How did you plan the categories or tags you’d use on your blog?  You DID make a plan, right?

Based on looking at a lot of real estate blogs, I can tell that if you didn’t make a plan, you’re not alone!  

By the way, for the purpose of this post, I’m going to call the descriptors you use to identify your posts “categories”.  Some blogging platforms have just categories, some have just tags, and some (like this blog) have both.   But, I’m going to get very fatigued typing both terms throughout this post.  So, keep in mind that I’ll use the term “categories” as a catchall phrase.

If you cruise around the Internet a bit, you’ll find all kinds of things going on with categories.

1.  Some Blogs Have No Categories – This is a bad idea, for a few reasons.  First, categories help your readers find related information.  If someone wants to see what you’ve written on a specific topic, categories get them there quickly.

On this blog, for example, the key categories are shown as menu items under the header image.  Take a look.  If you click on any of those menu buttons, you’ll be taken to a list of all the posts that were categorized under that topic.

The second reason you need to use categories is for the search engines.  Look at the bottom of this post.  You’ll see two links that are actually category links: Real Estate Marketing Tips and SEO.  So, every post on this blog links back to a lot of other posts on the same topic.  That internal linking is a good thing for the search engines.

The third reason is valid depending on your blogging platform.  For this blog, for instance, the categories are automatically turned into keywords in the meta tags.  Now, whether you think keywords are important or not, the fact remains that unless you know how your tags are being generated, you won’t know what you’re missing if you fail to use them.

2.  Some Blogs Have Too Many Categories – If you don’t plan which categories you’ll use, it’s almost a certainty that you will end up with too many categories.  Lots of categories makes it difficult for your visitors to get an idea of what topics you address on your blog.  Besides that, you will find that you’ll repeat yourself.  You’ll end up with one category for New Homes, and another for New Construction, for example.  No one will know where to find anything – including you!

3.  Some Blogs Don’t Have One Keyword Phrase in the Categories.  If you’re going to use categories to organize your posts, you might as well use keyword phrases to your advantage.

• Avoid categories like:  Neighborhood News, Technology Notes, New Construction, New Homes, etc. 
• Find categories like:  Atlanta Real Estate News, Real Estate Technology Tools, Atlanta New Homes

Are you seeing a trend?  Let’s say the keyword phrases you’re targeting relate to the Atlanta market (not a good target, but easy for illustration purposes).  You should have a category for each important keyword phrase you want to target, and you’d want to use the words Atlanta, real estate, homes, etc. wherever they make sense.

A Final Note:  There’s another advantage to planning blog categories in advance.  You’ll find that staying on message is easier if you know you have to fit each post into a specific category.

Sure, I’ve got a category for “everything else”, but I only use it on special occasions like holiday greeting posts for example.

You’ll find that staying on message, and using your target keyword phrases in your categories, posts, and links back to your main website, will make a difference in your SEO!