In WordPress, your posts can be organized into different categories, subcategories, and tags. You can even create subcategories for more tuning, organization, and control. It is important to use these major and subcategories correctly. So you can help your readers find the content they’re most interested in.
Proper categorization of content can improve your website’s SEO as well. We will explain to you how to add them step by step.
Understand the major and subcategories
Categories are powerful tools. They are not just a way to sort your content. It also helps you develop an appropriate site structure that is meaningful and that leads to your search engine optimization. The difference between these categories of classification and tags shows how to use them correctly.
You may be wondering why and when someone needs to use subcategories (subcategories) on their WordPress site?
For example, you might have an article on the best water parks in each country . It would make more sense to use “United States” as a category for that job. But you might have articles about the best places to eat in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and more. This is where you can use subcategories or ratings. “United States” can become a main category, and cities can become sub-categories.
It is not necessary to add a subcategory under the main category. In our example, we could have left “United States” unchecked and put the article in the “New York City” category. If you submit an article under the sub-category but not under the main category, your article will appear only on the archive pages of the sub-category.
This is especially useful when you want to avoid duplicate content. So let’s take a look at how to add both regular categories and subcategories in WordPress.
Once you click on the link, two new boxes will appear where you can add your category. For the parent category, you don’t need to select anything from the Parent Category drop-down list.
Adding main categories in WordPress
You can easily add a category when writing an article or post. In the Documents panel on the left side, open the Categories tab. Then, you can simply click on the “Add a new category” link to create your new category.
Once you click on the link, two new boxes will appear where you can add your category. For the parent category, you don’t need to select anything from the Parent Category drop-down list.
Once you have typed in your taxonomy name, click the “Add” button. It will then automatically check its box for your current post. You can deselect if you want.
New categories can be added without editing your article. Just go to Posts » Categories and then add . This is useful if you want to create all of your labels or categories before adding content. This method also allows you to edit the URL of your rating .
Then you can delete and rename the categories here too, so you can give them a description as well .
Learn how to add keywords and descriptions for SEO .
Add categories or subcategories
You can add categories or subcategories and modify them in the same way you added the main ones. When you are editing, open the Categories tab and type in the name of the subcategory. Select the category you want to use as an asset from the dropdown list.
Similarly, you can also go to Articles » Categories for sub-additions .
All you have to do is type the name of the branch category and select the root category from the drop down list .
Also, your subcategories can have their own subcategories .
For example, we might decide to develop a classification structure that uses continents, countries, and cities, like this :
Here, Europe is the root classification, with the UK and Spain having their own subcategories: York and London for the UK, Barcelona and Madrid for Spain and so on. Classifications that are at the same level within the main category are sometimes called “siblings”. For example, the UK and Spain are siblings here. It can have more than one branch. You cannot add one sub-category under two different main categories.
SEO benefits in site structure based on rankings
The category URLs will look like this: http://example.com/category/united-states/new-york-city/
This is useful and helps search engines and visitors understand your topic. Also, adding keywords to your URL helps people find your content on search engines.
In addition, WordPress gives you the ability to change the /category/ prefix of your category URLs as easily as removing it entirely if you like. Simply go to Settings » Permalinks page and scroll down to the “Category Rule” section.
Here you can enter the prefix you wish to use and click the “Save Changes” button to store your changes .
Attention: Do not add the “category” prefix in URLs that are useless for your SEO. In case you want to remove it by installing the FV Top Level Categories plugin
All you have to do is install the plugin and it will remove the word “category” from the URLs of your category archive pages. Instead, it would look like this : http://example.com/united-states/new-york-city/
Important: If you decide to change the categories rule on your current site, you need to set up redirects to avoid 404 errors for search engine visitors.
How to display categories, whether main or sub, in the sidebar
You can add a widget to your WordPress sidebar or footer to show a list of categories. In your WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance » Tools .
If you haven’t changed your widgets from the default ones, you should see the Categories widget already in place. If not, you can drag and drop it from the list of available tools on the left side .
By default, the tool will display all of your ratings in a flat list, in alphabetical order :
Here’s some advice :
Your ratings will not be displayed in the list unless you have assigned at least one published post to them. You can change it to show sub-categories (sub-categories) below the main ones, if you want . All you have to do is check the “Show hierarchy” box in the tool, as shown in the figure. Then press the Save button .
On your site, you should now see the main categories and subcategories nested underneath .
Another piece of advice :
If your sidebar changes are not showing up, you may need to clear your WordPress cache . Apart from the default taxonomy widget, you can also create custom taxonomy menu links using the WordPress navigation menu .
Then after that, you can add that list in your header, sidebar, footer, or other list locations .
We hope to help you learn how to add main and subcategories and deal with them easily .