As we discovered on Monday, the more tag is a very powerful feature in WordPress. By simply using the more tag, or not using it has a significant impact on the chance of your post being read by the readers of your blog.
This is the second part of the “Breaking down the more tag series.” We talked about the advantages and disadvantages of using the more tag to display partial posts, now we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of not using the more tag to display full posts.
So in the last article I went over the basics of the more tag: what it does, how to use it, and the advantages and disadvantages of using it to display posts. We found out that using the more tag did have some very useful advantages, but even though the list of disadvantages were less than the advantages — the tradeoffs seemed to balance themselves out.
I think the cases I bring up in this post will be a real eye opener to some, and some of the points are very interesting to think about. Maybe some of you will want to start removing the more tag, or maybe some of you will want to start using it after you read these points and take them into consideration.
Advantages
The items in this list have some surprisingly exceptional benefits for a strategy that isn’t used very much in the blogosphere today.
- Allows posts to be read without a catch - If you read the first post in the series, you will have learned that the more tag hides a part of your article and only shows a couple paragraphs, and a link that leads to the full post. Without the more tag, you will not have a link and your full post will show up on your homepage.
As we also learned in the last post, the link that the more tag creates can be unappealing to many and they may not want to click the article. So without the more tag showing, there is no link to click and access to the content requires literally no effort. - Affiliate link clicks can go up - When you make your content more available to your readers, they will be more likely to read it. When they read it, you may have interested them enough where content starts getting read more and more, and links start getting clicked more and more. If you think about it, there will be no barrier between a clicked affiliate link and one left unseen if access to your full content is right on the homepage.
Disadvantages
In my honest opinion, the disadvantages weigh out the advantages of excluding the more tag from your posts. The items in the list below are probably why so many people use the more tag rather than exclude it.
- Can create a HUGE, unappealing scrollbar -Large scrollbars are extremely unappealing to many people. If you have a large scrollbar, the chances are you have plenty of other problems with your site. Long page loading times, a cluttered look, and extreme repetition of the same styles just to name a few.
- Duplicate content - If you think about, having the full content on the homepage of your blog AND the single page of your blog can create a duplicate content issue. My SEO knowledge is not the best, but that sounds like duplicate content issues to me. And plus, if you display full posts in your archives, well, that can’t be helping you out too much either!
- Design clashes - I think that when you have all of your long posts on the same page, it will start to get very repetitive and start to look very unappealing. Yes, even you use the more tag to show shortened versions of posts, it an get repetitive. But, it looks worse design wise to show the full post and all of these different styles everywhere.
A short, but powerful list
I will admit that this list is a bit on the short side, but I tried not to write too much of the things you know already. I think the list is powerful, and each side does have its pros and cons — some that outweigh the other too.
Final Thoughts + Recommendations
So the use of the more tag in your posts has a great impact in the performance of your post. The use of the more tag in posts is the most common way to show posts throughout the blogosphere, and is probably the best for your blog in the longshot.
I do use the more tag on all of my blogs for many reasons. It’s SEO smart, it makes my designs look cleaner, doubles pageviews and many, many more reasons.
I hope you enjoyed this series, and I do look forward to hearing your thoughts and feelings on this issue. Until then, keep blogging strong!
30 Discussions
I yhink that its advantages are more powerful than disadvantages.
yet nicely written by you.
I’m not sure I 100% agree, but the benefits definitely stand out.
Alex´s last blog ..New Design, New Content – Asnio Back in Full Swing
Good post, a great disadvantage of showing all post on home page is if a post is very big and they may stretch a lot. A reader who wants to read the next post, may have to scroll down for a long time which could be very frustrating. It will be better if you adding a Read More link for the post and make it short!
Exactly! I tend to not use a site with a large scroll bar unless I really have to just because I always classify sites with long scrolling as really unorganized and hard to use. Not to say it’s always true, it just looks so unappealing.
Alex´s last blog ..New Design, New Content – Asnio Back in Full Swing
Duplicate content isn’t an issue as long as the url is in all instances the same. Let me explain, if all links point to an articles called http:mydomain.com/article-title that is fine, but if you have pointing http:mydomain.com/article-title and http:mydomain.com/category/article-title then you have a duplicate content problem. There are two solutions for this, either noindex tag, categories etc or decide on having pretty urls from the beginning, not including anything else then just domain name and post title. Hope that helps, SY
PS I decided against the more tag on most of my blog as it gives more fodder to Google to index when you have the full post displayed.
Blogging´s last blog ..How stupid can a single spammer be?
But, when the content is on the homepage http://domain.com/, then http://domain.com/article-name, AND in the category archives as http://domain.com/category/article-name/ isn’t that a problem?
Thanks for your explanation, but what I wrote above is what I was trying to point out in the article. And (I’m asking you as a guy who has little SEO knowledge) is the above an example of duplicate content?
Alex´s last blog ..New Design, New Content – Asnio Back in Full Swing
Yes, I agree. I don’t like having to scroll down the whole length of a post on a homepage to see what other posts are there. I think that’s especially a turn-off for first time visitors.
