There are two ways to put post excerpts on your main page in WordPress.

They are:

• The post excerpt function in WordPress
• The “More” tag

Which is the best way to use excerpts for your blog?

Can you tell which I am using?  I’ll let you know at the end of this post. Both have advantages and disadvantages. In some cases, the disadvantages can be eliminated with a little modification of WordPress or with a plugin.

Lets start with WordPress’s built in post excerpts.

Actually almost nothing could be simpler that just activating the excerpt function. That is, if your theme or template has the option. If not, then it is not built in and you’ll need to make some changes in the code. You can also download a plugin that will add the feature.

The advantage of using excerpts instead of the more button is you can write an optional excerpt for each post.

This means you can have content completely different than the post the excerpts point to. This also means you have to write an excerpt for the best effect. You will need to write the excerpt both to tell what the post is about and create enough curiosity click through to read it.

Another advantage is that it affects all your posts when they are viewed on the main pages. No need to go through all your posts in order to shorten them.

For a great post about editing the WordPress code for excerpts check this post at Pro Blog Design.

For a plugin that lets you add excerpts check this post at Daily Blog Tips. This plugin also lets you choose to have a certain number of posts with full content while keeping excerpts on all the rest.

I have not tried either of these methods so be sure to make a backup of the files you edit before you edit them and see if the plugin is compatible with the latest versions of WordPress.

One disadvantage of using the excerpt function is, that by default, your excerpts may not have any link to the post other than the link in the title of the excerpt.

This can easily be unnoticed with some themes, leaving your blog looking it is full of scraped content. The post at Pro Blog Design gives a way to add a link at the bottom of the excerpt with a call to action to click the link (such as “click here to read the full post”)

There is one big disadvantage of excerpts that is shared with the More tag and that is partial feeds. We’ll talk about that in a bit.

How about using the More tag for excerpts?

This feature is in the WYSIWYG editor. Just place your cursor where you want the excerpt to end and click the button in the editor. No need to make any changes to your code. It is that simple. Place in a good spot and you will automatically create curiosity and tell what the post is about, at least, if you write your introductory paragraph with this in mind. This is the easiest way to go.

The More tag also provides a link to the post at the end of your excerpt, right where you place it.

This gives a call to action and encourages the reader to click through and read the full post. This goes back to those long sales letters you used to get in the mail. People are actually more likely to read, click, or go to the next page if you tell them to.

The disadvantages of the More tag are many.

The content is the same as used in the post. This is not really bad because the amount of duplicate content is not large enough to cause problems.

If you want excerpts for all your posts, you will need to edit each post and add it. This is a big problem if you have many posts. This type of excerpt is not blog-wide like the regular post excerpts.

I don’t particularly like the default text for the link. In some cases, it is just “More.” This is a relatively safe edit though, even if you are not familiar with code. The post mentioned above at Pro Blog Designs also shows how to edit the text in the link. Even I would feel safe with an edit of this type since you are just changing the text not any real code.

Again, the More tag shares its biggest disadvantage with the post excerpts.

Both methods will send a partial RSS feed. It seems like everyone believes that partial feeds are generally not as well accepted as full feeds. This can be fixed with a Full Text Feed plugin By Ronald Heft, Jr.

Ideally, your post excerpts are also used on both your Category and Tag archives as well.

This does require some code editing. If you want to tackle this job, I am going to send you off on your own to the search engine of your choice. As you can probably tell, I am not much into editing code myself. I would hate to go through the trouble now with a new WordPress version about to be released.

What method do I use for post excerpts on this blog?

I use the More tag, but with some special features. The Semiologic Pro theme I use here has both excerpts and a modified more feature. With Semiologic Pro the title of the post is used in the More link. Also, the test is easy to change to say just about anything you want to use.

With a bit of thinking, I came up with link text I think makes sense and provides a call to action. Also, the anchor text of the link is them optimized for all the SEO advantages you can get from an internal link using the keywords in the title. Much better than a link to pointing to your post with the anchor “More” or “Click Here.”

The Semiologic Pro theme also uses post titles automatically on the Tag and Category archives. This eliminates duplicate content on them. The Full Text Feed plugin is also already installed.

What is the best method for post excerpts on the main page for your blog?

