What’s the Best Way to Handle Blog Categories?

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What’s the Best Way to Handle Blog Categories?

By Brad Shorr | September 17, 2007

Blog categories can be a valuable resource for your readers. When I visit a blog, the first thing I check out is the categories - well constructed categories provide a fast and accurate snapshot of what the blog is all about.

With that in mind, I’ve been trying to upgrade my own category list to make it more reader-friendly. That’s entailed the following -

1. Reducing the number of categories. After 200+ posts, I had accumulated lots of categories with only one or two posts. What at the time seemed like a fertile field for future posts turned out to be a dead end. So, for example, I took a number of very specific technical categories and consolidated them under a new category, Tech Tips.

2. Subdividing overloaded categories. Lo and behold, I realized there were almost 60 posts under the category Blogs. I started the category as a kind of catch-all, for posts on a wide variety of topics. It took awhile, but I was able to analyze these posts and break them down into three subcategories - Blog Strategy, Blogging Tips, and Valuable Links. My goal is to enable readers to quickly zero-in on topics they really want to investigate.

3. Tying together loose ends with a new category. Although the main purpose of my blog is to generate discussion on sales and marketing issues, I enjoy writing about unrelated topics from time to time. I had sprinkled these posts around under whatever category seemed closest, but now I’ve consolidated them under a single category, Coffee Break.

4. Displaying the number of posts. This is a category feature I’m surprised many bloggers don’t use (if you’re one of those bloggers, I’d love to know why). When readers see the number of posts in a given category, it gives them a sense of where your emphasis is.

5. Make the category descriptions reader-friendly. There’s definitely an art to this. I had a category called Management. Never liked the name - sounded rather uninviting and not very descriptive, either. So I changed it to For Owners & Leaders.

Although keeping categories ship-shape is an ongoing process, one thing I’ve learned is that you don’t want to overdo it. In WordPress, when you change a category description, you break internal links to pages within the affected category. That’s a lot of backfilling if you’ve set up lots of internal links, as I discovered the hard way.

One thing that continues to perplex me is whether to assign posts to multiple categories. It would seem reader-friendly to do so, because it provides guests with multiple avenues to reach posts they’d be interested in. But many experts discourage the practice - which approach is best?

How do you handle categories? What suggestions do you have for making them reader-friendly?

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8 Responses to “What’s the Best Way to Handle Blog Categories?”

Joanna Young Says:
September 17th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Hi Brad, I know categories re-organisation is a hu-uge task, so congrats on redoing yours. I did something similar myself a wee while back and it was a lot of work - but I felt it was worth it because it made things clearer for my readers, and a lot easier for me to check whether I was sticking to my stated ‘purpose’ or drifting way off track.

The way I do this is by using a category ‘cloud’ as a visual to show which topics are getting most coverage.

The reason I don’t highlight numbers in each topic is that I don’t know how to do it! Or if it is possible in Typepad…

I do put things into more than one category in case someone is looking for something in a particular topic. That seems helpful to me - not sure what the counter-arguments would be.

Joanna

PS Be back for some coffee later!
brad Says:
September 17th, 2007 at 11:03 am
Hi Joanna, clouds look good - that’s a great solution. I find them hard to read sometimes, though. Not sure about TypePad’s capabilities, but you’d think numbered categories would be available.
Lillie Ammann Says:
September 18th, 2007 at 5:44 am
Congratulations on the category re-organization.

I used to have the number of posts in each category but lost it when I changed themes. I hadn’t thought much about it, but you’re right that the number of posts really gives a good picture of what your blog is all about. Maybe I’ll try to figure out how to get it back.

I try to keep the categories fairly broad; however, I still sometimes assign posts to more than one category. It seems user-friendly to me - what are the arguments against it?
brad Says:
September 18th, 2007 at 6:18 am
Hi Lillie, some bloggers are very minimalistic with categories, keeping them to maybe 5-10 per blog. In that case, one category per post is sufficient. Some bloggers advocate a catchall category for posts that don’t fit anywhere else. I’ve read that assigning multiple categories is sometimes done simply to make it look like the blog contains more material than it actually does. I’ve also heard it argued that if your blog categories and your posts are well thought out, there’s no need for multiple categories. This last point is the one that gives me pause. Sometimes, if I don’t have a really clear point to a post, I’ll assign it to multiple categories, even though it doesn’t exactly fit into any of them. That’s something I’m trying to get away from.
Lillie Ammann Says:
September 18th, 2007 at 8:36 am
Interesting thoughts … maybe I need to take another look at categories.
Robyn Says:
September 25th, 2007 at 6:26 am
I have never taken time to sort my blog posts into categories. I did take time to sort out Most Popular Posts so at least I have a start, Brad! Your advice is well taken.
brad Says:
September 25th, 2007 at 6:36 am
Hi Robyn, good luck if you decide to tackle it. It’s a project.
Look before You Leap with Your Business Blog | Word Sell, Inc. Says:
October 3rd, 2007 at 12:08 pm
[…] about? This means more than just brainstorming specific topics. It’s imperative to have your categories well thought out. Otherwise, you’ll be tweaking them continually, confusing both readers and search […]