Taxonomy serves the logical ordering and systematization of content. WordPress offers two built-in taxonomies “category” (tree structure) and “tag” (flat structure). Additionally, you can create taxonomies that allow you to group content according to your assumptions. A single entry may be assigned to multiple taxonomies and multiple places (taxa) within one taxonomy.
What are the categories and tags in WordPress?
It’s almost the same – you can use both taxonomies for the content grouping and organising posts, but…
- categories have an ordered hierarchical structure – you can use them to build a tree structure by arranging them into subcategories,
- tags have a disordered flat structure – just one bag where everything falls into
- you can use categories to organise departments on e-commerce websites, e.g. meat, dairy products, bread, vegetables etc.,
- tags are more for loose labelling, following the example of the store, e.g. more by specific features of the assortment, e.g. colour, packaging size, manufacturer.
Indexing tags could be an SEO issue in the e-store. It creates messy structures that are not easily understood by the customers and often competes for keyword positions with products (keyword rankings cannibalisation). A good practice is to index categories and noindex tags.