Visitors love blog categories. As a user I love to go through a blogger’s archives by blog category to see what else that person has written on the same subject. In fact, this is the top way I go through a blog’s archives, especially when I am not interested in some of the other categories the blogger writes about. Here is how to make sure you are making the most of your blog categories, both for organization as well as for usability.

Are your categories too generic?
Do you blog a lot about search engines? I might read something fantastic about Google AdWords and want to read what else you have posted about it. But when I hit the Google category and see 327 other Google posts on everything from Docs to GMail to iGoogle, that category has become pretty well useless to visitors. So make sure your categories aren’t to generic and large for what you are writing about.

Are your categories too narrow?
Likewise, you don’t want to make sure you don’t have too many blog categories that are just too narrow that they all will only have one or two blog posts each. In these cases, going up a level or two will make your blog that much more useful. Don’t forget, you can always narrow it down later, if one particular area of a category warrants being split up.

Are you remembering to use your categories?
The new Wordpress 2.5 has resulted in many bloggers (including yours truly!) forgetting to tag entries with anything at all! So check your “Uncategorized” category and make sure none of your posts are languishing in that category instead of being categorized properly. Doing it long after a blog post has been published is better than not doing it at all.

Are you checking off too many categories?
Sometimes blog posts warrant having three or four categories checked off. But make sure you aren’t making a connection when there really isn’t one there. Just because you mention Google offhand doesn’t mean it warrants going into the Google category. So look at it from the perspective of a visitor going to the Google category. Does the post fit in there with other Google posts, or will the visitor be left wondering why on earth it ended up where it did?

Are you not placing posts in all relevant categories?
That said, there are definite reasons why you will have a single blog post in multiple categories. So don’t feel you have to only use one blog category. If you are comparing Google and Yahoo side-by-side, it wouldn’t make sense to only have it in the Google or Yahoo category. You can chose as many as you need to for each blog post, so long as it still fits within the realm of what you have chosen.

Don’t assume search will do it all
So why don’t people just search instead of using categories? Sometimes search can either be too specific or too broad. And sometimes I just want to read down a category, without really knowing what I am looking for, I am just more interested in what the blogger is writing because it is interesting to me. So while search is an important tool for your blog to have, don’t let it take the place of categories.

Don’t assume tags will do it all
Tags are becoming much more popular too, but they can also be too broad in the sense that a blogger might tag a post with 18 tags, yet only place it in one or two categories. So it is harder to drill down with tags the same way you can with categories, when looking at it from the perspective of a new visitor looking to find other interesting blog posts you have written.

Categories can be a very strong tool for bloggers to use, as long as they are being used properly. And a good category structure can lead to increased page views as your visitors easily look to see what else you have written along the same lines. So take the time to not just check your categories you are using to see if you can make any tweaks, but to also make sure you are making the most of them when you create new blog entries.