First to get an understanding of what works for your niche and your blog or future blog – if you have a blog take a look at the categories and find which categories;
- You used a couple of years ago but don’t use any more
- Have only one or two posts in
- Have names that aren’t self-explanatory
- Seemed like a good idea at the time, when you added them for one specific post
The advice on determining your categories is sparse but here is some good info: Lorelle on WordPress:
Here are some tips:
Plan, Plan and Re-Plan!
Most bloggers fail by not planning at all – and, if they do plan, failing to adjust that plan to fit reality! A very specific plan helps keep a blog on track and more successful. Content plans can change, but start your or redesign with a good site map with four solid categories.
Do not use series or marketing jargon categories – categorize all content into the simplified categories
If you have a series of posts that are part of a series create a link to an index page which holds the whole series and you can include a previous and next in the series. And if the series is 10 or less posts just place the index block in all posts.
I would suggest that, for the majority of blogs, posts in a series should be categorised “normally” just like any other posts. Each post in the series should have a link at the top and bottom going to an index post (or even a page) which holds links to the whole series. You might also want to include a link to the previous and next posts in the series from each
Make all Categories equal
A very common problem with categories is not keeping your categories at the same level of granularity. By that, I mean that some of your categories are probably very broad and others are very narrow. This is often caused by failing to plan: it’s a good idea to sit down for an hour or two and decide roughly how many categories you want, and how broad or detailed that means they’ll be.
Blogs which are narrowly focused on a niche will probably have narrow, specific topics as readers are likely to be looking for expert advice in particular areas. Blogs with a very wide remit need broad categories to help readers weed out the areas that aren’t interesting to them.
On Problogger, I would suggest that the categories list has some items which cover too narrow an area. For example, “Yahoo Publishing Network” is very specific when compared with categories like “Advertising” and “Blog Networks”.
Mistake 4: Inconsistent Category Naming
I’d bet good money that, at some point, you’ve come across a categories list on a blog and wondered what the heck some of the categories meant. Perhaps most were self explanatory, like “Reader Questions” or “Content Writing” but then you came across “Special”. Special what? Try to make sure your category names can be understood without the reader having to click on them to figure out what they might mean.
Or maybe you see a blog which has a nice neat list of one-word categories, then one which is five words long so gets a disproportionate amount of space compared to its importance. (Usually, the shorter the name of a category, the broader its remit and the larger the number of posts it contains.)
This is a tiny point – but be consistent with capitalisation. One of my favourite blogs, The Change Blog, capitalises all the categories except two (“blog carnival” and “personal growth”) – to me, this looks a little odd.
Another problem is when some of the categories have quite formal names (“Finances, Frugality, Investment”) and others are slangy or chatty (“Quick tips”, “Easy wins”). The way in which you name your categories is important in setting the tone for your whole blog. On most blog templates, the categories list displays on the front page: that means you need to put at least as much thought into the wording of your categories as you do into the wording of your headlines.
Doing It Right
Now that I’ve been through the common mistakes people make with categories, you might be looking at your own blog in dismay – or rethinking your plans for the one you’re about to launch.
I mentioned earlier that I’ve just launched a new blog which took a considerable amount of planning. You can see the categories page at www.alphastudent.com/categories (I chose not to list the categories on the front page).
Rule 1: As Few Categories As Possible
Due to my blog design, I needed to keep the number of categories down to make sure they fitted comfortably in the list. I also wanted room to show the latest post from each category.
Most bloggers would benefit from using as few categories as possible. This avoids blog clutter in your sidebar, and avoids presenting readers with a forbidding list of dozens of different topics.
Alpha Student has a wide remit – “Helping you make the most of your time at university” – and covers everything from advice on exam technique to lists of flash games to play when you need a break. I decided on the categories:
Academic
Career
Financial
Personal
Practical
Social
When you’re planning your blog, think about how many categories you really need … can two of your topics be conflated into one?
If you’ve got an existing blog, take a look at your categories list and note any which are superfluous.
Rule 2: Don’t Be too Specific
Try not to be too specific, at least to start with. I deliberately kept my topics very broad. I could have broken down “Academic” into “Essays”, “Exams”, “Lectures”, “Seminars” and so on. When your blog is new, having dozens of categories means that lots of them will only contain one or two posts for a while.
Even if your blog’s been going for a while, you’ll find that some categories are too narrow – anything which contains under 5% of the total posts on your blog can probably be ditched.
Rule 3: Think Ahead
I know that with Alpha Student, I’ll want to run some series. For example, I’m going to do a series on essay writing with posts on topics like “Planning your essay”, “The first line of your essay”, and so on. But I don’t want to introduce a category just for a short series.
So I’m planning to categorize all those posts under “Academic”, which means readers browsing the academic section can find them easily. (Bear in mind that the majority of your readers won’t sit down and follow a whole series from beginning to end – they might only read one post from the middle.)
I’ll also have a single post announcing the series which will contain a list of the posts in the series, linking to each one. The individual posts in the series will link back to this index post.
How do you (or how will you) manage series on your blog?
What about competitions, giveaways and other one-offs? Think about how you can make these easy for readers to follow without using a category.
Over to You
As I said at the start of this article, little has been written about choosing categories for your blog. I’d love us to start remedying that here!
What are your thoughts on this topic – do you have a particular plan behind the categories on your blog? Do you think that categories aren’t really that important? Is there anything you wish you’d done differently with the way you’ve used categories?