I think sub-categories are a great idea. They’ll take a bit of planning/recategorizing to get going, but they could really help me clean things up.

Thanks again!

I took a quick look at your site and here are a few quick tips.

Your site is focused on baby names, how to choose, stories and history, and fads and trends in naming children.

Why not consider subcategories, grouping like topics together, to help your readers find the information they need.

“How to Choose a Name” could have “Picking a Baby Name” and “Need Baby Name Help” and “Name Studies” and “Name Predictions” under it. “Picking a Name” and “Need Help” sound the same to me so those might be combined as well. I’d really like to see a link in your top menu to these excellent “how to choose” articles as well rather than having them buried way down in the sidebar and footer. They are tremendous articles. Maybe a Page linking to all the articles as a reference web page?

“Baby Name History” or some scientific word for the naming of people (I’m sure there is such a word, if not, there should be so make one up ) could have Baby Name Definitions, Stories, in the News, Pop Culture, Popular, Questions Mysteries Polls, etc.

“Baby Names” could feature Boy, Girl, Names (in general), funny, nicknames, unique, unisex, and so on.

By grouping the content within sub-categories, it might make it feel like you are treating your site professionally as it is more structured, educational if you will. It would also make the long list easier to read, and could help your SEO as the urls would have the parent category as well as the subcategory in them.

You are doing amazing work on the subject of naming, but I didn’t discover that until I really dug into your site more. At first glance, it looks a little commercial and spammy, but you are really passionate about the naming game. Fantastic articles. Topical, creative, educational, and in many cases inspired. This isn’t a full site review but think about first impression over content reality. I’d really love to see you show your stuff better so you are really viewed as an expert in the subject. This is some brilliant stuff you do!

Thanks.

I started my main blog, a self-hosted WordPress blog, in early 2006. I wasn’t too concerned about keeping categories in check back then. I ended up with several dozen.

A couple of years ago, when I had maybe 40 categories, I decided that I really needed to clean things up. So I started whittling down my category list.

Just the other day, I turned 19 categories into 18.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to squeeze all my posts into just 12 categories, but I’d like to. More realistically, I think 15 or 16 would be a good stopping point.

Good for you identifying a useless category! Excellent. 5-12 is a good number. I’m working harder to minimize my own with thousands of articles spread across all of them, so you are not alone!

I mostly categorize according to type of content and also I mention if the image in it is art or photo (I’m an artist, primarily).