Bloggin Ads

A blog could be about anything a blogger wishes it to be. Since the blogosphere is so big, there are many different topics you could choose from without having to worry much about if you’re doing it wrong or not. The only thing I could think of is that if you wish to grow your blog quick or make huge money, there are only a few topics that could focus on that. Apart from that, I could most definitely say that if you wish to start blogging, the topics are countless for you to choose from.

Bloggers think that after choosing the correct topic to use on a blog, they would not have to think much more of topics again, but they’re wrong.  One simple topic like “blogging” itself could split into many of their own little topics known as categories.  As a blogger, just blogging about your topic without splitting it within some smaller sub-topics would cause problems for your readers.

I have noticed that categories allow viewers and readers to easily browse through the blog without hesitation. Lets just say that you’re going through the blogosphere for money making blogs and you find one that exactly meets your needs.  As soon as you enter the blog, you decide that you need to find specific money making topics, but you realize that there aren’t any categories in the sidebar or anywhere on the blog to find what you need.  Instead you would need to browse through the blog’s archive just to find the correct post that you have been seeking for.

Once again, I’m going to link to Garry’s post that explains how many categories should be on a blog.  Typically, categories for a blog are usually listed on a blog’s sidebar because it’s the easiest place for viewers and readers to find the correct thing.  It’s also good to place the categories at the mid section of your blog because that’s where most scrollers usually end up at .

The way you should specify categories on your blog could be a very difficult task.  You would not really know how many categories or what categories you would actually need until you start writing posts.  As your ideas come, you should be able to know what your mind thinks about.

Narrow

A narrow category list is basically little to nothing.  This usually consists of just 3-4 categories.  Narrowing things down could be good and bad.  The good thing is that your posts would not be scattered everywhere and you would not need to worry much about what category you post needs to be under.  The bad thing about it is that if a reader or viewer of yours would like to go into a more specific topic, it would be a bit more difficult to find the necessary information.

Expanded

As you could see with my sidebar, I have quite a few different categories.  The reason for this is because my blog topic is on blogging, which is pretty broad if you think about it.  Unless you’re writing purely on how to blog, you wouldn’t need as many categories as I’m using.  What I have is an example of an expanded type of category list.  I have almost all of the main ideas covered and it’s quite easy for my viewers and readers to go through the list to find a post in the correct section.

For Example: If someone wanted to learn about blogging and how to do it correctly, he/she would go to my Education & Training section, which is where he/she would find all my posts that teaches something.

It really depends on how your blog is and what your topic is to decide whether you should have a narrowed down or expanded category list.  Garry mentions there should be about 5-7 different categories, which is really a reasonable amount.  I used to have about 20, which really expanded all my posts.  It became a difficult task to find out where each of my posts should be under.

I believe that all bloggers should use categories on a blog because it really does provide an easy way for your viewers and readers to find things.  The easier it is for people to access your blog, the more daily traffic you would receive.  I have also heard that another great thing about having categories is that it adds on to your blog’s SEO, which means that search engines could easily access and index more of your pages.

Do you have categories on your blog?