Categories can help organize your blog by topical areas, making your content easy to navigate and user-friendly. However, it can be difficult to choose the right categories to organize your content.
To create well-defined categories for your blog, you’ll need to consider both your niche and your target market. By choosing broad editorial focuses and ensuring that category names are consistent, you can help visitors to understand what your blog covers quickly.
In this post, we’ll discuss the benefits of adding categories to your WordPress blog. Then we’ll show you how to choose the best category names and add them.
- Why You Should Add Categories to Your WordPress Blog
- How to Create Great Categories for Your WordPress Blog With 4 Tips
- How to Add Categories to Your Posts
- It’s Time to Optimize Your WordPress Blog Categories
- What are website redirects, and why do you need them?
- Types of website redirects
Why You Should Add Categories to Your WordPress Blog
When organizing your website, it can be helpful to group your posts into categories. These are short, descriptive labels that define the topic for each piece of content:
Similar to tags, categories help users identify what your posts are about. This way, visitors can refine their searches by selecting the topics they want to read more about. For instance, you might click on the “Lunch” category of a food blog to only find lunch recipes:
While most categories are wide topics, some bloggers choose more specific labels. A creator in the food niche might use a more precise category such as “Quick Dinner Recipes” instead of just “Dinner”.
By adding categories to your blog, you can:
- Group related posts together in a navigation menu, sidebar, or widget
- Keep your blog organized
- Allow viewers to narrow their searches
- Guide the topics of your future content
Rather than displaying random posts, you can use categories to improve your website’s organization. Without them, visitors might have to scroll through your content to find what they’re looking for. By adding categories, you can provide a helpful guide to direct users to the content they want.
How to Create Great Categories for Your WordPress Blog With 4 Tips
Adding a few categories can be one of the best ways to organize your online content. However, it can be difficult to know which categories will be most helpful for your readers. Since every website is different, here are a few factors to think about before creating categories in WordPress.
1. Consider Your Content
The first thing you should consider is your content niche. When choosing categories for the first time, it’s best to select broad topics that you want to cover or that you’ve already written about.
If you own a media review website, you can create categories based on the content you write about. For example, you can add different categories for your film, TV, and book reviews. This can make it easier for a visitor to filter out topics they’re uninterested in:
It’s often best to start with three to five categories. There’s no ideal number, but having fewer options can help you organize your website more clearly. If you create too many categories, it could leave visitors overwhelmed and unable to find a certain topic.
If your blog is new or fairly small, try to use broad categories that can encompass a variety of different posts. If you can only include a few posts in each category, the topic may not be high-level enough.
However, being more specific can be beneficial when you’re organizing a large archive of existing posts. This can prevent having too many posts in one category. As a general rule, the more content you have, the more categories you’ll need.
2. Know Your Audience
When you add categories to your WordPress blog, the main goal is to help visitors find what they’re looking for. To improve the user experience, you’ll need to know which posts your audience enjoys the most. This way, you can create a category for that topic and make it easier to locate.
If you already have posts on your blog, you can start by evaluating your web analytics. In your WordPress.com dashboard, navigate to the Stats page. There, you can view which of your posts has the most engagement:
Once you notice a popular topic, consider creating a category for it. By doing this, you can narrow your niche and refine future posts. This simple addition also helps visitors navigate your website.
If you’re struggling to find new categories, you can also consider conducting competitor research. By visiting competing websites with a similar audience, you can get ideas for your own categories.
Finally, you can use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools to find popular keywords in your niche. Then you can use these keywords in your categories. Make sure they’re relevant to your content. This can even help your category pages rank for search queries.
3. Be Consistent with Your Category Naming Structure
After you discover ideas for new categories, it’s time to name them. When doing this, it’s important to make sure the names you choose are consistent in both style and structure.
As you add categories, you might be tempted to use wildly different naming conventions. For example, you might use a one-word noun for one category, and a long question for another. However, this can negatively affect the user experience. It’s better to create short, consistent category names so they can be easily understood by visitors:
Although your categories don’t have to be exactly the same, they should look similar. This enables visitors to quickly read your list of categories and choose the one they’re interested in. Plus, creating clear and consistent categories can make your website appear more professional and credible.
