Do you want to add categories and subcategories in WordPress to boost SEO? Look no further, this blog will help you answer this question. However, we will first give you a definition of these terms to help you gain more knowledge.
What are Parent and Child Categories in WordPress?
Initially, you need to understand that Categories is one of the taxonomies in WordPress. This plays an important role in classifying and grouping your content into various topics. Thanks to that, your visitors can see archives of related posts shown in one place.
However, why and when do you need to create parent and child categories in WordPress? Now, we give you an example.
If you are going to create listings for various trusted beauty destinations around the world. And your user wants to find a destination both country and city. Particularly, once users want to search for nail salons in the United States. It is necessary for you to create related posts and use the United States as the category for those posts.
However, when users would like to find the best locations in Michigan, New York City, Texas, or much more. You can need to create subcategories titled Michigan, New York, and Texas that are child categories of the parent category “United States”.
In fact, adding categories and subcategories in WordPress not only improves your visitors’ experience by making it easier for them to look for content on your website but also helps you boost SEO by giving crawlers more context for your site’s structure.
How to Add a Category in WordPress?
There are various methods to add a category in WordPress. However, in today’s tutorial, we are going to start with the quickest and simplest method. Now, you can track the following steps.
Step 1: Choose the Categories Option from the Block Editor Menu
First of all, you need to create a new post or edit an existing post that you want to add a new category. On the Block Editor screen, simply click on the Gear icon displayed at the top right corner of the screen to open the options menu.
Then, click on the “Categories” section to see a list of available categories on your website.
In that case, you have not added any categories before, currently, your website only displays the “Uncategorized” option. This option is the default category in WordPress. Whenever you forget to assign a particular category, WordPress will automatically set the categories to “Uncategorized”.
You may need to visit our step-by-step tutorial on how to Rename Uncategorized Category in WordPress.
Step 2: Click on the “Add New Category” link
Once you click on the “Add New Category” link below existing categories, then WordPress immediately displays a few fields you can fill out.
Step 3: Give your category a name and save it
Under the “New Category Name” field, you need to provide your category a name. It should be different from other available category names on your website.
For example, we are going to create a tutorial blog about WordPress. We might add is “WordPress“, which will be further broken down into additional subcategories.
For a regular category, you leave the Parent Category field. Finally, don’t forget to click on the “Add New Category” button.
After that, the new category will be automatically checked for your current post. You can uncheck it if you want.
Alternatively, you can also go to Posts > Categories and add your new category. This way allows you to create all your categories before creating content. In addition, you can edit the slug, delete, rename categories here. Even you can give your categories a description.
How to Add a Child Category(Sub-category) in WordPress?
The process of adding a child category in WordPress is also similar to that of adding a category as we have just demonstrated above. Nevertheless, there is still the main difference. Now, let’s take a look at the following steps to create a subcategory for a parent category in WordPress.
Step 1: Start editing a post & choose the Categories tab
Firstly, you also need to edit a post or create a new post that you want to add a child category. Then select the Categories section under the post tab in the right column. This will expand the categories section to help you see existing categories in your WordPress.
Step 2: Click the ” Add New Category” Link
Similarly, you need to select the “Add New Category” link. This will open a few fields where you give your child category a name.
Step 3: Choose a parent category for your child category and save it
Let’s click on the Arrow symbol on the Parent category field to select the category that you want to use as the parent category from drop-down options.
For example, we will add a WordPress Tutorial that will be considered a child category of the “WordPress” category that we added above. So, we will select the “WordPress” option from the Parent Category dropdown list.
After assigning a parent category for your subcategory, let’s click on the “Add New Category” to save it.
In addition, you can also navigate to Posts > Categories in your admin dashboard to add child categories easily.
You should notice that each subcategory can only have one parent, so you can not assign two different parent categories for one sub-category.
How to display category and sub-category in WordPress sidebar?
In order to display categories and subcategories in WordPress sidebar, you can simply use the Categories widget.
First of all, you need to go to Appearance > Widgets. Then you will see a list of available widgets on the left side, let’s drag and drop the Categories widget to the sidebar. If the categories widget is already on your sidebar, you can skip this step.
Under the widget settings, you can choose your favorite way from 3 ones to show your categories. Then click on the “Save” button to store the widget.
For example, we checked the “Show Hierarchy” option in the widget. When visiting your website in the front end. Your categories will display like this.
The final thoughts
Adding categories and subcategories in WordPress is really an easy task. We hope that this blog gave a detailed guide to help you handle your problems effectively. Do you have any questions? If yet, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below. We will support you as soon as possible. You may need to see our detailed guide on how to properly rename categories in WordPress.
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