WordPress Post Excerpts : Spruce Onsite SEO and Content Presentation

Onsite SEO for your Blogs

Your post in a WordPress Blogs can be displayed in a number of different places and in a number of different ways. Be it under the Tags, Category Pages, Search Results, Archives etc. What does this means?

“You get penalize by Search Engines.”

“Post Excerpts. Make sure only your Single Post Page displays full content.”

Proper Content Presentation using Post Excerpts

As good as it seems to use Post Excerpts for displaying at various places, there are few disadvantages of the same.

• Post Excerpts strips off the text formatting and remove images
• WordPress by default just uses the first few words of the post. This may not be a proper summary of the content to follow

A Simple Workaround

• Use Full Post instead of Excerpts on the Homepage.
• Cut the post with “More Quicktag” precisely where you want.

The “More QuickTag” is a tag used in WordPress to cut off large post into two parts. Part One is displayed as the excerpt and the Part Two is displayed as the user clicks on the More QuickTag.

Code

This is how default excerpt more looks like <!—more–>

Output

This is how default excerpt more looks like more

Customizing the More QuickTag

The More QuickTag can be customize in two basic ways

• Individual Posts
• All Posts

You can add a custom text in the More QuickTag every time you use it in a post.

Code

This is how default excerpt more looks like <!—more Custom Text–>

Output

This is how default excerpt more looks like Custom Text

Else you can change the “the_content() Tag” (used for displaying the full posts, found mostly in index.php or full-post.php of most themes) and have a Custom Text Link displayed on all More QuickTag Links.

Code

<?php the_content(); ?>

changed to

<?php the_content(‘Custom Text’); ?>

Output

This is how default excerpt more looks like Custom Text

What about More Tag and RSS Feeds

Earlier version of WordPress used to cut even the RSS Feeds the same way when the More QuickTag was encountered. As of WordPress 2.5 and above, the presence of the More Tag does not cuts the RSS Feeds into two parts.

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