‘More’ tag. What is it?

In many of my previous posts I told you all about the ‘More’ tag SEO issue, it was not clear to some of the bloggers. Some of my friends even contacted me for the details. Instead of giving the information about it and its issues in WordPress I found writing about it is a better way to let all know. The ‘More tag’ is actually a tag generated and inserted in the post section by a button present present above the ‘content’ section of the WordPress, used to create a ‘Read More..’ or ‘Continue reading’ link in the posts on home screen, tags, categories, pages and search pages. Well, if you think this small tag does play an important role, then you should not be calling yourself a blogger because none of the features in WordPress is useless. Every feature plays an important role and like all it does too. In this post I am going to tell you WHEN and WHEN NOT to use this tag in your blog. I am sure that I would help you.

When to use?

Ok! the ‘More’ tag comes default in WordPress installation and one can easily insert it by pressing ALT + SHIFT + T. The question which might arise in some readers is in last post I told that using more tag is not good as it creates a # tag at the end of the URL and creates a duplicate of the original post that is not good for SEO. Yeah! I told this, but this thing does not matter when is blog is just two three months old? Moreover, I am telling this because it is always suggested not to make any severe changes in a blog for first three-fourth month until the blogs get Google love. So if your blog is not too old, then use it!

When NOT to use it?

When the initial period of your blog gets overerd you are free to remove this tag and I will tell you how can you how do that just keep on reading. Now assume that initial period of your blog is overed and you want a professional blog. To make it look professional I am sure you would like to remove the dirt looking link of ‘Read more..’ or ‘Continue reading’. Moreover, now you might start caring about the SEO matter (as I assume you might have Google Love until now and does not want to get it a lost). You remove the tag there are many options like by hacking your WordPress files, but that is risky and you have to take a backup of your blog to try that. The another method is by using a plug-in called Thumbnail For Excerpts.

The idea of this plugin is to make excerpts have an image near. By default, WordPress strip every tag in excerpts, including images, so the look can be boring.

This plug-in would remove the bad looking read more links from the screen of your blog, add a thumbnail (will automatically add it by searching the post) with excerpts. The best thing about it is that you can easily change the width and the height of the thumbnail according to the color and design of your theme.

Links: Download/Instructions