How To Add Categories In The Blogger Blogspot Platform

Even though the BlogSpot is user friendly, sometimes even simple things can be confusing. It is actually a learning experience where you learn the simple steps of customization slowly and gradually, along with the more complicated things like the editing of HTML. Anyway, to customize the blog in a simple manner, you don't have to do much with HTML, but you can customize your blog with the inbuilt user friendly features already available in the platform. Only thing is that you need to know how to make use of those features.

I started a food blog using the blogger some time back, and I did add a few recipes whenever I had time. I didn't bother for a very long time about how to categorize the recipes based on the type of foods, like desserts, breakfast recipes etc..

However, it is just recently that I found it is actually difficult to find each recipe from the blog, unless the user searches for the particular posts in the search box. This can be difficult for the users and it can actually reduce the overall traffic. If you add categories, it should increase the traffic, because the users may get attracted to the posts displayed in the different categories.

For example, if the user is reading a cake recipe in your blog, there is a chance that he or she maybe interested in reading your other cake recipes or even other desserts posted in your blog.

You can now make the user navigation really easy by categorizing your blog posts in the blogger. Just follow the below simple steps to add the categories to your blog!

Even if you are not very familiar with the blogger platform, you can do the categorization of your posts by following the simple instructions.

1. In the blogger, go to the "Design" tab on the right top of the home page.
2. You will have to log in to continue.
3. Go to the Layout tab on left side.
4. When you click on the layout tab, you can see "Add a gadget" on top and also on the right side of the page.
5. Click on the "Add a gadget" on the right side of the page.
6. A list of options will be displayed, out of those you have to choose the "labels" gadget.
7. Add the labels gadget and save it to your blog. You can name it "categories" or something similar as you wish.
8. Now that the categories gadget is added to the right sidebar of your blog, you can start adding posts to it.
9. Go to each post, click edit and there on the right side you will see the tab "labels".
10. Click on the "labels" tab and add labels. For example, if you want your cake recipes to be displayed under "cakes" and "desserts" categories, add the labels "cakes" and "desserts" separated by comma. If you want your post to be displayed under just a single category, enter a single label.

For example, in my food blog, I have a recipe for Apple Cashew Nut Cake and I have used the labels cakes, desserts and also apples for this post so that the recipe will appear under all the three categories.

In brief, categories are actually labels in blogger, and you can enter your blog posts under a single category or under multiple categories by entering the appropriate labels.

Most of the experienced bloggers will be already familiar with all these features in blogger platform. However, I am still learning how to edit the blog and customize it the way I want and so I guess there will be many more who will want to learn this.

Adding categories is something I learnt new and I thought it would be good to document the steps, as it is really easy to forget these things later.

I think the sharing of this information will also help those who are still learning to customize the blogger.

If you are very familiar with the blogger blogspot platform, and if you have any tips for beginners, feel free to share those in the comment section.