I recently had questions regarding adding categories to a Blogger blog. Although it doesn’t appear like Blogger supports categories, it in fact does and they can be added easily. In one of my recent posts titled Blog Designing Tips for New Bloggers, made mention of categories and that all new blogs should include a listing of them in their sidebar.
In this post I will explain what categories are, and how to incorporate them into your Blogger blog.
About Categories
Each post on a blog is usually about a specific topic, and a blog may have several topics overall. When you create many posts about a topic it would be nice to allow the visitor to view all posts that are related to that topic. This is where categories come into play.
A category is simply a tag, or label for a post. When you add a post to a category you simply begin to organize your blog in a meaningful manner. You then list you categories on your blog and when a visitor clicks the category link, a new page displaying all posts in that category is shown to the visitor.
It is important, however, not to create too many categories. I believe roughly 15 categories is a good number to have on your blog. Too many and your listing would be too large to read easily.
In the next section I will show you how to implement categories in a Blogger blog.
Labels = Categories
In the Blogger world you can attach labels to each post that you publish. These labels can then be listed in your blog’s sidebar as links. When a visitor then clicks one of these links, it will take them to a Web page that displays all posts that are assigned that label.
To add labels to your blog, use the following steps:
- Log in to your Blogger account, and then click the Layout link to the blog you want to change.
- Click the Add a Page Element where you want the categories to appear.
- From the list of page elements, click the Add to Blog button under Labels.
- Enter a title, and then click Save Changes. This should add the new Labels element to your blog.
- Now when you create or edit a post, enter some labels in the text box labelled Labels for this post. Each label should be separated by a comma.
- When you publish the post, a label will show up on your blog with the number of posts associated with it.
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on August 11, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Thank you!
keep up tha good work
on September 15, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Can’t believe I missed that! Thanks! No Code…. easy as pie….
just use your labels and label your posts!
on October 28, 2008 at 3:03 am
I would like to say that you have described in a very simple manner. Thanks and keep it up.
optimalhealtharticles.blogspot.com
on February 14, 2009 at 10:06 am
I have a Self Improvement Blog at Blogger and I was in need for that trick, thanks..
on June 30, 2009 at 12:19 pm
but that’s not categories, that’s just simple tags
i know there’s a way to emulate categories using javascript and searchengine
or using your e-mail account, but they are not comfortable either
i will search further
and good luck to you too
on June 30, 2009 at 11:10 pm
No, labels are categories in Blogger. The label widget displays exactly as categories would in WordPress. Tags usually provide a list with each word enlarging as more posts are tagged with that word. Labels in Blogger don’t do this, unless you use Javascript.
Look at tags in WordPress blogs, and you’ll see how tags are displayed.
on July 1, 2009 at 10:59 am
It doesn’t matter what the labels look like
labels just act like a simple keywords offering us a great help with SEO
of course we can use them as categories
but labels just lose their sense that way
on July 1, 2009 at 4:03 pm
If you use labels as tags, you would end up with massive list in your sidebar. It could get to the point where it is just too large to be useful. I have seen blogs with possibly hundreds of labels. This is why labels are more related to categories in that a smaller number is much better to display. Most bloggers may only use one category per post which is perfect for displaying labels.
There can be many tags, on the other hand, per post. You can’t display labels in a way that allows you to easily display a list of labels if you specify many labels per post. That is why using labels as categories in Blogger is more suitable than as tags.
If Blogger really meant to use them as tags, the Labels widget doesn’t display a lot of them easily.
on July 24, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Thank you so much!
on August 1, 2009 at 5:13 am
well, i guess searchengines don’t use labels as keywords
so, they’re better for categories
on September 6, 2009 at 2:24 am
thanks for your suggation
on September 9, 2009 at 12:08 am
Thank you very much for this very useful post.
on September 25, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Thank you. This is the information I really need. Let me try, I’ll be back to let you know if I’d manage.
on October 20, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Excellent tutorial! It’s the only one I was able to find that actually got the message through my thick skull about “Labels” being “Categories”.
