Creating post categories in WordPress is fairly simple and straightforward, especially if you know how you want to make use of them.
For the purpose of buiding a site to drive traffic to an online store, we will be using them to do the following:
- Provide a navigation panel on one of your sidebars.
- Provide easy links for jumping to similar products and articles on your site.
- Provide a means for automatically listing related items in category showcases.
If you haven’t done keyword research for your post categories, be sure to do so before you create them…though changing them later isn’t typically too painful.
Organizing your post categories
For post categories, I recommend using the following structure:
- News and Updates
- Products
- Category One
- Category Two
- …
- Category N
- Other post categories
In the above, you can use any name for News and Updates. The idea for the category is to provide information concerning your site, general information about your store, and other such things.
Products can be named whatever you wish. For tightly focused theme stores, you might use a much more specific term. For example, if you sell exclusively kids toys, you might use kids toys in place of products
Your main keyword for each of your store categories should be placed in the slots shown as Category One through Category N, with subcategories underneath of them unless you want to treat sub categories just the same as top level categories.
Creating a category
- Log into your WordPress admin panel
- Select "Posts" → "Categories" from the admin menu
- Enter the name for your category
This should be semi short so that it can fit into a sidebar without wrapping. - Leave category slug blank
It will be created automatically from your category name. - Set the Category Parent for your category
- For top level categories this should be "None"
- For second or third tier categories this should be the name of the post category you want this category to be a child of
- Enter a short description for your post category
- Select "Add Category"
Editing a Category
Should you decide that you want to change a post category for some reason, here is how you do so:
- Log into your WordPress admin panel
- Select "Posts" → "Categories" from the admin menu
- Place your cursor over the category you want to edit
You should see options come up under it when you do so. - Select "Edit"
This will bring up the post category editor. - Make the changes you want
- Change the category name
- Change the category slug
- Change the category parent
This will move the category to be a child of a different category or to be a top level category. - Change the description
- Select "Update Category" to save your changes