You started a business because you have an expertise you want to share with the world. And then you started a blog because you knew you needed content to help you market that business.
But now, your blog is a mess. It’s impossible to find anything and your older blog posts aren’t getting any visibility because people can’t find them.
Chances are, you didn’t think through your blog before you started publishing content. Not to worry! This is fixable. But you’re going to have to spend some time thinking about your zones of genius so you can narrow down your ideas—and the categories on your blog.
What Are Categories?
Your blog categories are like the table of contents for your content marketing. They help you organize your topics so readers can quickly and easily find more information about each of the topics. Categories should be clickable links in the sidebar or footer of your blog, so people can click on the topic of their choice and read more of your free content.
Ideally, you have about six categories in your blog. While that might not seem like many, think about it this way: How many different services do you offer? Chances are you have just a few key services because this is what helps you stand out in your industry. When you only have a few key areas where you specialize, you’re able to become a true expert in those areas. If you have more than six or seven categories or areas of expertise, you’re watering down your content makes you look a little spread thin.
[bctt tweet=”Your blog categories are like the TOC for your content marketing.” username=””]
Identifying Your Zones of Genius
Whether you’re starting from scratch or trying to rein things in on your blog, knowing what you’ll write about is key. This comes down to identifying your zones of genius: the things you can and want to write about. But this also doesn’t necessarily mean that you offer these areas as a service.
For example, I write about blogging, online marketing, business ownership and writing practices. While I know a lot about these topics, “business ownership” is not something that I actually offer as a service—or business coaching. But I know my audience is full of business owners and I feel like I have a lot to offer in that area.
I also blog about some of my personal experiences in business and I use my Friday blogs to kind of reflect on life and business and how they go together. (I would like to think that I am an expert in my own life. Ha ha!)
When you’re determining what your categories are going to be for your blog, or you are ready to do an audit of your blog to make sure that your categories really reflect what your blog is about, make sure that you are taking into consideration not only your zones of genius but also what your audience wants to read about.
[bctt tweet=”Your blog categories need to include what your audience wants to learn about.” username=””]
Keep Your Categories Broad
You also want to keep your categories broad enough that you can include many different smaller topics within them. One of my categories is blogging, but there are so many things that go into blogging like categories, writing style, your audience, formatting, promoting your blog and so on. Each of those would not be big, overall, umbrella categories but rather tags or smaller topics within the larger category of blogging.
Grab Your Free Resources Here
So now you’re thinking, but how do I even know what my categories should be? How do I come up with the titles!? I’m glad you asked! You can grab your zones of genius worksheet below, then watch my video that walks you through how to come up with the categories for your blog.
And if you’ve already been blogging for a while and need to do some revamping, don’t simply delete old categories that you no longer need. Instead, my friend Katie Williamsen wrote a blog post a few weeks ago about categories and as the website guru she is, she includes instructions for cleaning up what you already have.
