OK, I may be ‘nuts', categorically crazy even.
I spent the better part of a day revising and adding categories to the NPT blog, assigning about one-third of almost 600 posts into 8 ‘parent' categories and 27 ‘child' categories.
I placed a “Site Map” above the category list, which displays only the parent categories.
Why am I being so picky about a category list?
Well, here are 6 primary reasons you too might want to go ‘categorically crazy'.
- Logical organization of site content helps visitors (who have little patience and short attention spans) find what they want faster.
- When visitors find what they want faster, they stay on your site longer (increased ‘stickiness') and will visit again.
- Longer visits increases exposure to products, resulting in higher conversion to sales.
- Sites that are ‘sticky' gethigher search engine rankings and thus still MORE visitors and MORE sales.
- WordPress will assign a catgory ‘slug' (or you can choose your own) that displays in the address bar. For example, my “How to Get Traffic” URL is “website-traffic/” and each sub-category also includes that ‘slug'. Those keywords are great search engine fodder, especially when the post content relates appropriately to the category.
- Increasing the number of categories also increases the number of feeds. Having more narrow niche-specific feeds may increase the number of feed subscribers, which then encourages repeat site visits and therefore even more sales.
Gee… give your visitors what they want, and they'll respond in kind.
Crazy, eh? 🙂
Here are a few suggestions to help you go categorically crazy yourself…
- To save time and effort, write a list of all your possible site categories on paper first.
- Create a logical hierarchical structure, ie. top-level or ‘parent' categories and sub- or ‘child' categories.
- Limit the number of categories, preferably so that they all appear ‘above the fold'.
- Create a site/blog map that displays the entire category list, along with descriptions. (One option is to use the Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress).
OH, and one last suggestion.
Categorize your blog BEFORE you have almost 600 posts – or you may end up ‘certifiably' crazy. 🙂
Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!
Cheers,
