Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How many categories should you have within a blog / Wordpress Site for SEO?
-
Hi Guys
I am just wondering whether or not for SEO purposes it is better to have a small number of categories for your blog posts to fit into as opposed to numerous ones. The reason I ask is that I have one site which is fairly new to the search engines - 8 months old which has 7 general categories within the blog for instance "rail contractors", "railway construction" "airport construction" etc I have another site which is 10 years old which has built up 25 different types of categories for instance brand design, brand development, brand management (i guess you could put all these under 1 category "branding"? We've been writing lots of press for both sites... yet the younger site is getting more coverage on Google page 1. Would this be because the blogs / press are more concentrated under a specific category as opposed to being spread thinly throughout the site? Any help would be appreciated.
Debs
-
The number of categories on your blog can grow over time if you write about a diversity of topics. To justify a category you should have a few existing posts in that category or anticipate generating a few posts within a reasonable amount of time.
Extremely active blogs can support, and probably should have, a large diversity of categories simply to organize the content better and gain keyword reach in the search engines.
Another factor is the power of your site. If you have a new site without a lot of power then busting out 100 categories could be like dead weight on your entire site.
I have a blog that over the past several years has received 25 to 60 posts per week. It has over 150 categories and each post goes into at least two categories (one for geographic location and one for topic area). Most of the blog's search engine traffic flows in through category pages because they rank well for high traffic terms.
-
The number of categories you have on your WordPress blog should accurately reflect the content you write about. If you have a legitimate need for 50 categories, then by all means, 50 categories it is. If your content all falls under 5 categories, then that is all you should need.
Essentially, let your content dictate how many categories your blog has. Remember to look out for duplicate content, or pages with little to no content. It's possible that you have a single blog post that is tagged to two categories - and those categories have no other posts attributed to them. The category pages will then show short excerpts of the content (little to no content), and be essentially identical because the same post is tied to them (duplicate content).
-
Define the goal for your blog, categorize as appropriate for keywords and the content you will need to create to achieve your goal and then, create your blog posts to fit within your categories.
As far as which is getting more traffic and why, is the traffic you're looking at going to category pages or individual blog posts? More "coverage on Google page 1" doesn't mean anything if it's not earning traffic to the site. Are the blog posts bringing in search traffic? If they are and that traffic is going to the individual posts, then it may be that the posts are better optimizer or the topics you're writing about on the new blog are better chosen. If you're seeing traffic going to the category pages for category keywords on one site but not the other, maybe your keyword research for the category pages wasn't done well enough, maybe you just have to give it more time, or maybe you have to take a look at your internal and external links to see why one site is out performing the other.
-
You should have as many as you need. Do not create categories if there are no articles you can place within them. But do not group unrelated articles under the same category. Check into some keyword research to see if your broader categories get search volume and go from there.
For the example you gave, I would say to keep them all under a "branding" category and expand into those other keywords through articles.
If you have a more broad category it may get linked to more since it has more articles people may want. Therefore increasing its PA and ranks
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Content Writing - it should be for the main corporate site, blog or for social media?
Hi There, I have my main site : example.com and a related blog https://blog.example.com/ My management does not believe frequent content posting on the example.com My Queries 1- Will it help boost ranking of **example.com **if we share frequent content on our blog https://blog.example.com/? How much impact it has? 2- Every body says content is the king, Ok fine, but when you are not allowed to share it on the main corporate site, then where to share it? Blog and social media sites? please help. 3- We are in a business where clients do not bother to go on sites and read, so in this scenario is it correct to say that you hav to create the content for search engine consumption even when your clients dont need it/or have not in the habit of reading it? Hope somebody will enligten me caught in catch 22. Regards Tanveer
Content Development | | Sequelmed1 -
Blog.xyz.com
I have a site that is running its blog on www.blog.xyz.com and I am looking for ways to increase Google traffic. Would it be better to running the blog on something like: www.xyz.com/blog instead?
Content Development | | kevgrand0 -
Is it okay to delete old blog posts?
Hi All, I'm doing some SEO work on an entertainment (movies/tv/gaming) blog that started in 2011. Their recent articles have gained some popularity due to improved content and marketing, but there is some old stuff from the early days that was poorly written and gets virtually no traffic. These are mostly old news pieces. Out of approximately 10,000 articles, about 1,000 are receiving the lions share of the traffic. I feel like their good content is getting bogged down in a sea of crap. Would there be any harm in deleting some of those old posts? Is there a best practice for culling content? Thanks!
Content Development | | 74andsunny0 -
Wordpress Blog Pages, Duplicate Title Tag
Anyone have any experience in fixing the duplicate Title tag on a Wordpress blog multiple pages Basically the title tag remains the same on the pages /Blog/ /Blog/Page/2/ /Blog/Page/3/ My good friend Yoast Plugin doesn't seem to of resolved this (Unless i have missed something?) I don't really see this to be effecting anything and wouldn't of through it would either, but it would be nice to not see the notification within Moz site crawls and campaigns etc, its more of a cosmetic problem Any solutions ? Thanks James
Content Development | | Antony_Towle0 -
How do I properly sitemap a site with static pages + Wordpress in it's own directory?
I apologize for the awkward wording in the headline. No to the issue, I have a site with static pages that are created as follows: url.com, url.com/page1, url.com/page2, etc. I then have WordPress install at url.com/blog. What is the proper method for creating a comprehensive sitemap for my entire domain. I like the sitemap feature provided by Yoast SEO plugin but I assume it will only index the wordpress directory (url.com/blog). Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Content Development | | Qcmny0 -
Moving a html site into Wordpress
I'm getting ready to move a site into Wordpress. The current or old site is built with static html pages. My question is, how should I handle Google with these old pages. Should I 301 redirect from each old page to the new? Or is there a better way to handle it?
Content Development | | brandco0 -
Spell Check Bot / Crawler
Hi guys, Does anyone know of a script / app / bot / browser plugin that will crawl an entire website, examine the content, and report on any spelling (or grammar) mistakes? Many thanks. C.
Content Development | | cmoylan0 -
Blog for SEO: embedded in the site or separate
Hello, For both ecommerce and sites that sell services, I've seen a lot of people recommending a blog for SEO. Should this blog be inside or separate from the main website for the most results? I can see how adding one to a site would create more unique content and an opportunity for link bait, but perhaps there is a reason to have a blog separate from the main site Thank you.
Content Development | | BobGW1