Gordie Rogers´s last blog ..Why You Should Make Lots Of Decisions Quickly.
I guess we think the same Gordie, thanks for your comment!
Alex´s last blog ..New Design, New Content – Asnio Back in Full Swing
Another great look at more tag, Alex. I always find the blog that don’t use more tag can’t show that many posts in their home page. I mean, you definitely can’t reveal like 10 posts in your index page, because that will just be too long. But with more tag, you can do that. By having more posts in your index page, you’ll increase your page views and maybe the length of visits for each visitors.
Andi | Web Marketer Depot´s last blog ..Little Known Way to Bond with Your Readers & Generate Sales
You’re right Andi. There are 16 posts on the Blogussion homepage and the scroll bar is nothing. Imagine trying to fit 16 full posts on the homepage, it would be such a mess!
Alex´s last blog ..New Design, New Content – Asnio Back in Full Swing
I never considered the duplicate content issue but that makes sense to me… Also, clever use of post images!
Nick Tart | JuniorBiz´s last blog ..Don’t Buy a Book Without Finding Where It’s Cheapest
Thanks Nick, glad you noticed.
Alex´s last blog ..New Design, New Content – Asnio Back in Full Swing
I am not a big fan of showing entire posts, is just messy from my point of view. Using tags in WP is my biggest problem and am trying to learn more about it. Thanks for the tips!
It truly is an ugly way to show posts. Blogging is all about readability, and I believe that using full posts just isn’t the way to go.
Alex´s last blog ..New Design, New Content – Asnio Back in Full Swing
Great article Alex! You made some very valid points, having a long scroll bar can increase the loading time + make your site seem like it is full of unappealing content
Bilal´s last blog ..Interview with Jean, founder of Wprecipes.com
Thanks Bilal. Loading is a very important part of your blog. It can take a three second page load to make people stop visiting your site. Whatever you can do to cut down the load time on your page, I say do it.
Alex´s last blog ..New Design, New Content – Asnio Back in Full Swing
I’m also using Thesis, without the beautiful customisation this blog has but the point is that it easily allows you to set the teaser length, I personally like that instead if the whole post in my front page
Haroun Kola´s last blog ..Foods for Women – A Vegetarian Cooking Class by Pritam Khalsa and Janine Louw
Definitely Haroun, the teaser feature is an ingenious feature and I am so glad to have it!
Alex´s last blog ..New Design, New Content – Asnio Back in Full Swing
Hey Alex, how come this article disappeared for a couple of days after you post it the first time…just plain weird.
Andi | Web Marketer Depot´s last blog ..Here are Quick Ways to Improve Your Online Productivity
I actually scheduled this post to be published a day before it should have, and I decided to take it down for a little bit then publish it when it was supposed to be published. I didn’t think many people would notice, but you caught me. :p
Alex´s last blog ..New Design, New Content – Asnio Back in Full Swing
I didn’t think displaying full post in headers would effect SEO…
What about teaser copy, surely that can’t be hurting SEO (?) but I think displaying the full post on the home page looks messy. Keep it tidy and simple.
Best
David
David´s last blog ..How to Secure Your Gmail Account
I don’t really see how teasers effect your SEO. I mean, if you decide to use a custom introduction paragraph for the teaser only and fill it with keywords, I would imagine it could help you somewhat there.
Alex´s last blog ..New Design, New Content – Asnio Back in Full Swing
Great post. All advantages and disadvantages in it. Thanks for sharing!
Volksphone´s last blog ..Usability-Schnelltest für die eigene Firmenwebsite
Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
Alex´s last blog ..New Design, New Content – Asnio Back in Full Swing
We have the same sentiments then Alex. So bloggers out there, always apply expandable posts
cleaner design, more pageviews plus digestable info. all in one 
Liane YoungBlogger´s last blog ..The Two Worst Blogging Styles in Writing That You Should Really Stay Away From
It doesn’t get much better than that!
Alex´s last blog ..New Design, New Content – Asnio Back in Full Swing
I’m strictly a partial post guy. Full posts hog too much room on your homepage. @Liane – Completely agree :]
Although, it can work out for you, if you mostly post content that is on the short side!
Jeremiah Hoyet´s last blog ..The Cost of Blogging
Thanks for the comment Jeremiah, I suppose if you read both my blogs then you would figure out I’m all teasers as well!
I’m also using more tag on almost all my blogs, (the one that is not using the more tag has very short posts, and it clearly doesn’t need that. I agree with your opinion that this solutions is SEO friendly, as it removes duplicate content.
I must add that excerpts in Wordpress are similar solutions and they can be also used, instead of using more tag.. And if you are concerned about the duplicate content, just add noindex tag to the archives and categories..
Yachts Combson´s last blog ..Isa 600 Superyacht Review with complete photos gallery
Good points you brought up. I never use the excerpt feature though, I know what it does and how it works – I just always did it with the more tag.
Thanks for commenting.
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