6 Quick Tips to Organize Categories for Your WordPress Blog
Right from the day you start your blog you should take utmost care of your blog’s category structure and plan it accordingly. A blog with a well defined and meaningful category structure will always provide a better reader experience than a blog with a Lame and baseless category structure.Here are some simple tips to organize your blog’s category structure.
1. Create meaningful categories : Categories reflects what your blog is all about and first time visitors will grasp an idea about the topics covered in your blog from your categories.So it’s imperative that you maintain a meaningful category structure. So if your blog is based on the niche “web design” then create some meaningful categories like blog design,css,codes,html etc etc.
2. Put your categories Upfront : You want your readers and Visitors to explore your content don’t you ? So why not put the categories upfront ?.Put your main categories in the navigation or in your blog’s sidebar so that visitors can easily navigate to the content they are interested in.Do not hide Your categories.
3. No subcategories Please : This one is important and beginners commit a mistake right at the start. Do not create subcategories in your WordPress blog. They complicate your category structure and if you have the category tag in your permalinks then matters become even worse. Lets take an example to understand the situation :
Suppose you have a parent category A and a Child category C. You also have a parent category B and a Child category D. Now when you write a Post and assign categories C and D then the Permalink of your post can be accessed by two different URL’s which can give rise to duplicate content. Also Assigning a Post to a child category may complicate your permalinks. So it is recommended not to create any subcategories. Create and use only Parent categories in your Blog.
4. Limit the total number of categories : Do not create a new category for each and every post that you write. Remember that categories are only a way to organize your posts and you should have a limited number of categories. I have seen certain blogs with an overwhelming number of categories where the number of posts and the number of categories are almost equal. This concept does not make any sense.Readers will get annoyed if they have to scroll all the way down to read your entire Category List.
5. One post – One category : each article that you write should be placed under only one category. Do not use multiple categories in your posts. This may give rise to Duplicate content issues. If you use multiple categories in your posts then your readers will find the same post over and over again which is bad for reader experience.
6. Make sure that Your category pages display all the posts in that category : This feature is built within WordPress but if your blog is another platform make sure that clicking a category link displays all the posts of that category. readers have a Short span of interest in any webpage and you want them to deliver the content as fast as you can. So lessen the steps for them to find and read your content.
Hope you found it useful. Organized your categories? Share with us! Happy Blogging!!
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Thanks for the tips… I agree with all your points specially limiting the number of categories, I have seen blogs with so many categories , sometimes its very irritating and boring to go through that blog.
Yes i too experienced such kind of blogs having more than 20 categories. Which is very irritating to see on sidebar.
Yes lax. too many categories is not good. Unfortunately my blog has many categories but I think it won’t increase any more.
But I Do not agree with not using sub categories. I use it and use it very well. Also I choose some settings which do not create much SEO problems.
Having subcategories is ok, But having too many will lead to the same result
Thanks for this Awesome post I like reading the reveiws.
Thanks for your comments dude..
very creative post, friend
Thanks for your comments dude….
yes this is very important post, i have so many categories now i have to Do some work on that, but it is long list so it take more time to do this
You can’t remove them instantly. But you can try to shift them into some other standard category.
Well. I don’t agree with the 5th point Lax.
“One post – one category” entirely depends on what we are writing.
Some articles need to be specified in more than one category. Actually visitors too will expect that. But that should not be a practice always.
If we decided “one post- one category”, still we will not follow it 100%
Will you?
At least we should try to follow it in the long run.
Makes a lot of sense Lax. I agree that the number of categories should be something managable – 5 to 10 typically. Those blogs with 25 categories or labels listed are hard to read and move around. One post-one category is where I differ a bit. For example, I would want to write about a ‘blogging tip’ but also put a poll at the end of it (‘your opinion’)
Keeping a post in one or two will not be a problem when it deserve to be under that category
Thanks for sharing your opinion Ajith.
good tips lax, keep rocking
Thanks for your comments Anish.
Nice article buddy !
But dude, but sometimes bloggers get confused, they can’t able to decide which category the article belongs !
Suppose, if I’m writing an article about “Nokia’s new netbook”, I have to use two categories, tech news and reviews !
Yes its always happens that some articles fall into 2 categories.. We can exclude that situation
Can you imagine… from Categories itself you can make a useful post. Like the way you explain it. Thanks for sharing. Keep on good post.
You can make post from any topic
Thanks for your love and comments dude..
Wow, after reading this it just disappoints me. I hate my category structure and have for a long time, this just points out some of the numerous faults I have with it.
Thank you, added to the work list.
Great that you found it useful. Thanks for your comments here dude..
I don’t understand the sub-categories thing. I know the permalink will be a bit longer, but you will be able to group more posts in certain categories.
I currently have main categories and assigning all post to them. I wanted to create sub-categories to make it simple for the user. Lets say I have 100 posts under category WordPress, it would be nice if I had a sub-category for plugin reviews, new plugins, updates, etc.
Having few sub categories doesn’t Do bad with the traffic.
But having them limited is good
You can also take help of tags to organize your blog. This will help in managing your blog with less categories.
Yes that’s good idea take help of tags. Thanks for sharing all your opinion here dude..!
When I started my first blog I was not aware or tagging and categories..Later on i realize how important tags and categories are to structure a blog. Though people learn form mistakes and now I try to structure my website first and then write posts..
Great post Lax. Post tweeted
Right on the spot. I was damn confused how to categorize my blog posts.
So, how about using multiple tags for a single post?? I think this can help in bringing out the concerned and related posts.
Yes you can Do in that way also. What am doing is just adjust the post in one or two categories/tags. Am not considering tags as of now
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i have created sub category in my site.. its manageable..
You can manage until you have few sub categories. It looks good too..But if you have too many, there comes the problem