Think Quality AND Quantity for this Blog Item

A blog post category…sounds rather insignificant doesn’t it?

But in fact, it’s very important to your blog. The quality AND quantity of blog post categories are key items to consider. And here’s why…

Blog categories are a method of grouping your posts into topics that you write about and are a great support for your website SEO.

Do you blog on your website? If so, you likely use a WordPress blogging platform if you do.

When you create a WP blog post, you need to assign it to a primary or main category – (usually the first one that you pick if you don’t have a plugin that let’s you choose one after you begin writing it.) The primary category should be the best one that represents your topic. It will belong to that main category group (and subcategories that you pick), so choose wisely.

The categories you use, can also help your website get noticed by the search engines as part of your SEO. And that’s because the categories should be a part of the url or link to the blog post. If your blog’s url or link settings are not set up for this, get it changed so it too can be optimized for your blog post’s SEO.

When you write a blog post, you only need to choose a total of 3 to 5 categories for your blog post to belong to, including subcategories. You don’t need a lot of them for your blog post to be successfully indexed by the search engines.

If you don’t have a category that fits your topic, you can create one while you’re adding the post to your website. However, I caution you NOT to do this every time you create a new blog post. Sometimes people get caught up in it and then start making new categories each time they blog and then they end up with way too many – sometimes dozens. You don’t need to do this!

Instead, your blog post categories should be general topics that will house many of the articles that you will write about, plus some subcategories or additional ones that are more specific. The category label should also have your keywords in them too!

For example: I am an online marketing specialist so one of my main categories is email marketing. And some of my subcategories, that are more specific are lead magnets, growing mailing lists, creating marketing images etc.

For a private practice dietitian or nutrition professional some of your main blog categories would be about what some general health and nutrition topics and also some that you specialize in.

For example: if you are a private practice dietitian who specializes in celiac disease then you might use celiac disease, managing celiac disease or gluten-free food as a main blog category and then have more specific categories like gluten-free product review, ingredients to avoid, cooking for celiac kids, gluten-free ingredients, reading nutrition labels etc.

So, the trick is to remember to use a total of 3 to 5 relevant main and subcategories and NOT to create or use an over-abundance of them. Some folks use a total of 5 to 10 categories, which can be too many.