Organising Blog categories for SEO and usability.

[IoanSaid]

Hello!

I'm a professional photographer and have used categories in an old blog to separate my work. (weddings, portraits, etc.)

I'm starting an new blog and everything was imported, except categories so as i started rewriting them, I noticed the 'personalised URL.

So I was thinking of re-writing my categories based on types of jobs and location.

For example:

*North Wales

-wedding photography

-portrait photography

-commercial photography

*Cheshire

-wedding photography

-portrait photography

-commercial photography

and so on...

Or do you think it's best to just have shoot style categories?

What do you guys think?

Thanks!

[RyanKent]

Does your blog support tags?

If your site is focused on photography you may want to consider category names such as "weddings", "portraits", "commercial", etc. You can use tags for locations such as "Cheshire", "North Wales", etc.

From a user's perspective, if I visited your site and wanted to view wedding photos, I would hope to find a single area of your site which offered your complete selection. I don't think the location of the wedding has much relevancy to the pictures.

[IoanSaid]

The reason for the "relevancy" for me is more to do with search engines. For example, I have clients in London looking out for photographers in North Wales where they would like to get married.

When I put subcategories, I noticed the category (weddings) and sub-category (north wales) were both mentioned in the custom URL, which I thought made it better in terms of getting to the website rather than when client look at things within the site itself.

[mozalbin]

I agree with Ryan when it comes to using tags instead of categorys. About your thoughts about subcateorys, I still think the most useful and cosmetic way is to use tags instead of subcategorys. You can see the categorys as the "big headline" and the tags as guidelines below the category.

Good luck with your blog

[IoanSaid]

Right.

So right now my categories are:

Commercial

• PR Photography
• Event Photography
• Interior Photography

Portrait Photography

• Boudoir Phootgraphy
• Family Portraits
• Newborn Photography

Etc... Carry on or.....?

[RyanKent]

I understand and agree with your thought process Ioan, but not the end result.

There is a need to balance usability with SEO. Also consider CTR. Ideally everything can come together naturally.

I do recommend optimizing your URLs but keep in mind there are 200+ factors used to determine a page's ranking. I think you are over-optimizing in this regard.

You can build relevancy by using other factors such as header tags, content, backlinks from local sites, etc.

Perhaps others will share a different view point.

[IoanSaid]

Ok.

What do you think of my current categories then?

| Ioan Said | less than 1 hour ago | Edit |
| at Celynnen Photography |

Right.

So right now my categories are:

Commercial

• PR Photography
• Event Photography
• Interior Photography

Portrait Photography

• Boudoir Phootgraphy
• Family Portraits
• Newborn Photography

Etc... Carry on or.....?

Thanks!

[AnthonyMangia]

I think the new way you have the categories set up is the right way.  If you want to really focus on a specific locale, consider creating separate landing pages for each of these locations.  The landing pages can feature a map and some images of the area, links to your blog posts featuring weddings you shot in that area, and general information about weddings in that area: popular halls and venues, etc.

If you're going to do this, it's important that each page have GOOD, UNIQUE content about that specific location.  Otherwise, you'll create way more problems than you solve.

[RyanKent]

I don't care for that category organization myself. It seems a bit spammy. That doesn't mean that it can't work but it really depends on how you present it.

What I would not like to see is www.greatphotography.com/portrait-photography/newborn-photography/ as a URL. I am already on a photography site. It's not helpful to twice more add photography to the category names.

Make your titles as useful and user-friendly as possible. I know this answer is a bit vague but only so much help can be offered with a general question in a Q&A format. There are many factors such as how much content you can have to offer, how much traffic is there for the chosen category names, how competitive is that traffic, etc.

[IoanSaid]

OK...so what about:

Portrait Photography

• Boudoir
• Family Portraits
• Newborns

Better?

[KeriMorgret]

Here is how Graywolf (Michael Gray) sets up his categories and tags, it may also provide some insight. http://www.wolf-howl.com/blogs/how-to-use-tagging/