How Categories Help Your Blog's Readers
What are Blog Categories?
Since successful blogs are updated frequently, posts get buried quickly and can be hard for readers to find. Older posts are usually archived by month, but you can help your readers find older posts by creating useful categories to file them in. Categories are typically listed in a blog's sidebar where readers can search for past posts that interest them.
Creating Blog Categories
In order for your blog's categories to be helpful to your readers, they need to be fairly intuitive, meaning it's obvious what kinds of posts are included in each category. As you create your categories, think like your readers would. It's also important to strike a balance between creating categories that are too broad and therefore don't help readers narrow their searches and those that are too specific and offer so many choices that readers are confused.
Category Tip
As you create your blog's categories, keep search engine optimization in mind. Search engines typically find your blog based on keywords used on each page. Using some of your blog's most popular keywords in your category titles can help boost your search engine results. Just be careful not to overuse keywords on your blog or in your categories because Google and other search engines might consider that overuse to be keyword stuffing, which is a form of spam. If you're caught doing this, your blog could be left out of Google and other search engine searches entirely, which will negatively impact the amount of traffic your blog receives.
