Add a Categories Section to a Blogger Blog (Blogspot Blog)

By: ADMIN on 19:38:00

Blogspot blogs at Blogger.com have no categories only labels. This Blogger tutorial will show you how to manually create categories in Blogger from your existing labels so that all the articles listed under a particular label will be displayed.

While this way to add categories to Blogger is not an ideal solution it will mean that you can display a logical grouping of your most popular articles under the one heading.

This article is aimed at new bloggers and beginner bloggers although it is suitable for all Blogger bloggers (Blogspot bloggers). No changes to the template are required to add these categories to your Blogger blog (Blogspot blog).

How to Create Categories from Labels in Blogger
One easy way to create a categories section in Blogger is to simply rename the title of the labels widget as categories. This solution does not work for me because on this blog I have a huge number of labels and I don't want to show this widget at the top of my sidebar.

An easy way round this problem is create a separate categories section. If you look at the sidebar of this blog you will notice that I have several major categories at the top so that a new visitor will find what they are looking for quickly under these broad headings.


To add a categories section to a Blogger blog (Blogspot blog) follow these simple steps:

1. Decide how you want to group your articles according to the labels applied and what group heading you want to give to each grouping of articles.

2. For the first category navigate to the individual page of the label you wish to use by clicking on the label in your sidebar. Copy the URL address of this page from the address bar in your browser (right click and select copy). For example the URL address of the label of Blogger Tutorials on this site is:

http://quickearningtricks.blogspot.com/search/label/Blogger%20Tutorials

3. From the Blogger Dashboard go to Design > Page Elements

4. Click Add a Gadget in the sidebar and select Links List

5. In the Configure Link List dialog box that appears paste the link to your label into the New Site URL box



6. Enter the name of your label or some alternative text if you wish into the New Site Name text box. 

7. Enter Categories as the title

8. Choose between sort alphabetically, reverse alphabetically or don't sort

9. Click on Add Link to add the link to your new categories list

10. Click on Save

11. For every label you wish to put into the Categories Section copy the link and add it to the Configure Links List. By the end you will end up with two or more categories in your list

12. Use the up and down arrows for each link to shuffle them around until you find the desired order



Limit the Number of Posts Displayed in the Categories Section
To put a limitation on the number of posts displayed in the new categories section you will need to adjust the URL's of each label as follows:

From:

http://yoursite.blogspot.com/search/label/CategoryName

To:

http://yoursite.blogspot.com/search/label/CategoryName?max-results=max number of posts to display

So for the category Blogger Tutorials on this site for example I would enter the following to have only 25 posts displayed:

http://quickearningtricks.blogspot.com/search/label/blogger%20Tutorials?max-results=25

This Blogger tutorial has shown you how to manually add a categories section to the sidebar of your Blogger Blog (Blogspot blog) using the Link List widget.

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How to Add Internal Links Within Blogger Posts

By: ADMIN on 19:37:00

In the Blogger tutorial I discuss how to add internal links within your Blogger posts (Blogspot posts) to point to either another section within the same post or to another post.

There are lots of times when you may want to direct a reader to a different part of your Blogger post depending on what their needs and interests are. Or you might want to alert the visitor to something significant in a related post. In this article I will show how to make use of internal links both within posts and in Blogger generally.

Why bother with internal linking you may be wondering? Well the answer is to improve SEO. Blogs with a good internal linking structure will fare better than blogs that don't link posts. Plus you will be creating an aid to navigation for your reader. On longer posts jumps links to different sections within your post or to other posts mean readers can quickly find the information they are looking for.

How to Create Internal Links To Sections Within the Same Blogger Posts

How to Create Internal Links To Sections Within Different Blogger Posts

How to Create Internal Links To Sections Within the Same Blogger Post
Consider the above links. Click on them. Each jump the reader to a different part of this article. This type of internal linking is common practice in website building and can be equally applied to blogs to assist with navigation.

How did I create these links? The answer is that I used simple html that anyone can learn in a few minutes. Here are the steps I used to create these links.