4. Plan Out Your Categories Ahead of Time
You can use categories to organize your existing blog posts. However, it’s often more effective to plan your categories first, and then tailor your content to them.
For example, if you know you’re planning a blog series, you can create a dedicated category for it. Doing this can improve your site structure as you publish new posts:
On the other hand, you might develop a more general category that encompasses the upcoming series. This can keep similar information in one place, while limiting the number of categories you list on your website.
The most important thing to remember is that there’s no universal, perfect formula for creating effective categories. Instead, you’ll be best off if you create categories based on the specific needs of your blog and target audience.
How to Add Categories to Your Posts
When you’re ready to start adding categories, there are a few ways you can do this. One of the simplest options is through the Categories tab in your WordPress dashboard. To navigate to this section, go to Posts > Categories:
Then click on Add New Category. Here, you can name the category and provide a description:
You can also create subcategories by assigning them to a ‘parent’ category. For example, a food blogger might have “Dessert Recipes” as a top-level category, and then “Cookies” as a subcategory:
When you create a new post, you can assign it to an existing category in the Block Editor. In the Post section, scroll down to the Categories tab:
In this section, you can select a category for the post. You can also click on Add New Category if you don’t see an effective option, and create one without leaving the page.
It’s Time to Optimize Your WordPress Blog Categories
If you’re a beginner, you might struggle to find the perfect categories to define your WordPress blog (and even if you’re an expert, you might be able to better optimize your categories). However, you can start with a few broad categories and expand them as your audience grows, or as your content changes. By knowing your audience and evaluating your visitor analytics, you can define categories for your posts and develop a plan for future content.
To review, here’s how to choose categories for your WordPress blog:
- Consider your content.
- Know your audience.
- Be consistent with your category names.
- Plan out your categories ahead of time.
You’re now ready to organize your blog content with clear and well-selected categories.
Have you recently moved your content from one URL to another? If so, then one of the most important things you need to be using is website redirects. Here’s an introduction to what redirects are, why you need them, and the different types you’ll come across.
What are website redirects, and why do you need them?
Websites and URLs evolve over time for several reasons. This happens when you reorganize and update a site and when you change domains. If someone visits one of your old pages that have either been removed or brought over to a different location, then a website redirect keeps that visitor from getting lost by taking them to the new location of that page. In addition to getting your visitors to the correct page, according to SE Ranking website redirects also help you maintain your current search engine ranking even after you’ve made a change to your website.
If potential visitors search for your web page and come across old URLs that have been replaced, those visitors will receive a 404 error page and be told that the page no longer exists. Receiving a 404 error page isn’t a great user experience, and it’s likely that these visitors may not return to your website. This can also happen if any of your old URLs are referenced on other websites and printed materials and are bookmarked by users.
Types of website redirects
There are several types of redirects and each one has its own purpose. They generally fall under two main categories: temporary and permanent.
Temporary redirects
The various types of temporary website redirects include 302, 303, and 307. Anytime you want to move a website or URL for a short amount of time, then you should set up a temporary redirect. Temporary redirects are also used to let visitors know that the page they’re searching for was found but is currently not here. Temporary redirects can also be used to house sensitive information for a very short period of time, like any page that takes payment information. These types of redirects are typically created by web developers, computer programmers, and search engine optimization professionals.
Permanent redirects
Website redirects 301 and 308 are permanent and act the same way the postal service treats your mail when you move to a new home. These redirects tell search engines that the domain and URL have changed and to take all of the current page ranks and links from the old website to the new website. This ensures that you still receive all of the traffic you would’ve received before the domain and URL change. Typically, 308 redirects are only created by web developers, while the 301 redirect is the most popular one used by day-to-day website owners.
So, whether you’ve started with one domain name and decided you don’t like it anymore or you want to upgrade from an older site to a WordPress.com website, it’s critical to have proper redirects in place anytime you’re making a change that involves moving one URL to a different one. Having these in place ensures that you don’t lose any of the page rank you’ve worked hard for, that visitors who come across an old URL get to the right place, and that the content you’ve created is read — even after it’s been moved.
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