Take Time to Create a Good List of Categories

by Steve Remington

Creating and maintaining a good list of categories on your blog benefits both you and your readers. When people come to read your blog hopefully there will be a list of categories displayed somewhere in your sidebar. Most people search the Internet by topic and not by date, so place your category archive higher up on the sidebar than your monthly (dated) archive. It is important that people can navigate your blog with ease. By creating a well thought out list of categories it will help your readers find articles that they find most interesting.

If you have a general hunting blog you will probably want to break down your categories into different types of hunting; like deer hunting, bear hunting, turkey hunting, hog hunting, etc. That way when people search your blog they can click on whatever type of hunting they prefer to read about at the time. Let’s say our reader is an avid bear hunter and so he clicks on your Bear Hunting category. He can then get a list of all the blog posts you have done in chronological order that you listed under Bear Hunting.

It will be a little bit more of a challenge to set up categories when your blog is very specific to begin with. But as you write, try to think of what will be going through the minds of your readers and in a lot of cases you can think of a category you can add. For instance create categories like Products, Videos, Photos, News, Stories, etc.

Readers love choices to a certain extent. Too many choices can get a reader confused, but you don’t want to be a complete online blog dictator. Think of it as leading your readers.

Linking to your previous posts is a good way to get your readers deeper into your blog. Sometimes linking to a category on your blog will help direct people to an archive of related material. For instance, in your current post you are talking about your videos or you have posted a new video. Near the bottom of the post before you finish up and hit publish, just let your readers know that if they want to see some of your older videos you have posted then CLICK HERE and then link to your Videos category. Look at this blog here at Skinny Moose. I can tell you that once you are done reading this to head over and read ALL of my Blog Tips. Or check out all my previous Interviews I have done in the past.

This just makes it very simple and fun for the reader. Walk them through things and just make it easy. But as you can see, having categories was not only easy for your readers, it is easy for you to go back and find related articles to link to.

Search engine spiders such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN crawl categories too. Categories are set up to provide their own URL. So, I find in a lot of cases if somebody went to Google, for instance, and typed in “Bear Hunting Blogs” then one of the results to pop up could be a link straight to your Bear Hunting category. So make sure you keep your blog nice and neat and add as many categories as you think will benefit your readers. It is another door into your blog and it will make it that much more enjoyable for your readers and for you as a writer.