Short cuts:
The right structure
Plan your categories
Free printable category planner
When most bloggers start blogging, categories are kind of an afterthought. Nobody explained how or why to set up categories strategically and so many food blogs end up with a disjointed list of both broad and narrow subjects.
It’s never too late to get your categories in order though, so if you’ve already been blogging for a while, don’t panic, I’ll help you get to work fixing it!
How the categories should be structured
Weβll start by getting the technical side out of the way before deciding which actual categories you should have and how you should set them up for your readers.
This is what it usually looks like when the categories aren’t planned ahead of time:
Breakfast
Chicken
Chocolate
Cupcakes
Dessert
Dinner
Eggs
Side dishes
Smoothies
Not only does it make it harder for readers to navigate, it also makes it harder when the time comes and youβre ready to add a fun βrecipesβ page where your readers can check boxes and narrow down to exactly the recipes theyβre looking for.
We could take those same categories and organize them (technically speaking, a parent category and a subcategory). Theyβd look something like this:
Breakfast
Eggs
Smoothies
Dinner
Chicken
Side dishes
Dessert
Chocolate
Cupcakes
So Breakfast, Dinner, and Dessert are the parent categories, and Eggs, Smoothies, etc are now sub categories. Recipes can definitely cross over and go into multiple categories and subcategories.
Much easier to look at, right? Okay, so let’s plan yours.
Planning your own categories.
First, think about your readers.
If they were looking for ideas for something to cook today, what might they want to narrow it down by?
It’s easy to only think about what we want to create, but it’s important to consider what your readers are interested in.
Now think about what kind of recipes you create most.
While some categories and subcategories might seem logical to have, if you almost never post any breakfast recipes, then it wouldnβt make sense to have a category of Breakfast with various subcategories.
Your readers might see a Breakfast β Smoothies category and get excited, but then wind up disappointed when thereβs only one recipe and itβs 3 years old. You donβt ever want your visitors to feel disappointed or let them expect something other than what youβre offering.
If almost all of your recipes are dinner recipes, then you might not use Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner categories at all. Maybe you could use categories like:
Main Ingredient
Chicken
Ground Beef
Steak
Vegetables
Cooking Method
Braised
Crock Pot
Grilled
Instant Pot
Special Diets
Dairy Free
Vegetarian
If you still had a few breakfast or specialty recipes that didnβt fit into other categories, as long as you will have a good number of posts inside those categories, they can just stand on their own as categories.
want a free printable category planner?
Next week, I’ll show you how to actually create the categories in WordPress, and how to re-categorize your recipes if you need to.
More food blog categories inspiration
For inspiration, take a look at Foolproof Living and Pinch of Yum. You can see the headings on the side like βHealthyβ and βBreakfast.β Those are the categories, and then the options that you can select under each of them are the subcategories.
Pin this post so you don’t lose the instructions!
(And to help your blogging friends out too.)
nice blog very good information.
Thank you, so glad it’s helpful!
I’m so glad I decided to search for this topic before I messed up the categories! Lol. Thanks for this information. I love what you offer. I haven’t come across a site like yours in my 3 years of blogging. I’ve saved you in my FAVES folder and slid you to the top. Haha. Can’t wait to dive into your blog posts and hire you when the time comes.
I’m so glad you found it and it was helpful! π I look forward to getting to know you and your blog.
such a good blog for foodies, thanks for your kind information.
Thanks very much for the post, it was very helpful! I am in the middle of setting up my food blog and was still undecided on how to structure my categories. It was a great read π
I’m so glad it was helpful! Feel free to reach out if you have questions.
Thanks for the nice article. I believe if anyone shares nutrition levels in food articles in a food blog, that would be more helpful for readers.
This is very helpful to me. Thanks so much
Here to check info so i can make my friend site nicely. Thanks for information.
Iβm so glad you found it and it was helpful! I look forward to getting to know you and your blog.
Thanks for your informative information.
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