Read more or no?

[akira07]

I have been looking for this thread using advance search, and i find there is no thread which discusse about this topic. The topic is : read more or no?

I mean, in the frontapge of your blog, will you make your post is read more or stay it full-article?

I ever heard that google hate "read more" system, and i don't know why....

So, what is your opinion about this topic?

[Rarst]

"More" links are perfectly ok, I use them for most posts.

I especially hate when some blogs put 5+ full posts on home page with ton of images and combined size of 3-4Mb. It's a good sign that crying post about hoster kicking them out is coming. :)

[athlon24]

Of course, I use read more. I don't know exactly the reason of those who don't use it. Maybe they are thinking that the reader will not read their post but as long as your title and first and two paragraph creates intrigue, engaging and are valuable to the reader, he will follow your post for sure. It your opening statements are really dull. Forget it.

[sarahG]

The only thing that search engines are not going to like with the Read more links is when you don't set the anchor text so have 'Read More' or 'Continue reading this article' as it's non descriptive of the link. You can easily edit the read more link to make it include the post title, how to is explained here - http://www.bloggingtips.com/2008/07/06/control-your-content/

My overly long posts tend to be technical or tutorial type posts, so at that point I'll insert the more tag in, but if the post is of an average length or shorter then I'll leave the full post on the front page.

[Kevin]

I think it depends on the blog. If you're posts are quite short there's no need for a read more link ie. why make the user click to read more when theres nothing more to read.

[ap4a]

I don't use read more, I do post long posts, and I show 5 of them on the front page. I doubt that my host will kick me out, seeing as I am my host ;)

I find read more links to be a pain. I don't want to have to click another link and pick up reading where I was forced to leave off. If I'm reading something I want to be allowed to finish it before going anywhere else.

[sarahG]

I find read more links to be a pain. I don't want to have to click another link and pick up reading where I was forced to leave off. If I'm reading something I want to be allowed to finish it before going anywhere else.

They can be a pain when over used, one reason why I'm not a fan of excerpts. However, when your blog has a varied audience, and you post more than twice a year :p , a long involved post about PHP isn't going to interest people who don't write in PHP and are only coming to your site for your Photography posts (for example).

Of course 5 posts isn't many to scroll through and any good blog should have a list of their recent posts above the fold and easy to see anyway.

[Rarst]

I find read more links to be a pain. I don't want to have to click another link and pick up reading where I was forced to leave off. If I'm reading something I want to be allowed to finish it before going anywhere else.


More links can be used very differently. Some just stick them in the middle of the post which indeed can be uncomfortable for reading.

Others (like me) simply write short introduction and most of post is after more link. It's not reading, it's just saying what is post about.

[ap4a]

They can be a pain when over used, one reason why I'm not a fan of excerpts. However, when your blog has a varied audience, and you post more than twice a year :p

I'm sure I posted more than that once :P

a long involved post about PHP isn't going to interest people who don't write in PHP and are only coming to your site for your Photography posts (for example).

If the blog is about multiple subjects then it can be an issue, whereas a blog about PHP wouldn't have that problem. There are other methods that could be used instead of read mores, such as skip links - with long posts you could add a skip links after the title to allow people to jump to the next post on the page if they don't want to read that one (as one possible alternative).

Obviously different people have different preferences, but I dislike having to click through a read more link enough to not bother and not return. In a similar vein, if I subscribe to an RSS feed and I only get an excerpt then I unsubscribe.

Of course 5 posts isn't many to scroll through and any good blog should have a list of their recent posts above the fold and easy to see anyway.

That's why I limit myself to 5 on the front, it's not too many that it really becomes overwhelming and not too few that if I do post a couple of shorter ones it becomes too short. I also include a list of the 8 most recent posts at the top of the sidebar so that visitors can find other recent content more easily.

[navjotjsingh]

The only thing that search engines are not going to like with the Read more links is when you don't set the anchor text so have 'Read More' or 'Continue reading this article' as it's non descriptive of the link. You can easily edit the read more link to make it include the post title, how to is explained here - http://www.bloggingtips.com/2008/07/06/control-your-content/



Seems there is a plugin for everything related to Wordpress. Somebody released a plugin to give complete control over Read more text only 2 days back: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cy-custom-morelink/

[akira07]

anyway, both using read more or no it's not affected to my SEO, right? Read more link is not counted as "inbound link", right?

[sarahG]

'Read More' is counted as an internal link, and a good internal link structure is still necessary for good SEO. As I explained, if you just have the default 'Continue reading this article' text, it's not very descriptive. I linked to a post on how to easily make this unique and someone else linked to a plugin to give you even more control over it.

There's no harm in using it, just use it to its best ability.

[silent_thunder]

'Read More' is counted as an internal link, and a good internal link structure is still necessary for good SEO. As I explained, if you just have the default 'Continue reading this article' text, it's not very descriptive. I linked to a post on how to easily make this unique and someone else linked to a plugin to give you even more control over it.

There's no harm in using it, just use it to its best ability.

Does A unique desciprtion guarantee a better ranking??

[sarahG]

It'll make the page more accessible, and generally when a page is more accessible it's better optimised for search engines. If you have your read more link saying

Continue Reading 'How to make money online'

compared to

Continue Reading this post

Which one says more to you? The first right? Well the search engines place emphasis on internal linking as well as external back links. 'Click Here', 'Read More', 'Continue' - none of these are of any value as anchor text in a site.

Nothing's guaranteed when in comes to search engines and ranking though ;)

[akira07]

anyway, how to make it like that? I mean, to make "continue reading - "article post name" " ?
I never find tutorial about it. Yes, i think i prefer the first option.....

[sarahG]

As per my first post in this thread - http://www.bloggingtips.com/2008/07/06/control-your-content/

You can either do it manually with the more tag

<!--more Continue Reading The Title of this Post-->

Or you can edit your template to do this automatically. Details are in the post I linked to.

[narendra.s.v]

well it all depends on my post length as most of my posts are too long and have many pictures or videos i do use more tag in the middle to make it fast to load(homepage) and recently in one of my blog the theme only shows summary only but for that blog i get more views then the 1st one :D

[akira07]

of course :D, if the article is short, no need to add read more.

[athlon24]

but for me, there are times that even a post is long, I don't use the read more tool. Because there are post that you can't really cut and you want your reader to see the whole post even in the article. And I think, text does not add much to the loading time. So even if you don't use read more to your articles, the loading time of the front page is still the same. Unless, of course, if the remaining part of the post are images.

[akira07]

can you give me example the article which you will add no read more even it's so long? Maybe it's tutorial article?