If you’re just starting to build an online business using WordPress or another blogging platform, you’re probably wondering what the difference is between keywords, categories and tags. Since these are such excellent Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools, understanding what they are and how each one is used is important for ranking well in the search engines.  Here’s a breakdown:

Keywords

Keywords allow you to optimize your posts so that when someone searches for that word, your site has a better chance of showing up high in the search results. Say your blog is about Cooking and you provide content on a variety of food related topics. Every post you write will contain a Keyword or keyword phrase that has something to do with cooking.

A post you’ve written about quick meals, for instance, would use the term “quick meals,” as a keyword phrase so that searchers looking for quick meals would be drawn to your site. For best results, Keywords should be used in the first sentence, the last sentence and at least one or two more times in your post.

Categories

If you think of your blog like a filing cabinet, categories are the hanging folders that divide your posts by topic. Every post needs a topic, or a Category. Once you’ve written your keyword optimized post, you need to assign it a category. For your cooking blog, you might choose such categories as Recipes, Measurements, Common Substitutions, Menu Planning, Grocery Shopping, etc. Every post you write will fit into one of the categories you choose. Just as every piece of paper in your office would fit into one of the hanging file folders in your file cabinet.

Tags

If categories are the hanging folders, tags are the manilla file folders in the filing cabinet that is your blog. For instance, within the category Recipes, you might have Italian Recipes, Mexican Recipes, Frugal Recipes, Appetizer Recipes, etc. Every post you write will contain one or more of those Tags. If your recipe is for a Frugal Mexican Appetizer, you would tag it  for all three—Mexican Recipes, Frugal Recipes, Appetizer Recipes. These are akin to the manilla file folders that you would label and place in your hanging folders.

Keywords, Categories and Tags all serve the purpose of optimizing your blog posts so that your site will rank higher on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). That’s what SEO is all about and these three tools are great tools to help you improve yours.