Categories and Tags: Using Blog Metadata for Better Findability

We're wrapping up a project to update an entire blog with more usable tags and categories, and I've learned a lot in the process.

A little history about this project...the blog we were working on started with a focus on cool technology in general, but has transitioned to a stronger learning technology focus. The old categories didn't really work anymore and tags were inconsistently used.

However, at nearly 200 posts, it was time to make to restore information order. To begin, a colleague and I met with one of Ohio State's librarians to talk about categorization and metadata (data about data), and then worked out a plan that would highlight the focus of the blog without overwhelming casual readers.




Key lessons I learned are:

1. There is no right answer, but there are different approaches for creating categories and tags. We wanted to use our new categories and tags to shape reader expectations and show at a glance what topics are featured. That meant close attention to our choice of words and how to use categories vs. tags.

2. Don't use categories and tags interchangeably. Categories are the "big buckets" that different posts can be put in, while tags are additional keywords that describe each post. To keep the category list manageable, we decided to create a few categories for big concepts and to use tags for specific products, projects, programs, etc.

3. Use tags to connect similar posts. When applying tags, that means focusing on important themes that might be shared in other posts and reviewing past tags to apply them to new posts.

4. Don't be too vague when adding tags. Focus on what make an article unique, rather than using vague terms that apply to nearly everything. Otherwise, tags and categories all blend together. For example, when we first introduced the new system, one writer tagged an article as "information," but since that *should* apply to all posts we removed it and left only tags about the topic of the post.

We just finished the recoding, and the difference is striking. There are still some challenges in this project -- mainly that it's hard to bring everyone up to speed about the new guidelines in a shared group blog -- but we'll see how it goes.