Want to know how to create attractive archive pages? And how to increase click-through rates to your posts or pages? Make sure to write short and appealing excerpts for every post or page. The excerpt should be a teaser to get people to read your post. In this Ask Yoast, Joost explains the importance of using excerpts.
This Ask Yoast is all about the following question:
“Why is it important to use the excerpt? Doesn’t Google consider this to be duplicate content?”
Check out the video or read the answer below!
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The importance of using an excerpt
“The excerpt is that bit of the post, that will be shown on archive pages. So, if you write a specific excerpt for a post, then that excerpt is what shows on archive pages.”
The excerpt input field in WordPress
“Sometimes it’s also shown on your front page, if the front page of your site features your blog posts. The excerpt can actually be a very good teaser to get people to read your article.”
Blog post excerpt as shown on our homepage
“The excerpt is not considered to be duplicate content. In fact having excerpts for every post prevents having duplicate content, when you have a long archive page which shows more bits of the post. So you should use the excerpt if you can. It’s a bit more work, because that means writing an excerpt for every post. But you should if you could. Good luck!”
Ask Yoast
In the series Ask Yoast we help you with your SEO question! Not sure what’s best for your site’s SEO? We’ll come to the rescue! Just send your question to ask@yoast.com .
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