You have just wrote your first blog post, proof read it, added a few pictures, added the usual seo features & officially clicked the post button. Right now, the door to the world is starting to open just that little bit more, your voice is being heard among the mass of confusing noise. You realize you enjoy this blogging thing and write another post…and another…and another..before you know it you have over 100 blog posts on your site, 100 pieces of individual information for google to feed its little robots on.
Now where did I put that book?
Imagine a library, full of millions of books, this is the metaphorical picture of a website. Now imagine you walk into that library and you are after a very specific book, one book amongst a million. How would you expect to be able to find it? A category perhaps? That would certainly narrow your search down wouldn’t it!?
[image]
http://www.jawilsondesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/categories.jpg
[/image]
This is the basic purpose of using categories in WordPress. It may seem pretty obvious but when you first start using your blog categorization of your posts doesn’t really seem to matter that much, its more important to get your information out to the world but after a while you will realize you really should have spent some time creating categories.
Why is it so important?
I have already mentioned that if you are specifically looking for an old article you remember writing categories make it automatically easier for you to find. For example if you are looking for a blog post about the greatest football team in the world then a category called “Liverpool Football Club” would be an excellent place to store that post under.
User Experience
But really, wordpress categories aren’t for the creator, it is more beneficial to the reader. The best use of the internet isn’t for self its for the betterment of all. Yes of course it is really useful to store your knowledge that you gain somewhere and then be able to retrieve it at a later date when need be, but those who use the internet and blog for the right reasons want to share what they know in order to be able to help others.
A good user experience will have excellent categorization so it is easy to quickly find what they are looking for.
Related posts
Another great way to ensure navigating around your blog is easy is to add a related posts plugin of which I can suggest quite a few. What this will do is give a few options at the end of each post that will then give a very similair post to what has just been read. A very useful tool don’t you think.
My top tip
Before starting your blog sit down and think what is it you want to write about? Maybe you won’t have all the categories right away..that is fine, just make sure to create them as a new topic is generated. If it is partly related to a topic then make sure your new category is assigned what is called a parent category . All in all, you are wanting your visitors to benefit from the experience you can provide them so make it as an easy a ride as possible.
Any questions please don’t hesitate to complete the comment box below and best of luck in your category creating!