Lindsay Humes

Lindsay Humes

Each custom blog design starts with a comprehensive blog audit, where I assess the client’s content, branding, SEO, and technical capabilities. In this phase, one of the most significant overhauls occurs with the client’s blog categories and tags. Often, clients have no structure or logic to how they have assigned categories. They are missing valuable keywords and assign multiple categories repeatedly. Category terms often duplicate with tag terms, leading to repeat content – an SEO no-no. Updating your categories can help improve your bounce rate and pageviews. Category URLs become more valuable to the reader as they can browse similar posts. Organizing your content efficiently also contributes to your brand reputation and expertise as a content creator. Book Analogy Your blog is a book. Chapters define book sections into smaller, like-minded content. Categories work the same way. Would you put the same recipe in two different chapters? No. Categories should be simple, straightforward, and easy to identify. Let’s look at two examples: Recipes is a better term than Food for posts that include recipes. Outfits is a better term than Style or Fashion for outfit-based posts. You want to have multiple posts in a category (10-100+ posts). Often bloggers will create too many categories. It is better to have fewer categories than too many. For beginning bloggers, I recommend no more than four categories. I have about 250 posts on my blog, and I only rely on five core categories. I have worked on sites that have over a thousand posts, and they have less than twelve categories. Categories should be specific to the post. If you are using the same two categories all the time, find a way to differentiate your content better. Organizing WordPress Categories Create Your Category Buckets Not sure what categories to have? Use the bucket method of organization. For example, in a food blog, you can start with the following – Main Dishes, Beverages, and Side Dishes. Let’s say you have more than a hundred posts so that you can get more explicit with them. Add the category terms – Appetizers, Breakfast, Soups, and Salads. Soups as main dishes, sides, and appetizers, but at the most specific level, soups are soups! So, a post that is soup would only have that category. With your blog categories, it is also essential to be explicit. For example, if you are a style blogger, your categories should focus on the different types of outfits, whether seasonal or occasion. Use tags to address other verticals – travel, lifestyle, etc. Organized Blogs WordPress categories help readers find similar posts, but they also help you think about your content more deliberately and purposefully. Here are some examples of how my clients have organized their content: Food Blog: The Little Epicurean Fashion Blog: Color by K Lifestyle Blog: Here’s The Skinny You might also like WordPress Pages + Categories: What to Use + When and Adding Categories to Navigation + Widget Areas. Want more WordPress tutorials? Check out more posts! If you have any questions, leave a comment below! This post was originally written on February 16, 2015, and was updated in 2018.

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