How to setup a blog about two different subjects

Shannon asks…

“Is there a way to divide blogs into sub categories? I would really like to have a blog about dogs and a blog about travel all on my website. Do you know the best way to do this?”

First of all, it might be a good idea to create two separate websites/blogs, one for each topic. That way, you can appeal to dog lovers and travel enthusiasts with the name, style, layout, content and so-on of each site.

Google is apparently looking more and more at the theme of a website to determine relevancy, and therefore page rankings for related terms. It’s possible therefore that you’d be putting yourself at an immediate disadvantage by throwing these two quite different subjects together. I say possible, because search engine optimization certainly isn’t an exact science.

Also, if I follow your blog because I love your stuff about dogs, I’m probably going to keep hitting “delete” every time I receive a post about travel. This might not be a problem if your content is amazing, but unless the standard is ultra high, I’m probably going to unsubscribe and follow a blog that’s exclusively about dogs instead :-)

In any case, if these aren’t major factors for you, the good news is that categories are a built-in feature of WordPress blogs, and they’re pretty straightforward to use. All you need to do is create two categories (under Posts > Categories in your Admin section) called “Dogs” and “Travel”.

When you create a post, you assign it to one of those categories by checking the appropriate box on the right-hand side of the Edit Post screen.

Then, probably the best way to go is to link to your category pages from your main menu (you do this under Appearance > Menus in your Admin section).

So your website’s menu might look something like: Home, About, Dogs, Travel, Contact. Whereas the other menu options will link to a page in the normal way, your Dogs and Travel links will instead take the visitor to the appropriate category pages.

Your category pages then list out all your posts for that category. You can see category pages in action on our Happy Guide website:

Mindset category
Habits category

People usually link to their category pages on their blog sidebar only, but there’s nothing to stop you linking from the main menu, if you choose :-)

Hope this helps! Let me now how you get on, or if you have any queries.

Best wishes,
James Riddett