Being a WordPress crossover I think I deserve to be forgiven. Keep up the good work!
on October 31, 2009 at 10:40 pm
thanks alot! easy & clear
on November 9, 2009 at 11:18 am
Thank you very much for this helpful article.
on November 21, 2009 at 8:20 am
perfect !!
on November 27, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Well, labels can be used exactly as what they are meant for, as tags, labels.
If you check my simple ebooks blog you’ll see that I’ve put links to more important posts and links on top, and used labels (tags) in a cloud form, which I believe is more appealing to visitors because the size of the labels indicates where are the most and preferably best posts located. I’ve tested this, and figured out people use labels more in cloud form than with list (category) form. Probably because of that size, which sort of pops in the visitor’s vision.
But, why not, they can perfectly serve as category links.
on January 10, 2010 at 6:02 am
Thx, useful!
on February 26, 2010 at 12:59 pm
Thank you so much for guidance.
on April 18, 2010 at 7:21 pm
THIS IS AMAZING.!(: thank you soooooooo mcuh, haha i’ve been trying to figure this out for MONTHS.!(: im about to cry, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU.!!!!
on July 23, 2010 at 9:54 am
Thank you so much, this helped me a lot! You’re my saver!
on July 23, 2010 at 8:39 pm
Glad I could help.
on November 6, 2010 at 6:05 am
thank you….because of this post my blog is much better now. Two thumbs up for you = )
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on November 13, 2010 at 9:25 am
Thanks a lot! Since I opened my blog I have been needing something like this. I have seen many other blogs have categories, now I do too
on January 4, 2011 at 4:38 am
I’m sorry, but I don’t think labels and categories are the same. As you might know in WordPress there is the possibility of putting labels to your posts AND divide posts in categories. They are two separate things. For example one could write a post on pasta, and write as labels things like PASTA, SAUCE, TOMATO, BOILING WATER, but the category would be COOKING.
I know there is the possibility of doing this with Blogger to, but I don’t know how, so I was looking for suggestions.
Thank you anyhow.
Monica from Italy
on January 4, 2011 at 9:17 am
There are only labels in Blogger from what I can see, which is why you should use them as Categories. Blogger’s label widget can organize labels as Categories (list) or tags (cloud) so I’m guessing that labels can be either Tags or Categories.
on February 12, 2011 at 7:45 pm
I agress Monica! Do you know how to make categories on blogger?
on February 13, 2011 at 3:54 am
no, i’m sorry, i don’t.
I know try to use labels as categories as well, writing the category of the post in parentheses. It is not the best but it helps somehow. If you want to have a look at my blog, categories/labels are at the end of the page – hope you can understand, it is in Italian.
bye, M.
http://www.intotherose-garden.blogspot.com
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on February 13, 2011 at 11:26 am
With WordPress you have tags and categories. With Blogger, you are limited to labels, so you would need to choose how best to use them. Maybe, in the future, Blogger will offer at least one more option for tagging/categorizing posts.
on September 12, 2011 at 11:59 pm
There is a hack for blogger using the link list widget, but I am still trying to figure it out.
on January 4, 2011 at 4:46 am
Some more about it here. Thank you for your attention, keep up the good work.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?tid=3503595783563043&hl=en
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on January 24, 2011 at 8:12 am
I’ve got a problem!
I can’t find “Add to blob” button!
on January 24, 2011 at 8:39 am
My mistake. It should be “Add to Blog”. Corrected.
on March 14, 2011 at 6:08 am
Thank You so much. Very clear and simple to follow. I will now apply Labels to my blogger website.
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on October 1, 2011 at 5:42 pm
I tried using labels and added them to all my posts. My Google Webmaster tools started popping up all kinds of errors though.
I solved it by manually putting together a table of contents. This works well enough. What I’m missing though is the ability to create topic related “Pages” like WordPress can do. Any way of doing that (other than manually?)
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on October 3, 2011 at 10:04 am
Hi Jana,
What kind of errors did Google Webmaster tools begin to display once you added the labels to your posts?
on December 17, 2011 at 4:02 am
Thanks for this. Really useful information!
on January 11, 2012 at 3:48 pm
Thanks, but how do i add label with categories? It is not working too well for my blog.
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