This page outlines the standards for creating and using tags and categories for blogs on Wordpress. 

Categories and tags allow blog authors and users to sort and view only the blogs posts with these specific identifiers. They allow your audience to filter down to specific content they wish to see, as well as help you, the blog author, organize your content.

Making a Plan

You are not required to use blog tags or categories. If you choose to use tags or categories, your department/team needs a standard set of categories and/or tags used consistently by every person who makes a blog post. 

The web team recommends to periodically do a Category and Tag review of your blog. The web team can help you perform these audits.

A simple system for a blog is to use categories or tags.

General Tips

Do’s:

  • Create a plan for tagging or categorizing your blog posts.
  • Create a standardized list of categories (or tags) to use across your blog; this list should not change often.
  • Tags/categories should be specific to a few blog posts
    • Examples of appropriate tags: Alumni, Student Spotlight, Diversity & Inclusion, Applied Learning, Research, Careers and Internships, Newsletter, Artificial Intelligence, Sustainability
  • Tags/categories should apply to a specific topic or audience
  • Tags/categories should be title case (all important words capitalized)
  • Limit the number of tags used in each blog post

Don’ts:

  • Don’t use generic tags, such as WSB or UW (If the tag could apply to most or all posts in your blog, it is not specific enough.)
  • Don’t use a tag that only applies to one blog post (the tag is too specific)
  • Do not use a tag that is identical to a category on your blog and vice versa. (e.g. If your blog uses the category "Alumni News", do not create a tag also called "Alumni News")
  • Don’t use people’s names in tags 
  • Do not use the following tags: Wisconsin School of Business, Wisconsin MBA, Full-Time MBA, UWMadison, University of Wisconsin, MBA, UW, Madison
  • Do not use hashtags # in tags

WSB Newsroom

The WSB Newsroom blog (called Posts in WordPress) uses a specific category and tag system. Categories are large themes/divisions of the School. A post is only assigned to one category. Tags are more specific topic areas. View the standard set of categories/tags for Newsroom.



Tags

Blog tags are optional. The purpose of tagging blog posts is to allow users to filter posts by topic or audience within your blog. These tags are not intended to be used like search keywords, hashtags or buzzwords. A blog tag has its own link, this means you can link to all related blog posts as needed.

Categories

Blog categories are also optional. The purpose of adding categories to blog posts is to allow users to filter posts by topic or audience within your blog. These should be broader topics that cover large sections of your blog. A blog category has its own link; this means you can link to all related blog posts as needed.


Viewing your category and tags in WordPress

To view which tags and categories are used in a particular blog:

  • Login to wordpress at business.wisc.edu/wp-admin
  • Navigate to the admin page for the blog 
  • On the lefthand menu, select Categories or Tags and you will see a table of the categories/tags that are currently being used. You can also see how many blog posts use each category/tag.