Categories are great. They’re there to help us put our blog in order, allows readers to browse the posts they want to see with one click, and they give search engines an opportunity to help us out (more on that later). You would think there isn’t much bloggers can do to fail at the task of creating categories and using categories, but you’ll be very suprised at how wrong you are.

The Don’t’s of Categories:

1. Make a new category for every new little thing. It is not only annoying, but very distractive to the reader. Every ‘new little thing’ means that you cannot get focused on one topic and keep scraping the surface of different niche’s in order to try and make your blog successful. This is a big NO! Readers don’t want to read the things they already know, they want unique reads from your experience, life, work, etc where you give them content from your own prospects rather than ‘generic’ topics that do not have rich content (which is what in essence you’re doing if you have a thousand categories).
2. Putting one post into a dozen categories. Some time ago I read Darren Rowse’s post on how one post should only be matched up with one category. His analogy was if you think about categories as different drawers in a filing cabinet and think of posts as papers, then you should only have one post per category because you don’t tear papers apart and drop them into different drawers. I agree with that analogy to a degree, but I think posting posts into several categories, such as one or two is perfectly fine because, for example, I have the post Choosing an Effective Domain Name for your Site or Blog categorized under Blogging, Domains, and Search Engine Optimization because in essence, this is what this post is about and leaving out Search Engine Optimization or Blogging makes the post incomplete.
3. Have too many categories. Having too many categories is also not good which brings up the question, how much is too much? If you take a look at my categories, I have 21 categories which, looking back at it now, seems just a bit too much for me. I made these categories when I first designed the blog thinking I would be posting in each of these areas, but now I think I’ll be purging a few of them. Back to the question, how much is too much, it all depends on the niche you’re in. If you’re blogging about yourself, you might just have three or four categories. If you’re blogging about marketing, you will probably have more. There is no concrete answer to how much is too much, but don’t add categories as soon as you start blogging (like I did). Instead, keep posting your posts and if you feel you need a new category for a post, add it. You’ll come to a point where you’re using the same categories over and over and that is your balancing point where you should stop adding new categories.
4. Having too few categories. The opposite of too many is too few. Some blogs that I’ve seen only have one or two categories. This may work for them if they’re blogging about “My Life” or something along those lines. However, if you’re seriously planning to blog in order to generate some revenue, it would be a good idea to have several unique categories to blog in. The “too few categories” symptom, as I see it, leads bloggers to blog about either a) one specific thing and block out the rest of the world, b) they blog about everything in one category making it one big mess, or c) they don’t know much about categories.
5. Keep it Short. Don’t make a category name an entire sentence! Limit category names to a couple words maximum. Categories need to be eye-catching or else readers will not even notice them. Making categories very long is the same as putting white text on white paper. What good does that do, right?

The Do’s of Categories

1. Descriptive category names. This is not only good for the readers, but also for optimization because search engines will pick up on those keywords and will lead on higher rankings. By this I mean instead of S.E.O, put Search Engine Optimization or something of that nature. Keep in mind point #5 of my Don’t’s list thogh.
2. Create appealing categories. What disturbs me the most is bloggers that don’t take any notice in how they write. They will try so hard to make their categories stand out by doing things like ‘bl0GGing’ or bloggING’. It is much more appealing to simply stay with ‘Blogging’ or ‘blogging’ and makes you look professional.
3. List Categories in an order. Most themes will do this for you and so will wordpress by default, but it is still a good idea if, for example you’re making a page about your categories, to order you categories in some appropriate fashion whether it is alphabetical, by category length, from Z-A, etc. But having categories in an unorganized random way is also called chaos.
4. Use your ‘Miscellaneous’ or ‘Other’ category wisely. In my opinion, this category is one that won’t be clicked on because it basically tells the reader that this category is just a bunch of random posts. So if you’re going to make a post that you only want to be noticed when it’s on the front page such as a blog update, a notice, or something else to that degree, drop it into your ‘Other’ category. I guarantee you that nobody will ever notice those posts once they’re off the front page. This also means, if you have a meaningful post, don’t EVER put it into this category.

That’s all about categories for now. You’ll notice there’s more constraints here and what not to do rather than what to do which means that you’re free to make your own unique category list and still have it look appealing and unique and at the same time useful.

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