Can a Post Belong to more than one Category?

When you write a post can you add it to more than one category?

YES, of course! For example, I'm adding this post to my "Blogging 101" and "Weblogs" category.

Sometimes people wonder about the so called "duplicate content penalty from Google. Hey, there is NO duplicate content here! (besides, people in general freak out and don't understand this duplicate content thing -- most of you can entirely ignore it).

A long confusing thread full of misinformation and confusion on the Warrior Forum made me wonder if perhaps other might be confused by this?

It's simple: when writing a post, add it to all appropriate categories and just be done with it! Unless of course you are using one of the rare blogging platforms (like Blogger.com) that don't support categories)

Comments

[Ujjal]

What happens when you use multiple categories - how does the URL for the post look like in such a case - which of the categories will be included in the permalink

[Marti]

I can understand the confusion, because everyone is scared to death of doing something that makes Google mad :-)

I used to repost my blog articles at MySpace and at a mirror site on Blogger, because I had different people reading at the different sites. But when I learned of how this angers the gods, I changed MySpace and the Blogger site to a link that says "read my latest post at my main blog".

I agree with you, that simply using different categories shouldn't cause any kind of issue.

Great information, as always! All the best to you.

[T Demop, Blogging for Business]

Hi Ujjal,

The URL for the permalink will not include the category, just the original date based link. For example, the permalink for this post ends with:
2009/01/can-a-post-belong-to-more-than-one-category.html

[T Demop, Blogging for Business]

Hi Marti,

This duplicate penalty idea is widely misunderstood. Google doesn't penalize sites for duplicate content -- it simply doesn't pay much attention to the duplicate content.

For example, if there are many copies of an article online (as in a syndicated newspaper article for example), Google will pick one as the original and include it in its search results. The other secondary copies will be ignored or receive much lower search precedence.

Still, what you're doing makes lots of sense. LInks to the primary will tell Google and the other SEs that the original (and only in this case) is more important. Links are seen as an endorsement or vote of confidence.