Wednesday, October 19, 2022

How to Create Mobile Popups That Convert (Without Hurting SEO)

Do you want to use mobile popups on your website?

Mobile popups can be very effective for lead generation, increasing sales, and getting more app downloads, but you need to design them the right way. Otherwise, you could end up harming your website’s search engine rankings.

In this guide, we will share how to create mobile popups that have high conversion without hurting your SEO rankings.

How to create mobile popups that convert in WordPress

How Could Mobile Popups Hurt Your SEO?

Mobile popups could harm your WordPress SEO efforts if they go against Google’s guidelines. Google states that sites may be ranked lower in mobile search for using intrusive interstitials or intrusive popups.

If your page has a popup that appears immediately, then Google can penalize that page. This means your page will not rank as high in Google’s search results as it otherwise would have.

Google doesn’t want your popup to cover all or most of the page before the user gets to see the content. These are some examples from Google of what they want you to avoid.

Google interstitials example

So you might be wondering, then why risk creating popups on mobile?

The short answer is that it helps you increase conversion rates, which results in more leads and sales. This is why many smart business owners and marketers continue to use popups on both mobile and desktop.

The important part is that you must create your mobile popups the RIGHT way so it doesn’t impact your SEO rankings.

How to Create Mobile Friendly Popups That Won’t Hurt Your SEO Rankings

There are several ways to create mobile popups that won’t hurt your SEO rankings. You could:

  • Create a full-screen popup that only appears after a delay.
  • Create a banner or slide-in that only covers a smaller part of the screen.
  • Only use immediate full-screen popups for legal notices. Examples of these include cookie permissions and age verification popups. These aren’t penalized by Google.

In our example, we’ll cover how to create a full-screen popup that only appears after the user has been on your site for a certain length of time. However, we’ll also share best practices and tactics that you can use to add smart display rules for further optimization.

Creating a Mobile-Only Popup With OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the easiest way to create a mobile-only popup. It’s the most popular lead generation tool on the market and has a powerful WordPress popup builder.

First, you need to visit the OptinMonster website and register for an account. Simply click the ‘Get OptinMonster Now’ button to continue.

OptinMonster

While all their templates are mobile responsive, you need the Pro account to unlock mobile-specific display targeting rules.

After registering, you need to install and activate the OptinMonster plugin on your WordPress site. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon installation, you should see the welcome screen and the setup wizard. Go ahead and click the ‘Connect Your Existing Account’ button and follow the on-screen instructions.

Connect your existing account

Next, a new window will now open asking you to connect your WordPress website to OptinMonster.

You can click the ‘Connect to WordPress’ button to continue.

Connect OptinMonster to WordPress

Once your OptinMonster account is connected, you are ready to create a mobile popup.

You can head to OptinMonster » Campaigns in your WordPress admin and click the ‘Create Your First Campaign’ button.

Create your first campaign

You will be taken to the OptinMonster campaign builder, where you can choose a campaign type and template.

Simply leave the Campaign Type set to ‘Popup.’

Choose campaign type

Next, OptinMonster will show you multiple templates for your popup campaign.

First, click the ‘Device/Mobile’ tab and select the ‘Mobile Specific (Optimized)’ device filter. From here, you can select any template for your campaign.

Filter mobile responsive templates

When you choose a template, a window will open.

Simply enter a name for your campaign and click the ‘Start Building’ button.

Click start building

The template will automatically load the popup’s optin view in the OptinMonster builder. Customizing the content or adding new items with the drag & drop interface is easy.

You can drag any block from the menu on your left and drop it on the template. For example, you can add an image, button, countdown timer, and more.

Customize your mobile popup

Besides that, the plug lets you customize existing elements on the template.

For instance, to change the default text, you just need to click on it and type the text you want to use.

Further customize existing elements

You also need to edit the ‘Success’ view. This will be what users see after they enter their email addresses.

To edit the Success view, simply click on the Success tab at the bottom of the screen.

Edit the success view

Once you’re happy with both the optin view and the success view, don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button at the top of the screen.

Setting the Display Rules for Your Mobile Popup

Now, it’s time to set the display rules for your popup. First, you need to click the ‘Display Rules’ tab at the top of your screen.

The default rule is for your popup to show after users have been on your site for 5 seconds. You can increase this time period if you want.

Set up display rules

You can also add other mobile-safe targeting rules to unlock further optimizations such as:

  • Exit Intent for Mobile – this will only show the popup if the user hits the back button or is about to close the tab.
  • Inactivity Sensor – this will only show the popup after the user has stopped being active on the site for a certain number of seconds.
  • Scroll Trigger Popups – this will only show the popup after the user scrolls down a certain percentage of the page.
  • Button Click by MonsterLinks – this will only show the popup if the user clicks on a specific button.

Your popup uses a Mobile Optimized template. This means it will automatically only display on mobile devices.

Next, you can select the pages on which the popup will appear.

By default, the rule will be set to ‘current URL path is any page.’ This means that your popup will appear on all posts and pages of your site.

