Reusing category name as tag in different taxonomy

Finding the right structure for your site can be difficult, but it’s an important thing to figure out for your SEO. It’ll not only guide your visitors to the content they’re looking for, but also help the search engines understand what content on your site is most important.

Dividing your content into groups, using categories and tags, is a great way to structure your content. Naming these categories and tags is where it can get difficult, especially if you have several different taxonomies on your site. You’re probably aware that you shouldn’t have a category and a tag with the same name. But what about tags and categories that are in a different taxonomy?

Andrew emailed us his question on site structure and taxonomies:

“I know it’s bad to use a tag that you also use as a category. However is it okay to use the name of a category from one taxonomy as a tag in a different taxonomy?”

Watch the video or read the transcript for the answer!

Is it OK to reuse a category name as a tag in another taxonomy?

“Well, the problem is that the name is also the search term, and if someone searches for that term, which page on your site should they land on? Which is the most important one? How do you tell that to Google?

If you have both, then you have to find a way to link from one to the other and deem one more important and that’s actually hard to do. So if you can avoid it, avoid it. Good luck.”

Read more: What is the difference between tags and categories? »

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