At first glance a category and a tag look the same. In practice they answer different questions — which is exactly why you want both.
Categories: hierarchy
Categories are a tree. On this blog 'Cloudflare' is a child of 'Engineering': readers can drill from general to specific, and search engines understand the tree structure better.
Tags: flat but powerful
Tags ignore category boundaries. 'i18n', 'MCP' or 'SEO' connect articles across categories — and those connections power the related-posts block.
Series: order and context
Sometimes articles are a continuation. A series is a separate collection that posts reference with an order number — readers see where they are and what comes next.
Complex logic, simple interface
- Filters by category and tag at the same time
- Hierarchy on category pages
- Automatic related posts scored by shared tags
A good taxonomy opens paths for readers and stays out of editors' way.
