Comments on: What’s the Best Way to Handle Blog Categories?

By: Look before You Leap with Your Business Blog | Word Sell, Inc.

Look before You Leap with Your Business Blog | Word Sell, Inc. — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 18:08:17 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: brad

brad — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 12:36:44 +0000

Hi Robyn, good luck if you decide to tackle it. It’s a project.

By: Robyn

Robyn — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 12:26:48 +0000

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.

By: Lillie Ammann

Lillie Ammann — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:36:02 +0000

Interesting thoughts … maybe I need to take another look at categories.

By: brad

brad — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:18:16 +0000

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.

By: Lillie Ammann

Lillie Ammann — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:44:13 +0000

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?

By: brad

brad — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:03:33 +0000

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.

By: Joanna Young

Joanna Young — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 16:25:15 +0000

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!