, so will your category and tag list.
(4)What is the URL structure of tags vs categories ?
Tags look like this: www.yoursite.com/tag/1031-exchanges
More Reading…
Categories look like this: www.yoursite.com/category/buyers
It is possible to change the URL structure which is best left for another post. Please subscribe and be the first to be notified once it becomes available.
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