Making More of Blog Categories

[onlinemediadirect]

What are peoples opinions on blog categories and their importance. On many blog I setup a general news category and on others I have gone to town adding detailed categories.

Is there a major benefit in doing this ?

[EGOL]

My blog gets more traffic through category pages than through all other sources combined.  There are also lots of links hitting those category pages and lots of people subscribe to their RSS feeds.

It's all about which keywords you can optimize them for.  If I had a widgets blog I would have lots of categories by color, what they are made of, and more.

[onlinemediadirect]

could I ask for some feedback on this blog I am currently in the process of setting up -

http://www.supplementsnews.co.uk

If this was your project what would be your next move....

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Garry

The advise I have heard, and follow, is to keep categories more general, and to only have a handful - say 5-10 categories.

But you want to have lots of tags. Tags can be very specific and unique to each individual post.  You can have several tags for one post.  I have a lot of pages that get picked up by tag pages, which tend to also make great long-tail URLs.

So let me give an example.  Website about cars.  Categories might just be: Sports Cars, SUVs, Pick Up Trucks, Station Wagons.  Tags however would be very specific: 2 door honda, fastest sports cars, driving and safety - etc etc etc.

And I've also heard to be sure not to have a tag with the same name as a category.

I'm sure you'll see lots of examples that go against this format, but it seems pretty intuitive and has worked for me thus far.

-Dan

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Garry

At quick glance - I would come up with your 5 or so categories, get them on the top navigation bar. Make sure you have a category for every possible post you might do in the future.  The ones you have down on the right sidebar look like a good start.

Then utilize your tags as a way to add real specific words and phrases to each post.  These can be generated as you go, you can have dozens or hundreds of tags over time, and several on just one post.  Then put a tag cloud maybe in the footer.

So you'll have maybe 5 broad categories that always stay the same and sit on the top navigation, and you'll have lots of tags over time that are more specific.

-Dan

[EGOL]

I think that if you have a blog with one post a week or one a month then a very small number of categories makes a lot of sense.

However, if the blog is getting hundreds of posts per month and many posts hitting two categories then it could support a lot of healthy categories.

Category pages can attract a lot of traffic if they are in the right niche and optimized well.

[evolvingSEO]

True, I am hearing you there

Just curious, what's your take on tags in that situation of a large site with hundreds of posts per month?

[EGOL]

I have an active blog getting hundreds of posts per month with most posts going into two categories (one by topic and one by geography).  It has nearly 200 categories.  We don't use tags.  What we have is wild enough - but those categories pull in an awful lot of traffic and on average get a couple of posts each per week.