We have been working with many clients to eliminate the amount of duplicate content being discovered for their businesses around the internet.
Here's a great tip (and step-by-step) for controlling and reducing your full blog post feeds out to the various directories or other sites that pull in your blog post content from either your Word Press or Blogger blog.
Word Press Settings:
Step 1: login to your Word Press Account
Step 2: select Settings > Reading from your left navigation
Step 3: in the Feed Show area, click the "Summary" radio button
Step 4: Save Settings
There are no additional steps required within the individual blog posts to insert any special tag in order to see the "continue reading" link.
Blogger Feed Settings:
Step 1: login to your Google account
Step 2: select Blogger from your Products dashboard
Step 3: on the left side, select: Settings > Other
Step 4: here you have 2 choices: Short or Until Jump Break
Option #1: Short = the feed will truncate to display the first 50 words of your blog post. The reader can access your full blog by clicking on the link automatically embedded in your blog post title.
Option #2 (recommended): Until Jump Break = the feed will truncate at the point where you have inserted a jump break in your blog post content, which is easily done when you compose your blog post (or even after it has been published). This results in the "read more" words at the end of the snippet, and links to the full blog post which is preferred.
Note #1: Both of these steps will also change how your blog posts read when you link to your blog from your website; you will no longer see the full blog posts but the "read more" link option.
Note #2: This will not alter how your blog may be feeding to the home page of your website.
Blogger: How to Insert a Jump Break
Step 1: compose your blog post
Step 2: decide where to place your jump break (it should be after the first 2-3 introductory sentences of your post)
Step 3: place your cursor at that point in the content (red arrow)
Step 4: click the torn-page icon (green arrow), which displays "insert jump break" when hovered
Step 5: observe the inserted break (again, the red arrow)
Step 6: click the orange Publish button, or the orange "Update Post" button, if you're updating previously published posts.
Should you decide to change the jump break position, simply delete it by placing your cursor before the break and repeat the steps above.
You can go back to your last 10-12 blog posts and complete these steps for practice, which will support any current blog post feeds you have that need this help.
Blogger: Update Past Blog Posts with Jump Break
Step 1: click on your blog post title(s) to open the post
Step 2: follow the insert jump link steps above
Step 3: click update post
The changes will be immediate, but you may need to refresh your browser or delete your cookies to see these changes in a blog feed; Internet Explorer is not quick about displaying these changes, so try a browser you don't normally use.
As always, let us know if we can help in any way!
