Tags vs Categories for Wordpress blogs

[GregPDX]

What's the real difference? do we need to do both? Is there an SEO benefit for using tags with your keywords?

[jtgolden54]

Both are simlar but there are differences.

Categories will often times be utilized in SEO friendly urls and thus when wordpress is configured this way have stronger SEO value than tags. Another common practice is to limit the number of categories so there is a nice manageable widget of category links in a sidebar.

Tags on the other hand give alternative ways to search various topics they generally out number categories and each points to fewer posts. Often times they are displayed in a cloud format.

Regards,
Tim

[RESteve]

Additionally, I like to use tags to link in my articles where a specific category has not been created.

You see this being done on many popular blogs like Techcrunch and Engadget.

PS. Great summary, Tim!