Comments on: How to Choose Categories for Your Blog

By: Robin

Robin — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 14:21:11 +0000

I plan on having a few primary catagories in the future. I am currently, only working on articles, for one of these catagories, thus all my future sub-catagories for this section are currently being used as primaries. This way I can add the next primary, and let it grow , the sequester the subs. I feel it makes the site look a bit more complete, during these early phases.

By: Thomas Flight

Thomas Flight — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:19:23 +0000

And please capitalize your categories and tags. It makes them look a lot more professional.

By: Joel Drapper

Joel Drapper — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:45:35 +0000

Great tips. I will try to apply them to my blog before I go too far.

By: Keral Patel

Keral Patel — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 04:04:12 +0000

Hmm…. I was being too specific I guess with my category selections. Will research some more keywords and try to use them as relevant category names.

By: Georjina

Georjina — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 02:05:15 +0000

Thank you Ali,
As someone starting new to WordPress, this will save me a lot of headaches later. From my old blog, I didn’t consider categories and it makes my blog appear unfocused.

You have saved me work and probably helped my readers:)
Thank you again

By: Traci

Traci — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 22:09:40 +0000

Ali,

Perfect timing! We are in the middle of a rebranded website launch along with a corporate blog. I’m relatively new to the whole social media scene and have been wracking my brain to come up with categories that will make sense to our business and our passion.
We talk about ourselves in a 4 x 4 matrix of verticle markets and horizontal disciplines. Although I kept thinking 8 categories would be too many, I’ve gained some major insight from your post and other’s comments.
Thanks so much!

By: Anne

Anne — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:18:12 +0000

Would you like help choosing your categories? I would! Let’s help each other choose the categories that are best for our respective blogs. Contact me if you’re interested!

By: Serge

Serge — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 09:59:48 +0000

I also made the mistake to divide every subject into one single category. My blog is about photography, so for instance I had three categories called “Books” – “Magazines” – “DVD”. Afterwards I combined those into one category “Books/magazines/dvd” which looks more organized for the visitor (and also for me).

By: mecozz

mecozz — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 07:41:33 +0000

great articles, my site use all categories, I think to repair again

By: Nihar

Nihar — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 05:31:13 +0000

Thanks for the post… I will now check my blog and see the categories. I know there are 2 or 3 categories which aren’t used at all and there are some where they need to split.

thanks again

By: Peter | The Change Blog

Peter | The Change Blog — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 04:46:50 +0000

LOL – thanks for the mention Ali. I swear I have tried to capitalize those two categories and wordpress won’t let me. I was hoping no-one would notice ;)

By: Paul Marculescu

Paul Marculescu — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 17:55:18 +0000

We didn’t yet identified the categories for our blog.The plan I have is to get a consistent base of posts, then go through them and using the labels already set, to define the categories.

I agree that fewer is better.

By: Ryan Wanger

Ryan Wanger — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:01:08 +0000

Thanks for the post! A few people above have touched on SEO. What I wonder, would it be better off to rename “Advertisements” and “Videos” to “Food Avertisements” and “Food Videos”…even though there would be a lot of “Food” repetition (the people already reading the blog know “food” is implied), it stands to reason it would be a smart move in terms of search engine optimization.

Thoughts?

By: tuntis

tuntis — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:03:20 +0000

I guess I’ll have to keep this in mind while writing for my blog…

By: Hadassah

Hadassah — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 05:05:36 +0000

I seem to have accidentally done this right!

One of my categories, Interesting Facts, brings me traffic from the WordPress homepage quite frequently. I didn’t choose it for that reason, but I wonder if SEO should be considered too when choosing category names?

By: Index Options Trader

Index Options Trader — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 21:26:27 +0000

I keep categories very simple. Its frustrating to have a long list and wading through that pile. My content is very specific so I guess that helps. But short and sweet is the key. A good post.

By: Digit-8

Digit-8 — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 12:34:50 +0000

Very nice post once again.
How do u manage categories to appear not on sidebar?
I think its better than categories on right side.

By: Kate

Kate — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 09:00:39 +0000

I don’t see the point of worrying about categories when a well placed cloud tag takes care of the same thing?

By: Paul

Paul — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 04:01:39 +0000

It took me a long time to get a handle on categories. The one thing that helps me the most is planning.

By: Philippe

Philippe — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:34:00 +0000

I see many newer news-blogs that actually use categories for the placement of posts within the layout. Example: The title page shows a box with the latest or the latest 3 feature stories, or here on Problogger the video-posts that have their own placement on the title-page.

What is the general take on this?
Isn’t there somehow a conflict between choosing categories for technical reasons (like layout-placement) vs. content/topic reasons?
And: Would there be another way to do it, eg. using Tags (tags vs. categories)?