Why Categories are Important for Your Blog

It’s important to organize your website into categories, not only because it can make your site look neater or more organized, but also because it can optimize your site for traffic and help it rank well for any of its keywords or subject themes.

Imagine a blog or site that has categories or what I’d call “main topics; then imagine and compare with another that doesn’t! What you’d notice is a significant difference in terms of how easy or difficult it is to navigate around it or locate information on it; the presence of categories makes both easier and the absence makes both less easy—or even harder.

Generally speaking, the presence of categories on your blog or site will make it easier for visitors or readers to navigate around it and locate their desired information, especially information tied to certain main topics. Categories are like signposts that can help site visitors find what they’re looking for.

Until you start using categories on your website, you might not realize the latent superpower they possess. It was until I started using categories in 2019 that I realized how effective they are in organizing my site’s overall content in a coherent manner, up to this very day.

Figure 1: My site’s categories (Motivation & Self-help, Environment, Bitcoin & Cryptocurrencies, Technology & Futuristic Science, Technical Drawing & Engineering Graphics, Internet & Business, Real Estate)

The categories or main topics on my site help my visitors or readers from Google and other search engines find other kinds of related information on my site—if it’s there; my site’s past Google Search Console performance reports and current site statistics have proven how effective the use of categories and keywords have been in terms of attracting more traffic, especially to my site’s “Technical Drawing & Engineering Graphics” posts/articles.

Figure 2: My site’s 2023 search engine (Google, Bing, etc.) and WordPress.com Reader statistics, with technical & engineering drawing posts attracting readers the most

Irrespective of the type of content (post) you publish on your blog or site, you can categorize any or almost any type of content. Generally, you can create categories for posts, pages, files, videos, and FAQs, and you can use categories to display related information together in different places on your website so that anywhere visitors or readers land on your site, they’ll still be able to move from there (a category) and find the information they desire.

Think of categories like the “main topics” or “table of contents” of your blog. Categories are like major or high-level topics that can make it possible for visitors to have a broader understanding of your blog and locate the content of their interest. Eventually, categories can help to structure your site and organize individual and related posts and sub-topics under different categories or main topics.

For example, imagine you run a history blog: you can write about great world leaders, scientists, heroes, and villains; you write can also write reviews on history books and share photographs. These main topics (world leaders, scientists, heroes, villains, reviews on history books, and photographs) are your blog categories—which are the main topics as well! But you can also create a handful of sub-topics under each category or main topic in such a way that if I am visiting your site, it’ll be easy for me to locate a desired category and quickly go through the information your site has to offer. Regardless of the type of blog you run, you can place any of your posts or content under one or even more than one category.

The following are important reasons why you should use—or consider using—categories on your blog:

1. They create better usability by organizing your site in a logical manner for visitors and readers

Blog categories help to structure groups of content in such a way that visitors can easily and quickly locate the posts or content they desire. But you must also ensure that your site or site design is visually appealing; this is incredibly important for keeping or converting visitors to customers. It might be important to note that 90% of people have left a website because of poor site design.

2. They improve site SEO (search engine optimization) which in turn boosts traffic

Categories can give you added advantage in the SEO game. For instance, if you create a new category and continue to publish and add new posts and link relevant posts to it, you’ll increasingly optimize your site and search engines will recognize the optimization and up your site’s ranking, thereby making it easier for more people and traffic to get your site.

3. They make it easier to implement or improve your personal content strategy

It’s not easy to create a writing or editorial calendar; however, with the presence of categories, it becomes easier or even simple, as has been the case with me. Well-defined blog categories define the main topics you need to write about and fill up content with. The presence of categories indicates the main topics you may need to provide more content for, instead of just stacking up one category or main topic with every content you write.

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