Category vs Tag

Categories, tags, and the broader idea of taxonomies

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Websites that use categories and tags

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Categories and tags are most common on content-management-driven websites, where content is published continuously and needs to be organized, discovered, and reused over time. For example:

• Blogs and personal sites
• Media and publishing sites
• Knowledge bases and documentation portals
• Research libraries
• Corporate content hubs

In all of these, content is not just pages, it’s a growing body of material that benefits from structure beyond simple navigation menus.

From categories and tags to taxonomies

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Categories and tags are not special in themselves. They are simply two well-known examples of a more general concept called a taxonomy.

What is a taxonomy?

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A taxonomy is:

A structured classification system used to group and relate content based on shared characteristics.

In practical terms, a taxonomy allows you to answer questions like:

• What kind of content is this?
• What themes does it relate to?
• How does it connect to other content?
• How should users browse or filter it?

Taxonomies come from fields like biology, library science, and information architecture, but they are now a core concept in modern web systems.

Why categories and tags became defaults

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Historically:

• Categories emerged as top-level groupings (few, broad, stable)
• Tags emerged as descriptive labels (many, flexible, granular)

They proved so useful that most content management system (CMS) platforms adopted them as defaults.

But conceptually:

• Categories = one type of taxonomy
• Tags = another type of taxonomy

They differ mainly in intent and governance, not in underlying mechanics.

Modern frameworks and “custom taxonomies”

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Modern content frameworks (static and dynamic) generalize this idea.

Instead of hard-coding only “categories” and “tags”, they allow you to define:

• Any number of custom taxonomies
• With custom names, rules, and behaviors
• Applied selectively to different content types

Examples of additional taxonomies might include:

• series (multi-part content)
• topics (curated themes)
• industries
• frameworks
• use-cases
• roles or perspectives

Each taxonomy:

• Groups content
• Generates its own listing views
• Supports navigation, filtering, and discovery

In other words, categories and tags are conventions, not limitations.

The key idea to internalize

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Categories and tags are just named taxonomies with historical defaults. What matters is not the labels—but the classification intent behind them.

Modern frameworks give you the tools to define:

• How content should be grouped
• How users should explore it
• How ideas connect over time

The discipline lies not in adding taxonomies, but in knowing when a new lens genuinely improves understanding.

That’s the difference between a blog archive and a durable knowledge system.

Back to the diference between categories and tags

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When using tools like Wordpress or Hugo for a websites, tags and categories are both taxonomies serving different strategic purposes.

The short version

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• Categories = broad buckets

  • High-level themes
  • Few in number
  • Usually 1 (maybe 2) per post

• Tags = fine-grained descriptors

  • Specific topics, ideas, tools
  • Many in number
  • Often 5–10+ per post

Think of it like this:

Categories answer: “What kind of content is this?” Tags answer: “What exactly is this about?”

Categories: your site’s macro-structure

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Categories define the primary pillars of your thinking.

For a personal brand site like mine, good categories might be:

• Essays
• Fintech
• Strategy
• Leadership
• Technology
• Energy Transition

Rules of thumb

• Keep categories stable over years

• If you add one every month, you’re doing it wrong

• Categories often map to:

  • Nav items
  • Top-level content sections
  • “What I write about” framing

Example post front matter

categories:
  - Strategy

Tags: your semantic graph

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Tags capture specific ideas, tools, or lenses that cut across categories.

Examples from my own site:

• embedded-finance
• platform-economics
• stablecoins
• venture-building
• ai
• ceo-playbook
• long-term-thinking

Tags are powerful because:

• They enable cross-pollination
• They create a knowledge graph of your thinking
• They age well even as categories stay fixed

Example front matter

tags:
  - platform-economics
  - venture-building
  - long-term-thinking
  - kevin-kelly

A practical mental model (very useful)

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Use this decision test:

• If someone asks “What kind of writer are you?” → Category
• If someone asks “What ideas do you explore?” → Tags

Or:

• Categories = bookshelf labels
• Tags = index entries

SEO & discoverability implications

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Categories

• Stronger internal linking
• Clear topical authority
• Useful for cornerstone / evergreen pages

Tags

• Long-tail SEO
• Better content resurfacing
• Encourages deeper session depth (“related posts”)

For personal sites, tags usually do more work than categories.

Common mistakes to avoid

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• ❌ Using tags and categories interchangeably
• ❌ Having 30+ categories
• ❌ One-off categories used once
• ❌ Putting people’s names as categories
• ❌ Treating categories as chronological (that’s what dates are for)

Recommended setup for a personal site

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Categories

• 5–8 max
• Strategic, durable, opinionated

Tags

• Flexible
• Reused intentionally
• Reflect how you think, not generic blog taxonomies

Example (applied)

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For my Kevin Kelly / platform economics post:

categories:
  - Strategy

tags:
  - platform-economics
  - business-models
  - ecosystems
  - kevin-kelly
  - long-term-thinking

That tells both humans and search engines:

• This is strategic thinking
• About platforms, ecosystems, and long-term dynamics