What are blog tags and categories good for? And how can you use them well? Before we answer that, it’s best to first know what they are.

Categories are the way you tell your readers what your blog is about. They focus on the broader topic and create a skeleton for your blog—readers can look at them and decide on a path of action. Categories also determine how you get found on Google and other search engines, as the search engines use them to index your website content so it can be easily found when someone conducts a search. It is therefore of paramount importance to get your categories right—your blog will be an incoherent jumble to both your readers and Google if they don’t make sense.

Tags are a smaller subset within categories that showcase much more specific topics and help the visitor refine their experience on your blog or website. Tags show how well you know your readers. You should know what your readers want and then label it so it’s easy for them to find what is relevant to them. Again, as with categories, your tags should clearly direct your reader with as little confusion as possible. This means avoiding redundancy and not creating tags too general. For example, if you have a tag for “donor” as well as a tag for “donors,” pick one and delete the other.

Now that you understand the importance of tags and categories it is recommended improving them immediately!

Read the full article here for further details on how to but categories and tags to effective use for your nonprofit organizations: Socialbrite.