Creation of site categories is something too many site designers neglect! They leave it up to authors, leading to a confusing mess or no way to navigate the site.

Adding categories to your site is a trivial process. However, deciding what those categories are is vital, and different for every site. Even a site that covers the same topic will have different categories. Too many categories will hurt your search engine ranking and confuse readers, but having not enough will lead to your past posts being buried.

What are “Archive Pages”?

Your archives are the automatically-generated pages that show the content of each category. For example, the California Writers Club of Berkeley has an interviews category, and thus you can view the list of interviews on its archive page. No one updates this page, it’s updated automatically whenever someone posts a new interview, and the Interviews subsection of the home page is updated at the same time. When a new workshop is published, it automatically shows up on the workshops information page, and on the workshops archive.

The writers club’s website is a good example of how to work properly with categories and archives, because despite being a large site with extensive navigation, most of the pages are automatically-generated archival content! Their Home page is a good example: the majority of the content is pulled from various categories, even the text showing the “next event” at the top of the page.

What about tags? How do tags differ from categories?

Just like categories, every tag on the site creates another archive page. So they are similar. However, tags tend to be more specific, while categories are all-encompassing. As compared to a print book, think of tags like the index and categories like the Table of Contents. I often advise clients on how to think about the tags for their future posts. But it’s not built into the site design, because the tags are chosen as-needed per post. Whereas, because the categories broadly represent how the site’s content is organized, I want to ensure they are represented and present in the site’s navigation.


I often see authors misusing categories and archives, out of a misunderstanding of what constitutes “page content” vs “blog content.” This leads to situations where chronological content gets deleted (rather than archived), and creates a lot of unnecessary work for future editors of the blog. So expect some discussion as I help you determine your categories. My clients are often surprised by what content needs to be delivered via categories, rather than as a static Page.

All you need to know is that I make these determinations to save your precious time and make things easier to find for your readers.