How to Use Categories and Tags in WordPress

August 2, 2014 Beth Devine

Categories and tags are forms of classification for your website. They help make your site easier to navigate, allowing users to sort through your content by topic instead of having to browse chronologically.

What is the difference between categories and tags?

Categories are for grouping general topics, like a table of contents in a non-fiction book. Categories help to identify what your blog is about so users can find the subjects they are interested in.

Categories can be arranged in hierarchical order, which means you can create sub-categories.

Tags are more specific in their classification. Tags are like the index of a book, giving more specific details to further explain what the post is about. Tags aren’t hierarchical.

The main difference between categories and tags is that categories aren’t optional and tags are. If you don’t choose to, you don’t have to create tags. If you don’t categorize your posts, then they will automatically be categorized for you as uncategorized.

How to use categories and tags in WordPress.

Say you have a blog about travel. Your categories could be the names of countries where you’ve travelled. The tags could be food, museums, or best beaches.

As your blog evolves, your categories might also change. To start with, it’s okay to have only a small number of categories that reflect your content and to update these categories with new content regularly.

As your content grows, you will determine if there are new sub-categories that have grown enough to become categories, or tags that have developed into a category of their own.

Beware of using too many categories and tags. The purpose is to enhance user experience, not overwhelm them with a protracted list of choices.

When choosing a tag, try to maintain as few tags as possible. If you can’t decide on a tag, don’t use one. The only purpose of a tag is to group posts under that specific tag so users can choose to read more on that topic.

Choosing categories and tags.

Think of a keyword that a user would search for to read the post. For example, if someone was searching for “best beaches in Italy,” they could find useful information under your category “Italy” and your tag “best beaches.”

A post should be in no more than two categories. If it is, consider creating a sub-category. Tagging should cover only what is most relevant in your post, and it should be a tag you’ve already used or plan on using again.

Creating an archives page.

If you want to capitalize on your categories and tags even more, an archives page is a smart addition to your blog. This page contains three ways for users to locate content on your site: by date, category, and tag.

Learn more about how to create your archives page and improve your users navigation.

Did you know categories and tags are part of the archives URL?

Check to see how your categories and tags show up in a URL by going to one of your blog posts and clicking on either a category or a tag that the post was filed under. These can be found at either the top or the bottom of your post.

The active URL that appears will have the name of the relevant category or tag. This little exercise demonstrates the importance in choosing words to classify your posts.

Get started with these three easy tips.

Choose words that are easy to remember and that people would use when searching for your post, begin by using fewer words, and make changes as needed as your blog grows.

Remember, you can change your categories and tags in WordPress as you need to. Computer code is not written in stone like the Code of Hammurabi, so relax.

4 Steps to the Best Landing Pages

February 26, 2014 Beth Devine

The four steps to the best landing pages come with a history of attempted murder. Over a hundred years ago, E. St. Elmo Lewis, the creator of the original four steps, was twice targeted by an unknown suspect. First with arsenic, then with fire.

Being a successful businessman has its risks, after all.

Lewis devised the marketing acronym AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire and Action; the four steps in the process of selling. For landing pages, specific elements are applied to these four steps to achieve one objective.

A landing page can cause only one of five actions: to get your visitor to buy, register or sign up (which includes giving permission to follow up), click to visit a targeted page, learn something, or tell a friend.

Determine which of these five desired actions you want and stay focused on that one alone. Like a dog with its bone, don’t distract your readers with anything else.

1. Attention:

You have three seconds. Your visitors will choose to stay or go in this length of time, according to The Three Second Rule.

Convert your visitors toward your goal by attracting their attention with large font and captivating visuals. Make your landing page fertile ground by using web design that keeps the important elements above the fold, or in the visible screen without scrolling.

The three seconds begins with an attention-grabbing headline. Create a headline that matches the one from the place that drove your visitors to your landing page. This way your visitors will know they’re in the right place.

2. Interest:

Instead of talking about the features of your product or service, talk about how it will benefit your visitors. Maintain their interest by using “you” and “your” instead of “we.” This helps them to identify with what you’re offering.

Your design will communicate this with simple and clear elements, just like your copy. Try a one-column format that includes plenty of white space in the copy with small paragraphs and wide side margins.

There should be no more than five lines – not sentences – per paragraph. The first paragraph should be one to two lines. By varying the size of paragraphs, you make your copy easier to read.

Remember the dog and its bone. Keep the focus on one thing.

3. Desire:

How do you make your visitors want to buy, register, click, learn, or share? Answer this question: What do you want them to do?

When they land on your landing page, it should be clear what they’re being asked to do. Everything on the page is there to support the one goal you chose. Remove all distracting elements and visual clutter, including navigation bar, widgets, and extra links.

Don’t lose their interest by veering away from your chosen goal. Write copy that is absolutely clear, beginning with an eye-catching headline followed by the benefits.

Tell them why. When you include “because” you’re giving them a reason to choose your offer. Keep them on track. Everything on the page is steering the visitor to the next and last step.

4. Action:

This is a direct call to people to do what you called them there to do. There should be a minimum of two call to actions, unless the copy is long, then more is required.

Include a graphic button or hot-linked text that stands out. If your copy goes below the fold, then don’t neglect to include one there as well. Use direct writing on the buttons to encourage action. “Buy now,” “sign up free,” “get the ebook,” or “get started” make their expectations obvious.

Your landing page is a goal-oriented tool meant to accomplish one thing only. Stay single-minded. Don’t confuse it with your home page. Make it uncommonly good.

(There is one inconsistency with this post. I used a dog analogy instead of a cat. I hope it doesn’t throw anyone off too much.)

Are you shopping on Cyber Monday?

November 29, 2010 Beth Devine

We made it through Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and today is Cyber Monday! What are you doing to support the economy? I’m not much of a Black Friday gal — I hate the crowds. But I did shop on Main Street Manchester on Saturday in support of small business–I just wish there were more shops to choose from! But Cyber Monday is where I excel! In fact Cyber shopping any day works for me.

In support of Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday I’ve put together a list of some of my clients who have something to sell this holiday season. They are all hard-working, small business folks and most are local to me (in the Hartford region), but a few have migrated south (can’t blame them!), so support these small businesses from the convenience of your home or office.

Santa Visits CT If you’re having a Christmas party in Connecticut, make sure you invite Santa! I bet you didn’t know I was Santa’s cyber elf!	Alison Designs Jewelry LOVE her stuff! Great designs, great prices!
Janets Plan-its Calendars are a classic gift at Christmas and Janet’s Astrology calendar provides valuable insight all year long. Gift certificates for astrology services are also available.	NOLA Tee Make a Wave! Make A Wave shirts encourages you to be socially aware of our planet and all of it’s wonders by promoting a message to preserve it and to help others less fortunate. And they’re fun shirts!
CT Corporate Gifts Need some business gifts? This is the place to shop.	CMW Aviation Shopping for any pilots? You’ll find the best pilot headsets here.
Good Guys Powersports The place for motorcycle enthusiasts. A unique assortment of motorcycle accessories — especially for aging bikers.	My Hands Your Health Is your neck sore after all this cyber shopping? Call Ginny for some therapeutic massage.

Funny proofreading errors

August 11, 2010 Beth Devine

I just got back from a long road trip. While traveling, I noticed a few proofreading errors in marketing materials that were worthy of a Jay Leno spot.

1. A truck stop billboard ad said. “EAT HERE! (Get Gas Later).”

2. A road service billboard ad: “24-HOUR TOE SERVICE!”

3. A menu at a major hotel chain restaurant offered “A side of fires“. The embarrassed server reported that it was the 2nd printing with the error–when they changed the menu they missed it again!

The moral of this post: Remember to take the extra time to proofread your marketing copy to make sure you mean what you say and say what you mean.

Anyone else have any funny proofreading errors? Feel free to comment.

Top ten considerations for web design

June 4, 2010 Beth Devine

This week, I saw a LinkedIn discussion that asked “What do you think are top 10 considerations for web design?”

Interesting question. The first response I saw said “usability, usability, usability”. I agree with this response…but I think there are at least 10 things that make a site usable, usable, usable. So I’ll try to focus my list on what makes your site visitors want to use, use, and use your site again.

1. Beauty.

First your site has to be beautiful, or at least look professional, because if it’s not, people will leave it before you have a chance to show them all the other elements that make your site worthy of their time.

2. Navigation.

It must have logical navigation that is easy for users to follow. You must lead them through your site; help them find the nugget of information they seek, by providing clear, simple navigation.

3. Well-written content.

Never underestimate the power of a well-written phrase to draw people in, to coax them to delve deeper. Follow that phrase with clearly written content that’s organized and written to be understood by your site visitors. Write first for your visitors, not for your cronies or for search bots.

4. Match content to design.

Use the content to help define the design. A serious subject should look serious. A fun product should have a fun website.

5. Composition.

Use a writing style that is conducive to online viewing, scanning and reading. Use short paragraphs with headings, bullets and graphics to draw the eye easily to specific ideas. And give the user’s eyes a break with a healthy dose of white space.

6. Demographics.

Know your market. Choose your colors, your styles, and your language depending on who will visit your site. Are they old, young, adventurous or sedate? Are they likely to be using a ten-year old home computer or the latest smartphone or IPad to browse your site? Use typography, color and design that will appeal to your users.

7. Style commitment.

Define your styles and stick with ’em. Maintain a cohesive design. Whether you use a jazzy heading font with a high contrast color scheme or a traditional type with monochromatic scheme. Commit to it.

8. Accessibility.

Don’t discriminate. Make your site usable to all folks, bots and beings. Although it’s not always necessary to comply with Section 508 standards, it’s a good idea to understand what your web pages will sound like using a screen reader. And it’s wise to use text that the user can size to their preference — even if it does make your site design look a little funky. Validate your code so you won’t trip up miscellaneous bots, browsers and other beings who might be perusing the web.

9. Optimize for search engines.

Use best practices for SEO. Write code that doesn’t obstruct or deter the searchbots. Write unique and relevant keyword rich titles and headings for each and every page.

10. Create a call to action.

Understand the goal of the website. Is it to sell? To inform? To communicate? Define the goal and then make it easy and safe for people to complete that task.

Three web design mistakes that can hurt SEO

May 12, 2010 Beth Devine

You just started your business. Your marketing budget is limited and you know you need a website, so you opt to use one of the many low-cost tools available to build your own website or you have your daughter, (son, nephew or sister-in-law, name the friend or relative) who “knows the computer” do it for you. You work your way through this uncharted territory and you manage to get your website up and running and it even looks pretty good.

Job well done! But as time passes, you begin to wonder why it doesn’t rank better on the search engines. Many techniques factor into good search engine optimization (SEO) but novice website designers or do-it-yourself business owners often make three big mistakes that can hurt their SEO.

Search engines can’t read an image. Overuse of images. If you have website pages that are made up entirely of images or if you have blocks of text that are made of images you’re preventing search engines from reading the text on your pages. If search engines can’t read your page, they don’t know how to index your page. I usually see this mistake made by those with some graphic design experience. They may know how to create a beautiful layout but they haven’t learned the HTML/CSS code to transition that layout to the web correctly so they opt to insert the image into the web page instead of taking the time to code the page correctly.
Search engines can’t read an image – the sequel. Underuse of image alt tags. Each image used in a web page should use a descriptive alt tag. If alt tags are not used, search engines are not able to discern what the image signifies, so they ignore it. For example, say you’re Joe and you sell bicycles. You’ve created a fantastic logo that clearly identifies you as Joe’s Bicycle Sales & Service. You put it on you web pages and it looks beautiful but you fail to use the alt tag. Now when search engines crawl your site they’re not able to discern what the logo says. However, if you have used the alt tag correctly, the search engines will read the alt tag that says “Joe’s Bicycle Sales & Service” and because you’ve provided that information, the search engine will have more information available to index your website.If you’re building your website using a do-it-yourself tool, you should see a field called alt or image description in the tool. If you’re coding, you’re image code should look something like this:
<img src=”logo.jpg” alt=”Joe’s Bicycle Sales and Service” />
If you wrote a book you, would you title it “Book”? Title tags and meta descriptions not used at all or used ineffectively. Just like a book or magazine article, every web page should have a unique title. In addition each web page should also have a unique meta description that accurately describes the content on that page — think of the meta description as the book synopsis often found on back or inside jacket of the book. In an html document both the <title> and <meta description> tags are within the <head> of the document which, as you might expect since it’s called the head, is toward the top of the document. So when search engines crawl the page the title and meta description tags are among the first indexable information they come across and search engines expect the tags to describe the content on the page because that is what the tags were designed to do.
But too often, inexperienced or lazy web designers use a title tag like “home” instead of “Joe’s Bicycle Sales | Yourtown, Your state”. Or on the page that shows products the title tag says something like “products” instead of “Bicycles – Raleigh, Schwinn, Trek, bikes for all ages”. And the meta descriptions are either ignored entirely and left blank, or the same generic information is duplicated on each page.

The title tag is the information the web browser shows at the very top of the browser screen–above the toolbar and url address field. You generally want to limit your title descriptions to less than 60 characters. The meta description tag is not viewable on a web page (unless you view source) but search engines sometimes use the meta description you provide on your html page as the description in your search engine listing. Limit your meta descriptions to about 160 characters.

So if you’re not satisfied with your search engine rank, check to make sure that you haven’t overused images in your design; that you have described all your images with alt tags and that you’ve written unique title and meta descriptions for each page on your website.

Manage your domain name and beware of domain renewal scams

April 13, 2010 Beth Devine

You own your domain name and it’s an important part of branding your business. Some businesses are even named after their domain name–think Google, Yahoo, and yes, even cgwebhelp. So it’s important that you have control of your domain. You should know where it’s registered, when it will be due for renewal and how the process of renewal works. And you should watch out for domain transfer scams. Here’s a couple of scams that I see regularly.

Domain Registry of America

This company may be a legitimate domain registry service, but their methods for obtaining customers is so unethical, I certainly wouldn’t want to do business with them. Their technique for obtaining new customers? They send an invoice. Well it’s not really an invoice–it’s a solicitation to transfer the domain. If you look very closely at the fine print, you will read that by sending payment you are authorizing them to transfer your domain to their registry service. So the unsuspecting person sends them the $35 (which is likely more than their current registry charges to renew a domain) and unwittingly starts the process of transferring the domain.

Chinese Domains

This one arrives by email and suggests that your trademark is about to be infringed upon unless you swiftly purchase your domain with the .cn extension, as in yourdomain.cn. This might be of benefit if you have a market in China or you anticipate developing a market in China, but most of the folks I’ve known who have received this solicitation have no intention of marketing to China. For more information on this scam see http://professionalwebservices.blogspot.com/2007/10/chinese-domain-name-scams-from-china.html.

Know Where Your Domain is Registered

If your domain is important to your branding, and it most likely is, you should always know the following:

Where is it located? GoDaddy, Register, Network Solutions, Enom, OpenSRS, or one of the many other registry services available.
Know how to access the information and keep it updated with current contact information.
Know when it is due to expire and the process for payment. If it’s set for auto- renewal, make sure you keep a current credit card and contact information on file with the registry service. If they can’t charge your card because it’s expired, and the e-mail address on file is outdated, you’ll likely lose the domain name.