Getting your blog categories organized should be a straight forward task, but too many people seem to get confused when structuring their categories, hence why I decided to expand the topic. Below you will find 5 practical tips for organizing and making your categories more efficient:
1. Category names must be descriptive: your categories should orient even first time visitors across your blog. An old time reader will certainly know that under the category “Uncle John” there will be all your posts containing Windows XP tips coming from your uncle John Smith who works at Microsoft, but I will not! The categories tell a lot about your blog, and when readers can not figure what is going on around them it is very likely that they will just skip the blog altogether.
2. Limit the total number of categories: there is a reason why this is called “categoriy” and not “every single post that was written on this blog”, meaning that you should not create a new category for every other post that you are writing. Every blog should have a defined structure and a set of categories to support the topics of the posts, once you have that basic structure in place just fill the posts inside the existing categories, creating a new category should be done rarely and only when it is really necessary.
3. Make sure they fit in 1 screen: if you ask me how many categories your blog need the answer would probably be: it depends (no shit). Some blogs will work well with few categories, others will need 10 or even 20, just make sure that all the categories fit in one screen. Why? Because it is damn annoying to have to scroll down to see the complete list. Imagine I am trying to figure where a specific post was placed, once I get at the bottom of your categories I will probably have already forgotten what was on the top…
4. Try to put posts inside one category only: as a rule of thumb every time I write a post I try to place it inside one category only. I am opposed to monthly archives and to calendars (because the time when the content was written is not relevant) so the only way my reader has to find posts is through the categories. Guess what, if I placed posts inside multiple categories the reader would find the same posts over and over again, which is not cool, to say the least. Exceptions can be made when a certain post really touches more than one category, but those situations are more rare than what most people seem to think.
5. Display the number of posts inside each category: if your blog platform allows you to display the total number of posts inside each category do it. This feature will make sure that the reader knows what to expect when he clicks a certain category, and it also gives a general orientation about the most discussed topics on your blog.
About Mark
Mark is an digital entrepreneur from New York City who recently acquired DBT. He started his ventures buying growing then selling several businesses and content blogs on Flippa. A perfect night for him constitutes pizza, wine, slow jazz and WordPress! He's an SEO expert and a growth strategist. When he's not working on his businesses he enjoys sharing his learned lessons with the DBT community.
Try to put posts inside one category only. This is nice point and I will try it. I usually categorize my posts with two or more categories but it makes sense that the structure is better if the post is only in one category. and it also looks nicer and more organized
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Thanks the great list. Trackback
For point #5 I agree with you if your posting more than 100 for a category
I am disagreed with your point #5, because you are telling that we should display the number of post in each category, even you did not made it. Just have a look at your categories.
Another great article i have added a couple of catergories since i started however i am trying to keep the number under 10.
Daniel, thanks for this post. I am searching for a better way to optimize my categories and this post provides come very good do’s and don’t’s. Thanks again, Richard
Thank You DJHassoo
I am currently cleaning up my category so this was a terrific find. I have to agree with you on keeping things direct and clear. It is a tough decision to limit one category per post when it covers multiple topics.
Aloha folks!
Have a nice day!
An extra tip – keep your categories list lean. Somewhere between 10 and 15 is a good number for most sites. If you get too many you risk your users not being able to find what they are looking for. If you have too many now
A big ‘Bravo’! Even Darren Rowse, with his problogger tips has 7 times more rss readers than you, dailyblogtips is two times better and nicer.
Thank you! I’m new to blogging and was wondering how to do this. I’m definitely hoping I’m following your advice.
Thanks the great list. Trackback
I like your logic… #4 especially, since it also lends itself to preventing duplicate content, which we know makes Google cry.
Good advice..I’ve begun removing some of my categories which are duplicated (lots of work left to do since I was using categories as tags) but it does make sense.
Good tip about putting posts in multiple categories. I’ll be changing that from now on. Thanks a billion!
some basic facts explained in a nice way, which will help
in managing posts. after reading this i reduced no of categories from 14 to 8. thanks
Jennifer, I agree with your point, in fact I wrote “Try to put posts inside one category only” and “Exceptions can be made when a certain post really touches more than one category”.
When I was first introduced to blogs I attempted to use the categories to navigate through a bloggers posts. I figured that each post would be in one category. But much to my surprise most blogs put a post under multiple categories.
It sounds like Jennifer may be approaching categories along the lines of tagging or an index in the back of a book, while Daniel is using categories as main navigation or book chapters that are mutually exclusive. Sounds to me like the key is to pick one approach and stick with it–which means I need to go back and clean up my own categories that have been a hybrid of both approaches. I think categories as chapters will be the way I go.
An excellent set of guidelines. However, I wholly disagree with “Try to put posts inside one category only”. I agree that we should be judicious in the number of categories, but only one is often insufficient for some blogs. For example, sometimes I write about programming. If I’m writing about how to use ColdFusion to read in an XML document and then use an XSLT to manipulate the display of data, putting it into a “Programming” category would be terribly insufficient. I would require “XSLT”, “XML”, and “ColdFusion” in addition to “Programming”.
That would be something cool, but I am pretty sure you should be able to that with wordpress and some PHP coding, like using the .hover parameter on the category div.
i was looking for something which can display the no of posts when you move the mouse over a category .
This u said right.A post should be one category .I will take care of it next time.
Madhur, I just checked your blog and it is already displaying the number of posts on each category! Are you asking for people that is not using wordpress?
Nice article Daniel ..Well written ..btw is there any plugin available for displaying total no of posts inside a category .