How to Use Categories on Your Blog
SHOW NOTES: Episode 78
Welcome back to the Ultimate Blog Podcast! It’s Jennifer here today and I am going to share with you how to set up categories correctly on your self-hosted WordPress site to have a seamless user experience. Whether you are a new blogger or someone who has been blogging for a while, setting up categories correctly and occasionally reviewing them is an important part of making sure your site is organized and easy to navigate for your viewers.
On today’s episode, I talk about how categories are topics that make it easy to organize and navigate your site and how they create a hierarchy for the content that you have so that search engines like Google can crawl your site and understand it more easily. We want to make sure that your website is set up in an organized way so that your readers can understand what you offer, what different types of topics you write about, and what content you have under those topics. You want to take a look at how the menu is displayed and what the homepage looks like because those are the places where users will typically see your categories. I talk about how you can create new categories in your WordPress dashboard, what a slug is and how it is created, and how to create main categories and subcategories under them.
I also answer some common questions about categories which include:
- The difference between tags and categories
- How many categories you need
- How categories can be displayed
- Naming your categories
Your blog and your content is going to evolve and change over time. Take some time to review your different categories and put yourself in the shoes of your reader coming to your site. Look at it from their perspective and just make sure your site is really simple and clear for them. As your blog grows, you may find that you need to shift the organization of your site to better serve your reader.
We want to hear how this episode helped you! Let’s continue the conversation over on Instagram (@sparkmediaconcepts). We’d love to hear from you!
KEY TAKEAWAYS AND TIMESTAMPS:
- 00:00:51 — Blog Categories
- 00:13:45 — Setting Up Categories for Your Blog
IN THIS EPISODE, WE COVERED:
- Setting up categories on your WordPress site
LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Join our email list to get notified of our latest podcast episodes, brand new blog posts and exciting news when it happens!
- Join the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp!
- Check out the Blog Depot!
- Check out last week’s episode here!
- Connect with us on Instagram at: @sparkmediaconcepts
MORE ABOUT THE ULTIMATE BLOG PODCAST:
Welcome to The Ultimate Blog Podcast! This podcast is for you if you’ve ever wanted to learn blogging basics so that you can start your own blog or if you have been a blogger for years but are struggling to grow or need inspiration and community.
Every Tuesday we will be sharing a new episode where we will cover topics from the basics of starting a blog, monetizing and growing your site, to finding the inspiration you need to keep going. You will also find guest interviews with experts on different blogging topics as well as interviews with bloggers who’ve been in your shoes.
Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper are bloggers themselves who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success and your own story.
We’d love to connect with you on our other platforms so please visit us at www.sparkmediaconcepts.com or follow us on Instagram at @sparkmediaconcepts
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