# How to best represent keyword links **URL:** \ **Category:** Requests\ **Created:** [November 17, 2022, 9:34am UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/how-to-best-represent-keyword-links/2868 "2022-11-17T09:34:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![grothesque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/278dde/32.png) [@grothesque](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/grothesque)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2022, 9:34am UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/how-to-best-represent-keyword-links/2868/1 "2022-11-17T09:34:46Z")
Hello, I’ve been using org-roam for organizing my notes for some time now and I’m very happy with it, because it helps me to give notes useful structure and find them with less effort. I mostly see my notes as a sort of personal wiki. Perhaps this does not exploit the “Zettelkasten” idea to its full extent (I’m glad to hear suggestions). I tend to have nodes on specific topics where I developed some understanding (e.g. “Hyperfocal distance”) and then more generic ones (e.g. “Photography”). Now, I find it useful to link to more general concepts from the specific ones. So far I’m doing the following: at the top of a node, I add a org description list with a single item that holds the relevant keywords. For example, the top of a typical note file will look like this: ```auto :PROPERTIES: :ID: 20220821T223408.999966 :END: #+title: Hyperfocal distance - Categories :: [[id:20220825T125104.700838][Photography]] ``` I’m quite happy with this solution, but whenever I add a new note after some time, I have to remember how to exactly format the category list. It also feels like something that may deserve more explicit markup. I wonder how others are handling this. Is there a better way in org-roam (or org) to represent category links? ---
**Author:** ![nobiot](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/org-roam.discourse.group/nobiot/32/159_2.png) [@nobiot](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/nobiot)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2022, 6:46am UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/how-to-best-represent-keyword-links/2868/2 "2022-11-18T06:46:19Z")
From what I have seen on this forum, the way you represent categories with a normal ID link is considered one of the best practices – you should be able to find many, long discussions around tags and categories on this forum from the past. I don’t think there is a single best practice, but from what I can gather, yours is one of good ones. This way, the more generic note “automatically” becomes an index note with all the backlinks. > [@grothesque](#): > > whenever I add a new note after some time, I have to remember how to exactly format the category list. What exactly is the challenge? Do you type all the ID link syntax manually , and that’s the issue? If so, I suggest that you use `org-roam-node-insert`. If your issues is to remember what “categories” you have in your system, you could use `#+filetags` for your category notes to explicitly indicate that certain notes are “index” notes. This way, you can easily narrow the candidates in `org-roam-node-insert` to only index notes (by default, the tags can be show with “#” prefix in the candidate list). You can extend this and create a small wrapper function to only show index notes when you insert a note, and then automatically add “- Categories ::” as a prefix. ---
**Author:** ![Cletip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Cletip](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/Cletip)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2022, 1:56pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/how-to-best-represent-keyword-links/2868/3 "2022-12-18T13:56:27Z")
A bit old, but maybe you want to see the “vulpea” package, which offers metadatas : [GitHub - d12frosted/vulpea: A collection of functions for note taking based on `org` and `org-roam`.](https://github.com/d12frosted/vulpea#metadata)