Making More of Blog Categories
-
What are peoples opinions on blog categories and their importance. On many blog I setup a general news category and on others I have gone to town adding detailed categories.
Is there a major benefit in doing this ?
-
I have an active blog getting hundreds of posts per month with most posts going into two categories (one by topic and one by geography). It has nearly 200 categories. We don't use tags. What we have is wild enough - but those categories pull in an awful lot of traffic and on average get a couple of posts each per week.
-
True, I am hearing you there
Just curious, what's your take on tags in that situation of a large site with hundreds of posts per month?
-
I think that if you have a blog with one post a week or one a month then a very small number of categories makes a lot of sense.
However, if the blog is getting hundreds of posts per month and many posts hitting two categories then it could support a lot of healthy categories.
Category pages can attract a lot of traffic if they are in the right niche and optimized well.
-
Hi Garry
At quick glance - I would come up with your 5 or so categories, get them on the top navigation bar. Make sure you have a category for every possible post you might do in the future. The ones you have down on the right sidebar look like a good start.
Then utilize your tags as a way to add real specific words and phrases to each post. These can be generated as you go, you can have dozens or hundreds of tags over time, and several on just one post. Then put a tag cloud maybe in the footer.
So you'll have maybe 5 broad categories that always stay the same and sit on the top navigation, and you'll have lots of tags over time that are more specific.
-Dan
-
Hi Garry
The advise I have heard, and follow, is to keep categories more general, and to only have a handful - say 5-10 categories.
But you want to have lots of tags. Tags can be very specific and unique to each individual post. You can have several tags for one post. I have a lot of pages that get picked up by tag pages, which tend to also make great long-tail URLs.
So let me give an example. Website about cars. Categories might just be: Sports Cars, SUVs, Pick Up Trucks, Station Wagons. Tags however would be very specific: 2 door honda, fastest sports cars, driving and safety - etc etc etc.
And I've also heard to be sure not to have a tag with the same name as a category.
I'm sure you'll see lots of examples that go against this format, but it seems pretty intuitive and has worked for me thus far.
-Dan
-
could I ask for some feedback on this blog I am currently in the process of setting up -
http://www.supplementsnews.co.uk
If this was your project what would be your next move....
-
My blog gets more traffic through category pages than through all other sources combined. There are also lots of links hitting those category pages and lots of people subscribe to their RSS feeds.
It's all about which keywords you can optimize them for. If I had a widgets blog I would have lots of categories by color, what they are made of, and more.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can anyone recommend a good reliable blogging platform for a small to medium sized manufacturing and services company?
I've been asked by my manager to investigate the best blogging platform for our company website. On a recent CIM course it ways suggested that Wordpress is not necessarily reliable. Could anyone advise? The blog is required to provide a space for current industry news, casestudies etc. It is also envisaged that the blog will allow comments. I've only got good things to say about Wordpress, but have only used the platform for my own small SEO company.
Content Development | | Catherine_Selectaglaze1 -
Is it black hat to include your city name in a blog title to hopefully help local search resultts
I frequently blog and want to increase my ranking in local search in my area-Boston-blogging about Plastic Surgery. If I write a post about tummy tuck will I be penalized by Google search if I use a title like
Content Development | | wianno168
Tummy Tuck After Weight Loss Boston or Boston Tummy Tuck After Weight Loss0 -
Why do other sites rank higher for our blog content?
Our site has always allowed other sites to RSS feed our content. Recently, we've noticed that searches for a title of our blog post will rank 2 sites that only publish said content, while our links are nowhere to be seen on the SERPs for Google. Is there any way I can fix this or prod Google to adjust it for us? Background: We were ranked highly in many long tail keywords, but lost many of them in June 2013. During this time going forward, we received no manual action.
Content Development | | FreedomKeepsMe0 -
Blog and keyword advice
Hi, i am going to add a blog to my site to encourage more visitors as well as encourage google to visit the site more often but i am concerned on a couple of things. The blogs will be on weight loss hypnotherapy, anger management therapy and also gastric band hypnotherapy and i am concerned that by writing a number of articles on this topic that by using the keywords it will lower my rankings for the following keywords, gastric band hypnotherapy, anger management therapy, weight loss hypnotherapy. To help you understand more, i have three sections which are gastric band hypnotherapy, anger management therapy, weight loss hypnotherapy, which rank well with google and i am worried that if i write about these subjects in my blog that it will reduce my rankings. Should i reduce the number of times i use the word gastric band hypnotherapy in my new blog articles and say only say the word once or twice so google does not thing that is my main page on the subject. any help would be great.
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Are there quality blog sites allowing guest blogging ?
hi can someone guide me the right direction for guest blogging ? i m looking for quality blog sites that allow guest blogging especially for ecommerce related sites. Thank you Nick
Content Development | | orion680 -
Short Meme/Image Posts on Blog - Will this hurt me?
Hey guys, I use Hootsuite to cross-post to twitter/facebook/google+/wordpress. It's mostly short one-sentence posts (http://minecraftserverfinder.wordpress.com/). But it's updated about 5-6 times a day and the images are relevant and interesting to my followers. Currently the wordpress page is not hosted on my main site minecraftserverfinder.com, it just links to it. I do have another blog on minecraftserverfinder.com/blog that has a couple of lengthy articles. My questions are thus: Should I keep going with these posts? Should I consolidate the blogs and host them on my main site? Thanks in advance.
Content Development | | HamburgerHelper0 -
Benefits put my blog inside website or outside the website
Hi everyone, I wonder if you can provide some information regarding inside or outside blogs benefits. One of us thinks that the blog should be within our website URL. And the other one thinks that it should be a separate url. I believe an outside blog will provide SEO benefits but we hope that you will provide us your thoughts on this issue? Thanks for all of your help. Antonio
Content Development | | AVSFencingSupplies0 -
Blog Commenting Best interface
Hi All, In your opinion what are the advantages and disadvantages of Livefyre Facebook comments system Disques Thanks, John
Content Development | | johnshearer0