Category = A general class of ideas, terms, or things that mark divisions or coordinations within a conceptual scheme.
Categories by their very definition are meant to organize and compartmentalize larger concepts into smaller, logical, and searchable groups. They are meant to help your visitor find the information they seek in a quick and painless effort. If your categories aren’t well organized, then it defeats their true purpose.
Here again we need to visit the realm of planning before just diving in and creating numerous categories or making the huge mistake of creating categories “on the fly” as they are needed. You can add categories later on if you feel them necessary, but make sure you only do so if a tag won’t accomplish the same goal.
Too many blogsites have unwieldy category lists and can be more of a distraction than an asset. (example of Category Madness: The Simple Dollar).
When you just absolutely must use a large category list, think about turning it into a directory instead. (example of Category Directory: Ezine Articles).
Always keep SEO in mind when naming your categories. Make sure that you utilize the power of keywords as part of the names. Also make sure that your category names are logical and self-explanatory. If a visitor has to click on the category just to figure out what it’s about, then it hasn’t been named very well.
Once you’ve had your blogsite going for a while and posted content to it, here’s a nice list from Lorelle on WordPress about the process for refining your category choices:
- Sifting through content for topic collections
- Checking search engine result terms in blog statistics
- Checking tag lists for common threads
- Which subjects are generating the most comments and trackbacks?
- Narrowing the results down to core summary collections of post topics
- Ensuring an adequate number of posts, and future posts, for that category
- Finding a name for each group that works both as a category and a tag, if possible
- Adding categories to all the posts
- Re-evaluating categories as you go
- Revisiting categories in 3-6 months
