Where to put ‘Read More’
March 26, 2009 ·
By using the ‘Read More’ tag well on your blog posts, you will get more subscribers clicking through to your website from their email newsletter and will improve the chances of your readers finding what they need when searching your website using categories or tags.
What is ‘Read More’?
Read more is a button you click on to determine the section of your article which readers see straight away. Anything below that code, readers will need to click the text “Read More…” to see the rest of the article.
Above the ‘Read More’ code is the excerpt readers see when they are:
- Browsing a list of your blog posts on your homepage
- Viewing your posts by category
- Viewing your posts by tag
- Using your website’s search box to find posts
- Reading your website’s email newsletter
- Go to the post you want to tag
- Click on html button instead of Visual button
- Place insertion point where you want the read more to appear
- Click on the ‘more’ button in the html menu above the post
Where should You Put ‘Read More’?
Until recently, I always thought of ‘Read More in terms of what my subscribers would see in their email newsletter before they had to click through to read the rest of the article. With this in mind, I put it 2-3 paragraphs into the article after enough information for people to want to know more about the subject I was writing about. This has always worked well except…
One of my customers pointed out the other day that when she searches my website for information using categories, instead of seeing a list with post titles and small summaries, she has to scroll endlessly through screen sized articles to find what she’s looking for.
For this reason it would be better for me to put the ‘Read More’ code after the first paragraph of each post so readers can find what they are looking for more easily. In theory, you could put ‘Read More’ at the very beginning of your post so searches only see a list of title they can then click on.
What I have decided to do to balance the needs of subscribers and readers is…
- Add the ‘Read More’ in the “newsletter” position when I first publish a post.
- Once the newsletter has sent, move the ‘Read More’ to the top of the post after the first paragraph.
See the Difference
Search the Google Category of this website to see a list of posts showing only a short excerpt.
Search the Plugins Category of my website to see a long list with the ‘Read More’ still in its “newsletter” position
Note that I will be changing all my posts to the short version over the next few weeks so the Plugins Category may also be condensed by the time you read this.
What to Write Above ‘Read More’
The content above your ‘Read More’ code should read like a summary or teaser for the rest of your post. This is often all readers see when searching through your posts so it needs to entice them to click to read more.
When writing your first paragraph imagine that this is the only thing your readers will see. It is a good idea to summarise what they will learn in the rest of the post even if you repeat yourself later on.
Think of the first paragraph as a stand-alone!
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Categories: Blogging, Website Ideas, Wordpress Tutorials
Tags: blog writing tips, easy blog browsing, read more tag, searching by category
Chief website designer at Creative Web Ideas and author of the Creative Web Ideas blog. If you enjoyed this post - Subscribe to our Email Newsletter to receive future posts by email (once a month).
Great advice Jo. I arrived at a similar solution…just enough of a hook in the newsletter to entice more flow to my blog and thus my full site and different categories of website advice.
I find that some readers subscribe to only a few categories yet I suspect they would benefit from reading other category posts. Once in the site they can easily see short descriptions of other articles. It’s a big ask for readers to know which categories to subscribe to when they are a brand new reader. I find they often don’t switch.
Also, good advice on moving the Read more…after the notification goes out. I’ve done this intuitively. I wanted the near full post to go out in the email because it was a very busy time of year…I’m thinking my Christmas Wish List…and feared readers would delete quickly. I wanted them to be able to scan the whole thing in their email. Later I didn’t want the long article sitting there taking up so much viewing room. People hate to scroll, so do I.
Thanks again. Cheers, Kath
Talking about subscribing to categories…there is a box under the Post Notification settings where you can select ‘No’ so readers don’t get to choose categories. Maybe this option would work better for some blogs. If you choose this option you also have to alter the wording of the templates you see when subscribing and confirming your subscription.
Great bit of advice it was just what I have been looking for but was struggling to explain it when searching for it.
How does using the “Read More” on your home page blog affect Search Engines?
Hi Maureen,
I don’t think it does as they don’t really take any notice of it and index the entire post.