That decision is up to you. If you’re just starting out, the More tag is the simplest to use. It is also well supported in WordPress. If you have a lot of posts, excerpts may be the way to go for you. If you can edit code, you may be able to get excerpts to do a lot for you. If you have many sites or blogs, or plan to, Semiologic Pro might be a good investment for your internet marketing business or as a good option as a semi-customized theme.

Several days ago I started using post excerpts on the main page of this blog.

There are several reason for using post excerpts on the front page of your blog. Once before, I started to use post excerpts before and stopped. I am convinced that it is probably best to use them for SEO. There are other reasons for using them and at least one for not using them.

The main SEO (Search Engine Optimization) reason for using post excerpts is to avoid duplicate content on your blog.

When you make a post without using excerpts, the exact text is duplicated not only on the page for the post itself, but also on the main page and its archive. The search engines can see this as duplicate content. This can cause problems for your post to rank well for its keywords. The ranking can sort of get split between the different pages. This can be made worse if your blog also shows full posts on category and tag pages also. In most cases, your main page will outrank the post in WordPress because PR is focused toward your home page.

Ever do a search and find nothing about the subject on the main page of the blog you were sent to?

Very likely, the home page of the blog had the post on it when the search engine bots went through it. After the post moved off the home page, it was still not ranking for the keyword as well as the home page.

The duplicate penalty can cause a page on a site to be placed in the supplemental index.

Even on a single site. One thing that I have seen trigger this is duplicate meta tags for description and keywords. While I am not sure this is still something that will still show as much, but I had this happen on a web site where I had copied a page as a template and changed the content. I forgot to change the meta tags and title. Even though the content was completely different, the page showed supplemental.

A second reason for using post excerpts is to keep the main page of the blog from getting too long.

if you have the occasional long post, your home page can get very long with just 3-4 posts. When I go to a blog, I not only read the content, I look at the sidebars and other parts of the page. Are there other posts that look interesting. Who’s commenting. Who is visiting. I admit, I like eye candy. Also, many blogs are now putting more information in the footer. Fine, but if you have long posts most likely your sidbars end long before the bottom and readers there may not know there is anything more to look for at the bottom. If your sidebars are that long, then you have the opposite problem. The content ends the reader may stop scrolling down and again never see the footer.

You will notice I have a Blog Catalog widget in my footer. I want people to see it, I just did not want to increase the length of the sidebar by placing it there. I think it works well horizontally and I have placed MyBlogLog in this position on my photography site. My goal is to keep the sidbars about the same length as my average post. Keeping the home page close to this help make that easier.

A third reason is it helps the home page of the blog load faster.

Graphics are great, but they can slow a page. I find video seems to be especially likely to slow page loads. The more you have, the more likely you are to see an item that takes long or fails to load. Keeping those to a minimum on the main page does wonders.

My fourth reason is to show more posts on the home page.

Using excerpts and limiting other things, it is possible to show 10 or more posts on the home page with few problems. A visitor can see quickly what topics are being covered on the blog with out have to scroll and scroll and scroll to find a post that might interest them. While I don’t usually have this problem, if you post very often, having more posts on the home page gives readers a better chance to see your all your posts before they disappear off the main page.

Why not use post excerpts?

Well, there is the concern that some readers might not not like it.

This is an important concern. Does it matter to a reader if the post is on its own page instead of with a bunch of others?

I actually don’t see the main page of most of the blogs I usually read. I subscribe to the feed of any blog I regularly visit and then click through the feed to read the post nearly always (it’s something about the look of a blog that makes me do this, occasionally I skip it but I usually click through and read on the blog even with full feeds). I find using a reader simply the best way to keep track of what I want to read and when. I may be in the minority, but I suspect more and more people will be using readers. This also meant I had to go see what the main page of many of the blogs I read looked like as I made my decision.

I found use of post excepts to be a bit random on the blogs I read.

Some SEO blogs use excerpts, some do not. Some non-SEO blog use excepts while many do not, even with make money online blogs. I would think that most of us should really know better by now and use of excepts would be more common in the niche. I was a bit interesting to see that Gary Conn just switched back to using post excerpts and posted about it today. I wonder if it is a good sign that I am thinking the same way he is.

A second reason for not using excerpts is that it can cause excerpts in your feed.

This depends on how you use excerpts on your blog. There are two different ways of doing it.

My next post will discuss the different ways of making post excerpts and the advantages and disadvantages I saw as I decided what I think would be the best way create post excerpts.