Quote:
Originally Posted by Snake Doctor
Update on this for those who are interested.
Wordpress looks for the tag-slug.php, then tag.php, then archive.php, then index.php for the template it uses for tags.
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Thats very cool, I didnt realize they looked for them in that order.
About the question as to benefits of chosing tags over categories from a SE standpoint. I see it like this.
A category page will have an exerpt of text, that are all related to each other and that were put into said category upon posting. Based on whatever categories you use, and how many posts you use, at one point, you may be 40-50 posts in each category, and many of them will be listed back on yoursite.com/category/page/3/ etc. Your first posts may end up buried way at the back and get little link love or weight passed through. In fact, the only links to them may be from the 4th page of that categories list which is comprised of some "related" posts, but not highly defined and specific (like one keyterm specific) they are just to "general" and not specific enough.
Now categories work, to a certain degree, but I think most of us realize, the more specific and relevant your site/content/navigation is, the better it is for your serps. Obviously, the easier we make it for google to identify our content and BE SURE what it is, the easier time we will have ranking for them niches/terms.
Categories are usually all relative, but its not exactly definitive of the content. Now those same 40-50 posts from that category, will be further defined, and broke into dozens and dozens of seperate TAGS. Now what those tags give us is some fine tuned, highly niched pages, that display highly targeted posts (same tags). Its just a more definitive description of the content we want them to index.
So if we can control the spider and tell it NOT to bother with the categories, we can show them a much cleaner, efficient, and RELATIVE set of content pages that actually list pages within the site, based on microniches or Tags.
Not only will this get you in their good graces, but it works like mad for surfers as well, when these tag pages get listed and ranked for their terms, the surfer arives to a simple selection of posts, that ARE ALL EXACTLY what he wanted. Not just a close match based on categories (ie blondes) but a page listing all the blondes by name, chest size, sexual preferance, whatever else you decide to tag with.