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Excerpts

  1. starcraftadventures
    Member

    Hi everyone,

    I was wondering how you decide whether to use excerpts. For example on my blog I will have a few quite long posts each day, but I feel that if I create an exerpt (to gain space on my frontpage) it might discourage people from reading the entire post, as clicking on the post title is 'too much' for some people. However if they click on the title to read the full post they will also have access to sharing options (facebook, twitter etc.), thus potentially increasing traffic on my blog.

    How have you made your decision / what is your experience regarding exerpts?

    Thank you.

    The blog I need help with is starcraftadventures.wordpress.com.

  2. thesacredpath
    Member

    I use the more tag with longer posts so as to make front page navigation easier for the visitor. I personally don't find having to click on a read more tag all that much of a problem and I don't think others do either. It is sort of the norm anymore.

    http://en.support.wordpress.com/splitting-content/more-tag/

  3. timethief
    Member

    My experience is that magazine style themes are being used throughout the blogosophere that display only front page excerpts and we have grown accustomed to them. I have no objection to seeing all the choices on the front page displayed in excerpts format and then choosing which one to click into. However, raincoaster will probably enter this thread to tell you that she holds the opposite opinion. lol :D
    Have a merry!

  4. auxclass
    Member

    I like the read more - especially on a site I visit often - then I don't have to reload all the stuff I read yesterday and I can click on only the Posts I am interested in reading - I HATE the sites that have tons of stuff to load every time I visit the site -

  5. ykktom
    Member

    Hi there, WordPressers.

    I'm new to this WordPress caper, having spent the past fifteen months posting material on Hubpages.com. I'm told WordPress is the site to be on. However, compared with Hub it seems quite complex. Are there any of you out there who have material on both sites? I'd like your on pertaining to comparison between the two.

  6. thesacredpath
    Member

    I can't help you with a comparison since I know nothing about hubpages, but here are a couple links to help you start getting familiar with wordpress.

    http://en.support.wordpress.com/getting-started/
    http://learn.wordpress.com/

  7. raincoaster
    Member

    As TT said, I'm not a huge fan of the Read More option, particularly as the jump is rarely put in a place that gives the reader enough enticement to click. You might, at a certain point, use a Featured Image and title and nothing more, and many blogs do just that. It's not good from an SEO perspective, to say the least, and it will likely decrease your readership while artificially inflating pageviews.

  8. starcraftadventures
    Member

    So from an SEO perpective it's better to have full posts?

  9. timethief
    Member

    @ykktom
    hubpages is for monetized blogs. WordPress.com blogs cannot be monetized unless one has enough traffic for their blog to be accepted into the AdControl program or it is a self hosted blog. Moreover, wordpress.com blogs cannot be equiped for ecommerce and cannot be used to drive traffic to third party sites.

    All references at hubpages are to wordpress.ORG software installs. They are not to free blogs from and being free hosted by wordpress.COM Please see this entry so you understand the differences > http://support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/

    See also: http://wordpress.com/types-of-blogs/
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/advertising/

  10. timethief
    Member

    @starcraftadventures
    The whole post will be indexed by the search engines. Provided the title and content is properly optimized and relevant tags/categories are used then I don't believe there will be any difference at all.

  11. thesacredpath
    Member

    If you have really long posts, 1500 words or more, I would typically suggest the read more tag as it keeps the main page shorter even though it might not give you quite the SEO advantage for the main page. Thinking of the visitors here, not the search engines.

    As an alternative though, if you keep the posts whole on the main page, definitely limit the number of posts on the main page to perhaps 2 so that page loading times remain reasonable. This is especially true if you use images in your posts. Google now looks at page loading times when determining search engine ranking, and slow loading sites will take a hit on page rank.

    One last thought, and I'm no SEO expert, but when search engines index a post, they index the whole post (the post as it is on the single-post page ie the permalink page), not just the snippet on the dynamic main post pages, so as far as individual posts go, using the read more tag will not be detrimental to the ranking on that particular post. It may very well cut down on the main site landing page (home page) but then again, I have to think Google is smart enough to realize the reason read more tags are used and not hurt people too badly for using them.

  12. raincoaster
    Member

    Simply put, the more keywords you have on the MAIN page, the better off you are from an SEO perspective. But if you use the keywords in the title, image data, and first few sentences, you should be okay.

  13. starcraftadventures
    Member

    Thanks everyone!

  14. timethief
    Member

    You're welcome from me. Happy blogging! :)

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