Simple blogging tips for using the More Tag and custom Post Excerpts on your WordPress blog

If you use a traditional blogging format, several posts show up on the main page of your blog. You can set the number of posts that display under Settings > Reading.

This setting will not only control the number of posts that show on the main page, but also on the category and other archive pages. The excerpts that display on those pages are not controlled by the More Tag. They show the excerpt you create for each post (or automatically create an excerpt for you by default).

While WordPress will create an excerpt for each post automatically, you should create your own excerpt for each post. This gives you the opportunity to write a custom snippet that compels visitors to click through and read the entire post.

You do this by typing in your preferred excerpt for a blog post just below the composition window, in a box labeled “Excerpt”:

Tip: use your keyword phrase in your excerpt

The excerpt is different than using the More Tag, and you can learn more about it’s uses here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Excerpt

In addition to creating custom snippets for your category and archives pages, the Excerpt is used in Aweber’s Blog Broadcast to give your email subscribers a snippet of what each blog post is about. Using a custom excerpt can dramatically increase your click-through rate from those email notifications.

How Many Posts Should You Display?

I currently have ClickNewz set to display the six most recent blog posts, but you should set yours according to what works best with your WordPress theme. Ideally you’ll coordinate it with the length of your sidebar. This allows you to balance the content on your main page and eliminate too much “white space” either in the content area or the sidebar area.

(Since my excerpts have been a bit longer than usual lately, you’ll notice more white space below the content in the right sidebar. Not ideal.)

If you are displaying full posts instead of excerpts on the main page of your blog, that page could get quite long if you have it set to display more than one. It’s best to use ~5 post excerpts so that you can give your visitors a quick view and a sampling of your most recent content.

Using the More Tag

# more – WordPress tag that breaks a post into “teaser” and content sections. Type a few paragraphs, insert this tag, then compose the rest of your post. On your blog’s home page you’ll see only those first paragraphs with a hyperlink ((more…)), which when followed displays the rest of the post’s content. source: writing blog posts

The More Tag is used to control the way your posts display on the main page of your blog. You’ll find this tag in the menu bar at the top of your composition window. You can also type in the More Tag using this code:

(!–more–)

(you’ll need to replace the ( and ) with in the code above. So it’s a bracket, explanation point, two hyphens, the word “more”, two hyphens, and an ending bracket.)

There are two things consider when using the More Tag: how much content you want to display, and creating a lead-in to compel visitors to click through to read the rest of your blog post.

Since the More Tag is used only on the main page of your blog, this is a great way to offer new visitors a teaser of current posts and get them engaged enough to click through and read a specific blog post.

When I blog, I know that I am going to use the More Tag, and so I write my posts to lead into that More Tag. Here’s a recent example of a blog post as it showed on the main page here at ClickNewz:

The use of images before the More Tag will draw your readers eyes to the post, and a compelling statement or lead-in to your topic just before the More Tag will encourage them to click through and read the rest of the post.

Your blog post & page display formatting is important. Make good use of both Excerpts and the More Tag, and use them strategically to lead your visitors deeper into the content on your blog.

Best,

p.s. Want more great blogging tips? See http://www.probloggerworkbook.com

Not all inbound links are the same. Some links will get indexed more quickly than others, and some will carry more weight towards your Link Reputation and rankings than others.

When it comes to your link building strategy, you want to focus on the quality of your backlinks over
just the quantity or number of links you can get.

The first thing we’ll look at is how to define quality and which types of links carry more weight than others (and why), and then we’ll look at ways you can easily get those quality inbound links pointing to your pages…

The Quality of a Link

In addition to the quality of each individual backlink, your links are graded as a whole. This is why effective link building requires a variety of link types, and sources for inbound links. You are building a network, a navigation system, and that network of links and connections will be judged- not just on a link by link basis.

Factors that go into scoring the quality of a backlink include:

• Anchor Text
  Your anchor text should define the page you’re linking to, and should be the same or relevant to the keyword phrases you used to optimize that page. Anchor text is simply the text that is hyperlinked to your URL.

• Relevance of Linked Pages
  Two pages that are linked together should be related, or relevant to each other. The goal is to interlink related content across the web, with purpose.

• Link Location
  Links within the content area of a page carry more weight than links in static areas such as the navigation, sidebar, footer, etc. A contextual link is the highest quality link placement you can get on a page.

• Number of Outbound Links
  The total number of links on the page affect how much weight, or link juice, each outgoing link will receive. A link on a page with fewer outbound links will carry more weight. It will result in a higher click-through rate (CTR) as well, since there are fewer choices for visitors to click.

• Their Inbound Links
  If the page link to you has a good number of high quality inbound links, this will give your link on their page more weight. Seek out quality web pages with solid link structure for link placement.

• Follow/NoFollow
  While I subscribe to the rule of thinking that you should obtain any quality link from a relevant source that has the potential to send targeted (human) traffic to your page… for the purpose of obtaining the highest quality inbound links, you’ll want to get a good number of links that do not have the NoFollow attribute.

• PageRank
  I put this at the bottom of the list intentionally. What most people know as PageRank is really only Toolbar PageRank (TBPR) and is not actual PageRank. That said, it’s common practice to use the toolbar to get inbound links from pages with “more green” or higher PageRank. A good rule of thumb is to avoid pages with a greyed out PageRank bar (which means the page has been penalized).

Considering every single one of these factors for every inbound link you are considering can be incredibly time consuming. It can also be very rewarding, in regards to search engine optimization.

You still need a variety of link types and link sources though. A good question to ask yourself, before placing or requesting a link, is: Does this link add value to the page? Real value. People value. If so, add link.

