What is the reason for putting tags and categories in BOTH the post AND on the left sidebar under post - tags and categories?
Won't the reader find the topic in a search by ONLY putting tags and categories in the POST ONLY?
Just wondering.
Thank you.
Debbie
1 Answers
Great question, Debbie.
The short answer is... you don't need to! You can display tags and categories wherever you think they'll most benefit your visitors.
Keep in mind, every theme displays tags and categories differently.
Some themes don't display tags or categories on the blog archive page (your primary blog page where all your posts are listed in chronological order). They may only be displayed when a visitor opens the individual blog post, and even then, perhaps only when they've scrolled to the very bottom of that post.
So, many site owners choose to also display the tags and/or categories widget in the sidebar or footer of their site to make it easier for visitors to see at a glance what the site is all about, and get 1-click access to all the posts containing a particular tag (or assigned to a particular category).
To your question, yes, a visitor should also be able to find all the posts containing a tag (or within a category) by searching for that tag/category. But that's an extra step, and if there's one thing we've learned about our behavior when visiting web sites, it's that people generally won't take extra steps to do something that could more easily be accomplished by a single click.
When in doubt, I would display them in both places: in the sidebar/footer of your site, AND at the bottom of each individual post.
Hope this helps!