Author Blogs – Use Categories to Organize Your Posts

Many blog platforms have a default setting that places certain items (often called widgets) in the sidebar (the narrow column on the side). Two common default widgets are Archives and Categories.

The Archives widget displays a list the months of the year, with the most recent month listed first. Usually there’s a number next to each month indicating how many blog posts were made that month. Clicking on the month brings up the blog posts made during that month. I recommend deleting the Archive widget from your blog. It doesn’t serve a useful purpose, it takes up valuable space in the sidebar, and if you don’t post very often, the small number of posts listed for each month looks bad.

Having a list of blog post Categories in the sidebar is much more useful to visitors, especially for nonfiction author blogs. If someone has an interest in a particular topic, they can quickly and easily find more articles on that topic using the Categories list.

Each time you publish a blog post, you have the option of assigning a category to that post. The Categories widget displays a list of the categories you have used. Clicking on a category name takes the blog visitor to a page containing the articles in that category.

You may have the option of presenting your categories in cloud format. The cloud displays the category names in a cluster, rather than an alphabetical list, and the names of the most frequently used categories are shown in larger type. The cloud may be harder to read if you have very many categories, but it is more eye-catching than a list.

Another option is include category names in a navigation menu across the top of your blog. This works best if you have a small number of categories. You can use the menu in addition to or instead of the Categories widget in the sidebar.

On this blog, I deleted the Categories widget and added a link in my top navigation menu to a page called Marketing Tips. Most of the category links on that page lead to a page listing all the blog posts in that category, but several of them go to special resource pages that also list additional resources related to the category. For a sample resource page, see the Library & Educational Sales page. 

Another way to use the categories feature is to link to a category page at the end of some of your blog posts.  For example:  See more articles about Blogs & Websites.

See this post to learn how to avoid common mistakes in using categories on author blogs.

 

 

Comments

[Tony Eldridge]

This is a great post, one I have been meaning to take action on for a long time. One thing I regret is not building in a system to organize my blog topics and now I have a real job ahead of me with hundreds of posts. But, I know it can make my blog a lot more usable when I implement your advice.

My stop-gap option was to add the Google search bar at the top of my blog that specifically searches my post, but I know that I need to implement your advice to really have an effective way for visitors to use my archives.

Thanks for the post.

[Dana Lynn Smith]

Thanks for your note Tony. It's certainly easier to get the categories right early on!

I like your idea of using the Google search box as another way to help people find what they need on your blog. I found some info on the search box at http://www.google.com/sitesearch but it costs $100/year. Did you find a cheaper or free solution?

[Doreen Pendgracs]

I think Tony may be referring to the free "Search this blog" widget, Dana. I have that on my both my blogs, one of which is on Blogger; the other on WP. Great tool for someone who knows what they're looking for when they visit a blog.

But I really liked your idea of making better use of the "Categories" feature. Fortunately, when I started my travel blog on WP, I made good use of the "Category cloud" widget and I think people find it easy to see what's there at: http://diversionswithdoreen.wordpress.com.

But on my writer's blog on Blogger, I'd not realized there was a "category" widget. They call it "Labels" but it's the same thing as the category feature on WP. I've now added it to: http://doreenisthewizardofwords.blogspot.com. It took me quite awhile to go thru the 900 or so categories I'd inadvertently created, but I've now weeded the list down to a much more manageable (and searchable number.)

Unfortunately, it's at the very bottom of the screen, but at least it's there, and the search feature is at the top, so I think that gives readers enough tools to find what I have and what I've written about most often on the blog.

Thanks so much for this post. It was very helpful.

[Jay D]

Great blog! I'm new to blogging - so all of this advice is beneficial. I like to use the categories to reinforce the search term I'm trying to rank for. Keep it coming!

[Dana Lynn Smith]

Doreen, thanks for the tip.

[Anthony]

Great post Dana. Optimal use of categories is something all writers and authors should consider, but is usually an after thought as something that is related to posts but the understanding of the potential value is lost.

Optimizing categories for search terms is a great start and I've found with the 'tag cloud' tests and analytic's of my own and of clients websites prove it's barely looked at. Instead categories should be well labelled and organised 'Above the fold'(top visible half of your website) or even have a menu for them. This increases usability and visibility while decluttering sidebars.

Keep up the great work Dana, building awareness for writers and authors.

[Dana Lynn Smith]

Thanks for your feedback Anthony. I'm not crazy about the cloud tags myself.

[Tom Aker]

I have found the information in your blog post to be very useful and hope more are on the way. It's definitely one of the more easy to read ones that I've came across.

[Dana Lynn Smith]

Tom, thank you so much for your nice note. You can also find blog posts arranged by category on this page: http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/book_marketing_maven/learn-how-to-market-your-book-and-yourself.html
Dana

[Will]

Thank you very much for this article. I have a blog that has a fresh post every day of the week. It wasn't until you mentioned it that I realized that Archive and Category just take up space on the right column. I still need to revamp an inadequate Category system, but I have less than a hundred posts, so it is not impossible.
I got a tip from a blogger friend about creating a separate page with a table constructed setup with Categories with links, top 10 blogs, just something much more navigable.
Thanks again. Thank God for this site!

[Dana Lynn Smith]

Thanks so much Will - I'm glad you enjoyed the article and my website! Here's what I did on my own blog:

Before I deleted the category widget from my blog, I clicked on each of the categories and made a note of the URL for each category page (the page that lists all of the articles in a particular category.) Then I created a new web page called and listed the categories there. There's a link (called Marketing Tips) to this page in the top navigation menu of my blog. For a few key categories I created a special resource page to use instead of the standard category page. You can see my category page at http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/book_marketing_maven/learn-how-to-market-your-book-and-yourself.html