Patience & Aging

Link Building is not a one-day task. Even if you could get all of the inbound links you need in one sitting, they wouldn’t all count right away. It takes time for your links to be found and indexed, so a little patience is required in the overall process.

Link Building is a gradual and ongoing task. You want to build your backlinks over time, and the value of those links will grow over time as well. An “aged link”, or a link that has been there for awhile, carries more weight than a brand new link.

This appears natural to the search engines versus big shots of inbound links all at once, and then nothing new for months. Or 100 new inbound links this month, that disappear at the end of the month. Google knows the difference between a link that lasts a month or two (a purchased link) and a permanent, quality inbound link.

Regarding how long it can take for your inbound links to be found and indexed, or to show up in Yahoo’s backlinks, that depends on how frequently the page (where your link is) gets spidered or crawled by the major search engines.

Tip: You can tell how recently Google has visited and cached a web page by clicking the “Cached” link beside the listing in the Google search results.

How to Get Quality Inbound Links

Given all these details, you can boil your task down to getting inbound links within the content area of a related quality web page. Ideally without the NoFollow attribute, and using your Primary Keyword Phrase as the anchor text.

How’s that for simplifying it?

Some of the easiest ways to obtain these types of high quality links include: Guest Blogging, Article Marketing, Testimonials, Interviews and Cross Blog Conversations.

Another idea, a bit more difficult to achieve, is “Link Bait” – or having something so interesting that people share it, blog about it, and link to it around the web.

We’ll discuss each of these options in more detail, along with even more link building strategies and creative ideas for getting high quality backlinks, in upcoming posts in this series. Stay tuned!

Best,

p.s. If you subscribe below you’ll receive an email every Monday with the weekly archive from ClickNewz. You’ll also have the option to subscribe to daily updates, and receive notification about hot new topics as they are published:

We’ve discussed web page optimization, link building, and an effective link building strategy… so you know that you need backlinks to your pages in order for them to rank well in the major search engines.

But how many backlinks do you need?

The answer is: the number it takes to out-rank a competing page. If both pages are equally optimized for the same keyword phrase, and in most cases even if they’re not, it’s the number of backlinks that will determine who ranks highest for that search query. But not just the number of backlinks…

Why Some Sites Rank Higher Than Others… With Fewer Backlinks

Often, when analyzing backlinks, you’ll notice that a page with fewer links outranks a page that has more. The reason for this is in the quality of those links. Link Popularity is the number of inbound links, Link Reputation is the quality of those links. Quality is determined by a number of factors:

The type of link – article directory, social bookmark, etc. The variation in link types. The location of the link (content area vs footer, for example). The relevancy of the page linking to it, the anchor text used in the link, etc.

Another factor is the total number of unique domains linking to that page. Three links from one domain will not carry as much weight as three links from three different domains.

A little digging in the competing page’s list of backlinks can usually tell you exactly what it would take to outrank that page with your own. All you need is more total links, or higher quality links than theirs.

How To Analyze Backlinks

This method works well whether you want to analyze your own backlinks, or those of a web page you are competing with for placement in the search results.

Since inbound links (off-page optimization) carry so much weight in Google rankings, this is the one area you’ll do most of your competition analysis.

Here’s the quick & easy process I use to analyze backlinks:

• Search your chosen keyword phrase at Google.com.
• Click through the top results, and view the web page.
• Copy the URL of that page from the address bar.
• Go to Yahoo.com and use the search bar…
• Type in “link:” and then paste in the URL of the page.

example- link:http://www.clicknewz.com/1993/how-to-write-a-blog-post/

That will take you to Yahoo Site Explorer and will show you the total number of inbound links to that specific web page (URL). Once you’re there, you can use the drop-down box to select “except from this domain” to exclude all of that site’s internal links and see only the inbound links from other domains.

It’s easier than it sounds once I type it all out – give it a try and you’ll see it actually only takes a minute tops. A lot of people use fancy software programs, browser plugins or various other methods. I like to keep it simple.

Let’s walk through this together so you can see exactly how it’s done:

Tip: use the buttons in the lower right hand corner of the video to view it in HQ (high quality), or to view it in full screen mode.

What you’re looking for is the total number of backlinks to that page, and the total number of external backlinks (not including the site’s own internal linking). I tend to go for less competitive keyword phrases, and rule out competing with large numbers of backlinks and/or obvious authority sites.

That said, sometimes the number of backlinks alone can be deceiving so you may want to dig a little deeper. If they have a lot of backlinks and you really want to compete for their spot, then you can analyze the quality of those backlinks.

When analyzing a list of backlinks, count the actual number of unique domains linking to that page. If there are 5 links from one domain, count that as just one. You can also click through each link in the list, and look for the backlink.

See where it is placed on the page, as links within the content area carry more weight than links in static areas of the site: sidebar, footer, navigation, etc.

How relevant is the content to the page it’s linking to? Is it a pet site linking to a dog page (relevant), or a gardening blog leading to a dog page (not relevant)?

Also see if they are using your keyword phrase as the anchor text for that link.

The most important part of that research is to count the number of instances they use your keyword phrase in the anchor text. The total number of those links… will tell you how many links you need with that exact anchor text to out-rank the page.

While you’re analyzing the backlinks of competing web pages, you’ll often find great sources for inbound links for your own page. Look at who is linking to their page, and how, and make notes of places you can get your own link on that page – or on similar pages. Your competitors backlinks are a goldmine of link sources!

Watch the video, try it out, and see for yourself how simple this is

Best,

p.s. Next we’ll look at ways to get high quality inbound links, and exactly what types of links you’ll need for your pages to rank well in the major search engines.

Be sure to subscribe below for updates by email so you don’t miss a single tutorial in this in-depth Link Building series: