I do book marketing and make websites for authors. Often after I finish working with a client, I see that they are completely using tags and categories wrong, even after I’ve given them advice on it.
Honestly it is the biggest issue I see people mess up, e.g. putting Events on a static Page or using categories like tags (so they have thousands of categories). Or even using categories and tags properly, but not putting them in the navigation!
I’m curious for pros: is there some way I could bill clients for helping them get through this process? And if so, how would you charge for it? I’m thinking of a flat fee per blog post. I don’t want to charge too much, because clients don’t realize the value involved. But on the other hand, after they have messed up all their blog posts, it is much more work to fix these categories and tags later!
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Just send them this: https://wordpress.com/support/posts/categories-vs-tags/
You can sell them a training session for 2 or 3 hours and explain them the basics and introduce them to their website.
You can also bill them a monthly fee, like 1 hour every month to assist them.
I guess you might be better framing it around how it helps them meet their goals and objectives, assuming SEO and finding related content etc.
In many cases I think this is a case of categories and tags not matching up conceptually with what the user is trying to do. It might well be that a specifically named taxonomy would be better. For instance, if you had a recipe site, having “meal” and “dietary requirements” taxonomies to represent breakfast, snacks, vegetarian and gluten free, say, might make it simpler.
Another question to think about this: Do you expect the web designer to make categories for you and add them to the navigation as part of the web design package?
It feels to me like it should come later, especially because many of the clients haven’t thought through what they plan to write about. But at the same time, the site feels incomplete without categories in the navigation.
The link u/0x7466 has the answer. It’s not terribly hard. And where they still don’t get it, the converter plugin in that link makes it very easy to go in and clean things up.
I have a standard pitch for Categories and Tags that imposes certain benefits for compliance. For instance I tell them that if they check the Testimonials category on a blog their Testimonials page will automatically update. (Same for Announcements, or Portfolio, or Preferred Vendor categories, etc.) They first time they call and say “My testimonials page isn’t updating” I ask “did you check “testimonials” and they get it because *then* they see there’s a benefit if they use it and a consequence if they don’t.
A much bigger problem for me is the way the Block editor conceals categories and tags unless and until the user specifically digs for it.
If you’re adding blocks from default WordPress you have to
* Unhide the right sidebar (which by default is stupidly hidden for “distraction-free” authoring with new installs)
* have to intentionally go to the Post/Page tab
* possibly also open the Category and Tags accordions
* bonus bogusness — you can’t move metaboxes in the sidebar so even if the Post/Page tab is open they may still have to scroll down
I didn’t love the actual editor part of the classic editor but it made it impossible to miss the prominent Category checkboxes. Gutenberg, for all it’s much less worse for creating complex page layouts is… well… *categorically* worse for production blogging or creating other content types where taxonomy matters more than multiple columns, poetry blocks, and #%!# “duo-tone” charts and photos.
A solid SEO strategy will fix that.
I’ve never used tags on a site. I guess they’re good for SEO, but you have to display them otherwise Google punishes you, right? I don’t want a bunch of tags on posts. I guess a couple might look alright, but it seems like I haven’t seen tags in years. (Btw, remember tag clouds?)
The confusion is the terminology “tags”. I keep running into sites with hundreds of tags all with 1 or 2 posts in each tag. It’s a complete mess. They think tags are like SEO tags from twenty years ago and putting them in there means they’ll rank for those keywords. I just do my best to train them and I’ve even disabled it entirely for a few clients that kept mistakenly adding tags.
You’re better off writing a really thorough guide, and then continually reference and send a link to it. While you can and should bill clients for your time, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment operating under the premise that this is an issue that can be solved with some quick training. Provide excellent documentation and others will use it.
Once you’ve done that, circle back quarterly with a quick audit, suggest fixing this particular issue and then bill for the time.
I quit using tags for articles and blog posts. They just create a bunch of redundant archive pages. Now I just use tags for products.
naw you should just teach me for free