Posts can be organized by categories as well as by tags. Categories are meant to be a general classification of posts, while tags are designed to offer more detail about the content of a specific post. Let's assume we have a page titled Mortgage Refinance Tips and it is assigned to a "Refinance" category and a "Streamline Refinance" category. The page contains information on FHA and VA refinancing. To give viewers more detail about the contents of the post we can assign tags to it such as "refinance", "streamline refinance", "fha loan", "va loan", etc. This gives more detail without creating an excessive number of categories. The combined total of categories and tags assigned to a page should not exceed 15 as a rule of thumb.  

Tags also have an archive page associated with them. This is a page that lists articles that have been given that specific tag. Much of what we can edit in our Tags page is related to these archived pages.

Tags can be added when we create a post, but there may be times we want to manage them separately. Under the Posts tab of our main navigation, we can select Tags for more options.

1. Adding a New Tag
2. Managing Tags
3. Editing a Tag
• Primary Information
• Sidebar Options
• Tag Archive Settings
• Layout Settings
• Yoast SEO Settings

Adding a New Tag

Once in the Tags page, we can add new tags and manage existing tags. To add a new tag we will complete the fields on the left of the page.

Popular Tags Our most popular tags will appear right away for ease of navigation. Clicking one will take you to the page for editing that tag. Name The first field allows us to name our tag. This will be how the tag appears on the site, so be sure to capitalize and format appropriately. Slug If we leave this field blank, the "Slug" for our tag will be automatically formatted using all lowercase letters and a hyphen separating words (streamline-refinance). We suggest using this default formatting. Description Descriptions will rarely be displayed on the site, but you can give a tag a brief description to explain more about the tag.   Once you have completed the necessary fields, you can click Add New Tag!

Managing Tags

To the right of the page we have an overview of our existing tags. This section will tell us the name of our tags, descriptions, slugs, and the number of posts per tag (count). To make changes to an existing tag, we can click on the tag name or hover over the name to view a few additional options. 

Editing a Tag

After we have clicked our tag name, we are no able to make changes to the tag. This will allow us to change what we have already as well as enter a bit more information we haven't had access to yet.

Once in the editing section, the first changes we can make will be to the information we have already entered when creating the tag.

Sidebar Options

Next we can update Sidebar Options. Tag archive pages are assigned default sidebars when created, but if you wanted to use a unique sidebar for a certain tag, that can be accomplished here.  

Tag Archive Settings

We can give our tag archive pages an introduction through Archive Headlines and Archive Intro Text. This information will appear at the top of the archive page. These fields can be used to give a bit more information about the posts that have been assigned that tag. By default, there is not an introduction. 

Here is an example of how the Archive Headline and Archive Intro Text will appear on the page.

Layout Settings

We can choose a unique layout for each page or post on our site. Using the default layout will create consistency throughout the site, however there may be times when a different layout is needed. This can be changed here.

Yoast SEO Settings

Our SEO information can be edited for our archive page in this final section. Only the SEO Title and SEO Description should be changed here. The remaining fields are assigned default information that we do not want to change. For a better look at SEO Titles and Descriptions for the Yoast Plugin, click here.

Once you have made all of your changes, click update at the bottom of the page!