10 tips for tidying up your blog categories

Posted by Ben on August 21, 2009 | Permalink | Hits: 1585 
Tags: categories, organisation, hierarchy, navigation

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I often see blogs with messy categories, which makes it really difficult to find posts that are no longer on the front page. Every now and again, I suggest ways for those people to tidy up their categories, but these are split across various forum posts and blog comments. So now, for the first time, I've gathered 10 of my best tips for tidying up your blog categories in this incredibly useful and well-organised post.

(Today's post is accompanied by an image from 10b travelling.)

1. Categories with only 1 post.

Unless you've only just added a category that only has 1 post, it might be time to remove it. I've seen so many blogs with hundreds of categories, most of which have just 1 post in them. What's the point in that?

2. Categories that have very similar names.

For instance, you might have some of your categories named as follows:

• Blog design
• Web design
• Website design
• Design tips

These could be merged into one category.

3. Categories that have very similar types of post.

As with #2, but the categories have different names. A bit like this:

• Recipes
• Food
• Healthy eating

If you have a food blog, I can see why you'd split out your food categories instead of just having one big category called "Food". But how many of your categories contain posts that could also go in one or two other categories? Try to think of a logical way to divide your posts - it'll be easier for people to find things, and it'll be easier for you to choose which category your post should go into.

4. Posts that aren't in a very descriptive category.

How many blogs have you seen with categories along the following lines?

• Stuff
• My thoughts
• Random

Do you want people to read the posts in those categories? It's good to make your categories as descriptive as possible - it helps to guide readers to more of your posts. Why publish a post if nobody can find it?

5. New categories that you could start to write about.

Is there a new type of post you'd like to start writing on your blog? Or perhaps you've already started, but it's mixed in with another not so appropriate category? By all means add new categories if the need is there to do so. Keep an eye on which posts your readers respond well to, and see if you can write some more.

6. Overly specific categories that could become more generic.

Say you have a music blog with lots of reviews. You could split them up by artist name, but that would give you a lot of categories. You could split them up by genre... or perhaps by media type (album, track, video...). It really depends on your blog, but it's best not to have one category for every possible post type if you don't have the posts to go in all of them.

7. Old categories that aren't used anymore.

Have you stopped posting in any of your categories? Could they be archived? There's no need to keep the whole list in place if half of them aren't in use anymore.

8. Large categories that could be split.

When I started posting at Top Ten Blog Tips, I was a bit lazy with my categories. Everything ended up in a catch-all category, "Blogging Tips". As the blog grew, this quickly became unmanageable and I decided to separate the one big category into several smaller categories.

9. Whether some categories would be better off as tags.

Tags vs categories is a debate that's been discussed many times, although not on my blogs. In my view, both can be useful for navigation, but they can be confusing when the same post shows up in multiple areas. This is generally not so bad with tags, but I don't like it when categories do this.

I keep posts in one category, and assign multiple tags. Categories are then used for navigation, and tags are used to find related content. I'm sure you can think of other ways to use them - let me know in the comments.

10. Collapsible categories / hierarchy.

Sites with a complex structure may benefit from a hierarchy of categories instead of a flat list that runs from top to bottom. This allows interested readers to "drill down" into the deeper categories. Breadcrumbs are good for this type of site.

What do you think? How do you organise your categories? Are they in a mess?

Comments on 10 tips for tidying up your blog categories

2

Ben | August 27, 2009 | 190 comments

Hey Lightening - it's been a while! Re: your categories, just tackle them bit by bit. Sounds like you've already made a good start.