1. Log in to Blogger
2. Go to Posting > New Post or Edit Post and either create a new article or edit an existing one.
3. Within the article find a place where you want to add some jump links. This will be early on in the article as it will help the reader figure out what information is significant to them and how to get there quickly
4. Switch to the Edit HTML mode rather than compose mode so you can see the code you are inserting into your post
5. Create a couple of headings that will be your links to material further down in your Blogger article. Note you can also just jump to a word but for the purposes of this demonstration and clarity I am going to use headings. When creating this post I used the following headings:

   How to Create Internal Links To Sections Within the Same Blogger Post
   How to Create Internal Links To Sections Within Different Blogger Posts

   
   
6. Add links to your headings like so:

   <a href="#withinposts">How to Create Internal Links To Sections Within the Same Blogger Post</a>
   
   <a href="#withinblogger">How to Create Internal Links To Sections Within Different Blogger Posts</a>

   
   
   • The href attribute and closing </a> element is the same structure you use for other links in your blog
   • Each identifier is preceded by a hash mark (#). The # tells the visitor's browser to look for a section within your post
   • Each link identifier needs its own unique identifier and needs to be enclosed in inverted commas. Use a name that reflects the link you are creating if possible as it will make it easier to identify on a page with a lot of internal jump links. 
   
   
7. Now go to the first point in your post where you want to jump the reader to. This will be the start of some new idea, section or logical split in the information.
8. At this point create your anchor text by first adding your heading and then enclosing your heading with this anchor structure.

   <a name="identifier">a heading</a>

   
   
   • Note the use of the name attribute at the beginning and the </a> element at the end
   • Each link identifier needs to be enclosed in inverted commas. Make sure to match up the correct identifier with the one created in step 6
   
   
   Using this anchoring structure our first anchor becomes:

   <a name="withinposts">How to Create Internal Links To Sections Within the Same Blogger Post</a>

   
   Substitute your own link identifier and headings
9. Now move on to the next point you want to link to and create the second anchor. In this example we use the same structure but change the identifier

   <a name="withinblogger">How to Create Internal Links To Sections Within Different Blogger Posts</a>

   
   Again substitute your own link identifier and headings to suit your article
10. Save and Publish as normal and you will see your links are live and will jump the reader to different parts of the post

How to Create Internal Links To Sections Within Different Blogger Posts
Now you know how to create links to sections within Blogger posts let's look at how to create internal links within different Blogger posts.

Most of you will be able to create a link to another post in Blogger using the posts editor. You just highlight the text you want and click on the figure eight icon and Blogger creates the link for you. Which is great most of the time. 

However what if we want to direct the visitor to a particular section of a different post? When you create an internal link it will take the viewer to the top of the page but what if you want them to see something near the end of the article? Well using an internal link similar to what we did to create internal links within the post we can.

Say I want to take my reader to a particular post in this case Blogger SEO Tips and Tricks. How would I go about it?

1. I create the link as usual by copying the article URL address from the browser address bar and using the post editor to add the link. The Blogger post editor uses this structure:

   <a href="URLaddress">linkname</a>

   
   So the Blogger editor would create the following link:

   <a href="http://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/2009/05/blogger-blogspot-seo-tips-and-tricks.html">Blogger SEO Tips and Tricks</a>

   
   The link would appear like this in a browser:
   
   Blogger SEO Tips and Tricks
2. Now I want to direct my visitors to the section about creating breadcrumb navigation so I add a section name using the following structure:

   <a href="URLaddress#identifier">linkname</a>

   
   Thus my link would look like this in the Edit HTML section of my post editor

   <a href="http://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/2009/05/blogger-blogspot-seo-tips-and-tricks.html#breadcrumb">Blogger SEO Tips and Tricks</a>

   
   Note the link seen in a browser remains the same
3. If you want your link to open in a new browser window add the following to your link:

   <a href="http://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/2009/05/blogger-blogspot-seo-tips-and-tricks.html#breadcrumb"target="_blank">Blogger SEO Tips and Tricks</a>

   
   
4. Now I need to go to the post I am linking to and add the anchor. So in the post SEO Tips and Tricks I would use the following structure to link to the section about how to add breadcrumbs:

   <a name="identifier">a heading</a>

   
   So the section about breadcrumbs in the Blogger SEO Tips and Tricks article is now enclosed by the following:

   <a name="breadcrumb">Add Breadcrumb Navigation to your Blogger Blog</a>

   
   
   If you now click on the link below you will see that your browser open a new window and take you directly to the section about adding a breadcrumb to your blog.
   
   Blogger SEO Tips and Tricks
5. Save your changes and publish your article as normal

In this Blogger tutorial you have learned how to add internal links to a particular section of a post from both within the same Blogger post and within a different post. By adding internal links you will help your visitors to find their away your blog more easily and access information quickly. You will also be adding to your blog's SEO by linking related posts.

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