Shorten up the text on the index of the blog

[Philip]

Greetings all,

I have a problem that is cutting my nerves all morning.

I'm trying to figure how can i shorten up the text on the index of a blog and after i click on the topic to see all it's content?

please help me

10x

 

[sofia.khani]

I've been trying to add a tree structure to my blog for index as well, haven't been able to, if you find out how, please tell me 2

 

[Philip]

will do if i find how

 

[Teli]

Hello Philip,
Your question would be easier to answer if we knew what was powering your blog. For instance, are you hosted on Blogger or WordPress.com or are you running your own installation of blogging software such as WordPress or Movabletype? Once we know what you're using, we may be able to offer you some alternatives.

If you're using WordPress, I've written an article that goes over how to shorten content on your archives/index page called Three Easy WordPress Techniques to Help You Avoid Duplicate Content Penalties, which is copied below for convenience. Hope it helps.

~ Teli

You may have heard of Google’s duplicate content penalty which condemns certain web pages to languish in supplemental index purgatory. In fact, some of your blog’s pages may be there now and affecting your rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

When googlebot crawls a site’s pages and finds two or more that have significantly similar content, those duplicate pages may be relegated to the supplemental index. This doesn’t mean your site is banned, it means that your supplemental page won’t show up in the SERPs unless there aren’t enough results for the search query.

Since the news of duplicate content penalties has been spreading, it’s finally reached the blogging world and many are scrambling to find a solution for the way a WordPress blog displays its content. If you’re currently running a WordPress blog, then there’s no reason for you to fear; three quick and simple changes can help you to avoid the duplicate content penalty.

Optimize Your Archive and Category Pages

The archive and category pages are where a majority of the duplicate content problems arise. This happens because some themes publish the entire post’s content which gives off the illusion that a post was published in more than one place, although it truly wasn’t. To quickly get around this problem, you’ll need to turn those full posts into partial summaries.

Time for action: Open your theme’s archive.php file (and category.php, if it exists) using a plain text or HTML editor. A free one can be downloaded from PSPad. When you have the files open, change “the_content()” to “the_excerpt()”, save the changes, and upload the updated file to your blog.

Your Homepage Needs Attention, Too

The homepage of a blog usually suffers from the same problem as the archive and category pages, especially as you continue through the various pages of older entries. Although you could just as easily convert the full content into excerpts as you did for the archive pages, it’s not the ideal solution. Your homepage relies on the index file as do other sections of the blog. Altering this file may make sweeping, and undesirable, changes across the blog.

Luckily there is a solution, without getting into advanced template editing techniques. You can truncate your posts by using the "more" tag; however, if you already have a number of posts, then it may be better to use a plugin which will automatically truncate the post for you after a paragraph or two.

Time for action: Download the free Evermore WordPress plugin from Evermore: a WordPress plugin ? Semicolon and install it on your blog. After activating it, verify that it’s working as intended and that your homepage posts are shortened to one or two paragraphs with a link to continue reading.

Internal Link Structure Matters

Now that you’ve gone through the steps of removing potentially duplicate content, it’s time to tell the search engines where to find the right pages to index. This is where a strong internal link structure comes into play. The goal is to make sure that the permalink can be found from your homepage, the archive and category pages using relevant anchor text.

On your homepage, archives, and category pages, make sure that your post title is linked to the permalink page. Many themes will already do this, but double check. Also, avoid using terms like “permalink” or “post link” when linking to the individual posts.

Another way to boost your internal link structure is with a human readable sitemap page. The sitemap page should contain a link to each of your individual blog entries using the entry title as the anchor text. When the sitemap page is created, make sure it is linked to from each page of the blog.

Time for action: Download the free sitemap WordPress plugin from Sitemap Generator Plugin for Wordpress ? Dagon Design and install it on your blog. Create your sitemap page according to the plugin instructions, adjust the options until everything is to your liking, and double check to make sure it’s working as intended.

Curbing duplicate content penalties doesn’t need to be a difficult or involved process. In less than 30 minutes, your blog can be enhanced by using excerpts on the archive and category pages, truncating posts on the front page, and sprucing up your internal linking structure. Making those small changes will have you off to a great start.

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Teli Adlam is a blog consultant specializing in website and blog marketing. Visit WordPress SEO and Blog Marketing to learn more about WordPress, blogging, and traffic generation. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter for even more tips and techniques.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Phillip, buried in Teli's very informative article is a great tip and possibly the one you are looking for. It's easily overlooked and I had to ask Teli how to do it.
It's so simple you'll hit yourself in the head. (Or at least I did.)

If you are using WordPress there is a More button in the "write a post" editing panel. That will break your post wherever you insert it and add a "continue reading" link to read the full post.

What I've been doing lately, that I think is smart, but maybe not?
For the 1st day or 2 a new blog entry is up I leave the full post on the index page so its easier for people to read the whole thing and for spiders to read it all. Then a couple days later I go in and break it with the more tag after a couple paragraphs to make it easier for people to scan lots of articles on my index page.

Go to my blog 5 Star Affiliate Blogs. Scroll down the 1st super long one or 2 and then you will see shorter ones with a link that says "Read the rest of this entry ?". That's where I have used the more button.

What I like about using the more button for each post instead of a plug-in is that, based on the content of each post, I can decide the best place to "break" it.

Hope this helps and best of luck!

 

[Philip]

Teli, Linda I'm very thankful for the info, but the problem is that my blog is hosted on Blogger on those things probably won't work. I've something on blogger but the code i put on my Layout doesn't work . Maybe I'll leave it this way if i don't find a solution... But I'll keep beating my head to the wall until i know if it can be done or not... Appreciate the Post, once again 10x

If you have any info on blogger please let me know

 

[Teli]

Hello Philip,
AFAIK, Blogger doesn't have a function that allows posts to be truncated on the front page with a link to continue reading the entry. You'd need to jerryrig a solution; if you're trying to do this for more of a SEO benefit, then this <a href="http://www.standardsforlife.com/how-to-blogger-excerpts">CSS solution</a> may not be ideal, however, if you're doing it for reader benefit, then it may work for you.

Maybe one day Blogger will step up and start allowing excerpts for its blog entries. :/

~ Teli

 

[TheCaymanHost]

Hi Philip

For all I know you may have read these already but the following links explain how to truncate your posts in Blogger and will lead you to lots of Blogger experts if you get stuck with it.

Blogger Help : How can I create expandable post summaries?

in the official Blogger help section and also at Beta Blogger For Dummies here

Dummies Guide to Google Blogger Beta: Expandable Post Summaries

As far as I can make out this will only work for posts made after you implement the changes

Mo.

 

[amoona]

Good answer. I met this problem too.