The question is, how to determine what these should be to make it easy for a visitor to find your blog post?

Why categorise and tag blog posts?

Simply to enable visitors to quickly get to the blog post which interests them and answers their question.

In addition to adding categories and tags, posts can also be date/time coded. Using these three approaches (category, tag and date/time) allows postings to be ‘sliced and diced’ so that your visitor can get to the relevant blog post quickly.

How to identify categories and tags?

This is known as designing the blog taxonomy – identifying unique categories and tags that will be used for all blog posts.

There are two things to consider:

• The greater the number of categories and tags the finer grained it will be possible to set each blog post.
• Too many categories and tags can result in blog post subject overlaps which can easily results in too many low quality visitor search matches.

Getting started …

So, the best approach is to start off with a small number of categories. These could be the main goods or services you provide or main subjects that you will blog about. It is worth recording these.

Next, create some initial blogs and categorise them. When this is done identify an initial set of tags and tag these blogs.

Finally, review how the blog categories and tags are distributed and make any changes.

Thereafter, as you create new blogs try to use these blog categories and tags unless there is a good reason not to.

Business marketing messages, information, products and services shape a website structure. Identifying the information architecture is the process whereby all these elements are brought together. The process identifies the major web pages and how the site will be navigated for intuitive browsing (website usability).

To design the information architecture requires a knowledge of the business. Business First is the process to gain knowledge and understanding thus ensuring the published website reflects the business marketing aims.

Large Websites

The larger the website the more important it is to review the information architecture to ensure information is placed logically within it, and to ensure there is room to expand without significant website redesign.

Reflecting Your Business

One important point worth noting is that the website information architecture should reflect the way visitors see your business from the outside, and not how your business in structured internally.

Blogs fall into two basic categories; personal and business.

The aim of of a blog is twofold; to build an on-line community to give and receive information and secondly, to enhance your web presence as search engines love blogs because they represent active content.

Blog websites can be installed either standalone or integrated with a business CMS website solution (like this one).

For a professional installation, the ‘look and feel’ of the blog site should be consistent with the main website so that switching between the two is seamless for the visitor.

Business Blogs

A business blog is an informal way of marketing your business, ideas, goods, and services.

It allow you to inform visitors about new business developments, create a buzz, and seek feedback on ideas for new products and services.

Blogs are often run in parallel with other social media routes to market, for example, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

Personal Blogs

Typically an informal on-line diary used to express your thoughts and gain feedback from others.

Building a successful website requires an understanding of website usability blending website structure and content together.

Website Structure

Structure should follow established conventions to prevent visitors having to learn new ways of interacting.

Website structure covers for example, ‘look and feel’, search engine optimisation, accessibility and font styles and sizes.

Website Content

Content sentence complexity should be aimed at the target audience.

Web content covers writing style, language complexity, sentence and paragraph construction and information presentation.

Positive visitor experience

• Interaction. Visitors want to interact with your site at their own speed.
• Site navigation. Ensure the site layout and navigation are intuitive and follow established conventions.

Negative visitor experience

• Distractions. Heavy use of advertisements or moving text and images.
• Registration. Asking your visitor to register before providing basic information.
• Incomplete site. ‘Under construction’. If there is nothing to say, don’t say anything.