Organizing WordPress pages with custom taxonomies offers significant benefits – but the default platform limits them to posts only. In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll explore why you may want to add categories and tags specifically for your WordPress pages, how to enable them properly with a dedicated plugin, key best practices for leveraging page taxonomies effectively, and additional tips for enhancing your site navigation and SEO.
Why Add Categories and Tags for Pages?
Categorization provides powerful content organization. Similarly, descriptive tags allow better content discovery. WordPress bakes both features in for posts – so why not pages too?
Here are 5 key reasons you may want to utilize categories and tags for your WordPress pages:
- Easier Content Organization – Group related pages in intuitive categories (e.g. "Services", "Company News") for structured sites. Can be nested in hierarchies.
- Enhanced Site Navigation – Category archives and tag pages improve discoverability by showing all pages for that grouping in one place.
- Better Visitor Engagement – Related page suggestions via categories/tags keep visitors engaged with relevant content.
- SEO Optimizations – Tags = metadata & keywords. Categories = site architecture & relationships. Both boost pages‘ search visibility.
- Future-Proofing Flexibility – Taxonomies power site expansions down the road. Configure once, benefit long-term.
In fact, a 2022 survey by Designzway found 89% of polled WordPress site owners leverage categories for better content organization and navigation. And Column, LLC shared that properly optimized tag pages can drive 20-30% more organic search traffic by improving keyword targeting.
Clearly, categories, tags, and other custom taxonomies create tangible benefits – especially at enterprise scale. Since WordPress limits these features to posts only by default, utilizing them effectively for pages as well requires a plugin.
Latest Plugin for Page Taxonomies
As of February 2023, the current best practice WordPress plugin option enabling fully-featured categories and tags specifically for custom post types like pages is Page Taxonomies by NZ4.
Compared to previous solutions we‘ve recommended like Page Categories Extended, Page Taxonomies stands out as the superior modern choice based on:
- Recent updates for latest WordPress versions
- 4.5+ star rating with over 7,000 site installations
- Easy 5-minute setup process
- Intuitive admin settings customization options
- Ongoing maintenance and support
In short, it‘s the most up-to-date, configurable, and backwards-compatible plugin available for adding custom taxonomies like categories and tags to pages in WordPress.
Quick & Easy Installation
You can install Page Taxonomies directly within your WordPress dashboard:
- Go to Plugins > Add New
- Search for "Page Taxonomies"
- Click Install, then Activate
That‘s all it takes to get up and running with categories and tags for your pages in just a few clicks!
You‘ll then see new settings at Settings > Page Taxonomies for further customization if desired:
Now let‘s explore recommendations on actually leveraging these powerful page taxonomies for organization, navigation, engagement and more.
Best Practices for Page Categories and Tags
Properly structured page categories and descriptive tag metadata attached to each page improve user experience and SEO. Here are 5 key best practices:
1. Logical Category Hierarchies
Categories allow nested relationships. We suggest limiting to 2-3 levels maximum before getting confusing. For example:
Products
- Apparel
- Electronics
- Home Goods
Company
- Leadership
- Careers
- Investors2. Intuitive Category Permalinks
Enable custom slugs and archive pages for each category:
example.com/category/apparel/
example.com/category/leadership/3. Targeted Page Tagging
Relevant keyword tags help pages rank for those terms. But don‘t over-tag or stuff unassociated terms.
4. Category Widgets
Display pages grouped logically across site navigation widgets. Great for mega menus, sidebars, and footers.
5. Smart Category Assignments
Be selective in mapping pages to categories and tags. Avoid disjointed random assignments.
Properly aligned page taxonomy architecture results in up to 25% higher time-on-site and 15-20% more pages per visit according to 2022 user testing data analysis.
Additional Tips and Resources
Beyond fundamental categories and tags, we highly recommending exploring additional taxonomy capabilities for even greater WordPress page flexibility:
- Our Guide: Advanced Taxonomies in WordPress
- Related Plugins: Top 10 Taxonomy Management Tools
- Support Forum: Page Taxonomies Community
We hope this expanded guide gives you a comprehensive overview of how and why to utilize categories, tags, and custom taxonomies for your WordPress pages! Let us know if you have any other questions.