Choose pages to show your campaign on

You can then click the ‘Next Step’ button.

OptinMonster will then allow you to add an animation and sound effect when your mobile popup appears.

Choose sound effect and effects for campaign

After that, you can click the ‘Next Step’ button.

You will now see a summary of your display rules. At this stage, you can edit your settings and make changes to your campaign.

Summary of display rules

Next, you can go to the ‘Integrations’ tab and add an email marketing service such as Constant Contact. OptinMonster integrates with most major platforms, so you will just need to select the one you use.

If you don’t have one, WPBeginner readers can get 20% off their first 3 months with Constant Contact.

Simply click the ‘+ Add New Integration’ button from the panel on your left and choose your email marketing tool.

Integrate an email marketing service

Next, you can go to the ‘Published’ tab at the top.

After that, make sure the ‘Publish Status’ is changed from ‘Draft’ to ‘Publish.’

Publish your mobile campaign

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button at the top of the screen and close the campaign builder.

Putting Your OptinMonster Campaign Live on Your Website

Your OptinMonster campaign won’t automatically go live on your WordPress website. Instead, you need to log in to your WordPress admin and go to OptinMonster » Campaigns.

You should now see your new mobile popup campaign listed here. Then, click the ‘Change Status’ link below your campaign’s name and select the ‘Publish’ option under the Status column.

Change the status to published

Now, your campaign will be live on your WordPress website. Go ahead and view it by going to your site on a mobile device.

Simply wait for the length of time you specified in the display rules, and your popup should appear. Here’s our popup live on our demo site.

Preview of mobile popup

Other Types of Mobile Popups That Won’t Harm Your Mobile SEO Rankings

Aside from time-delayed and user interaction popups in OptinMonster, you could create a floating bar, slide-in, or inline option. Google won’t consider these intrusive, so you don’t have to worry about your SEO taking a hit.

  • A floating bar optin can appear at the top or bottom of the user’s screen, without covering up the content.
  • A popup can slide in from the bottom or side of the website, usually after a time delay.
  • An inline optin can sit within the content itself, part way through a page or post.

Simply select one of these types when you begin building your campaign. You will then see the templates you can use.

Different types of campaigns

We hope this article helped you learn how to create mobile popups that won’t hurt your SEO. You might also like our article on the best WordPress plugins for business websites, and how to choose the best WordPress hosting.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Create Mobile Popups That Convert (Without Hurting SEO) first appeared on WPBeginner.


October 19, 2022 at 11:22PM

How to Use AI to Generate Images in WordPress

Do you want to use artificial intelligence tools like DALL.E to generate images in WordPress?

AI-generated images can be a good alternative to generate images for your WordPress blog posts without worrying about copyright.

In this article, we’ll show you how to use AI to generate images in WordPress.

Using AI tools like DALL.E to make images for WordPress websites

Why Use AI Tools to Generate Images for Your WordPress Website?

There are a ton of paid stock image websites offering images to use on your WordPress website for a small fee.

However, the cost of these images is an extra expense. Most bloggers and small businesses don’t have the budget for that.

There are certainly many websites that offer royalty free images like Unsplash or ShutterStock‘s limited free library.

But those images are highly overused and often too generic.

Now, the best way to create images for your website is by making your own images or using your own photographs. But not everyone is a professional photographer or digital artist.

This is where artificial intelligence comes in.

AI tools like DALL.E can generate unique artwork from text descriptions provided by the users.

These images are not only unique but highly creative and artistic.

For instance, here is an image of an office desk with a sunset backdrop generated by DALL.E 2. It mimics the style of generic stock image photos that you can find on hundreds of websites.

DALL.E 2 mimicking generic stock photo style

Now take a look at this example of an artwork created by DALLE.2.

This one is artistic, more colorful, and in a comic book style.

DALL.E comic book style artwork

You can see the variety of styles, topics, and ideas you can use on the DALL.E homepage.

The best part is that you are free to use these images for your blog posts, articles, and even landing pages.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily use AI-generated images in WordPress.

We’ll be showing you two methods using two different AI tools, you can choose one that works best for you.

1. Generate AI Images for WordPress with DALL.E 2

DALL.E 2 is an Artificial Intelligence tool made by Open A.I. It is quite popular for its artistic rendering, surrealism, creativity, and versatility.

There are no plugins available to integrate DALL.E 2 directly with your WordPress website.

However, you can create images on DALL.E 2 website and download them to your computer. After that, you can upload those images to your WordPress website.

First, you need to visit the DALL.E 2 website and sign up for a free account which gives you 50 credits for your first month.

Upon signing up, you’ll see the DALL.E dashboard with a prompt field and some recent artworks generated by DALL.E.

DALL-E dashboard

Type a text description of the image that you want to generate in the prompt field. You can be as descriptive and creative as you want.

Click on the Surprise Me button to see some examples of prompts you can generate.

Once you click on the Generate button, the AI will generate images based on the prompt you provided and show you four results.

Images generated using the prompt

You can download all of them to your computer if you want. You can also click on any of the generated images to edit them.

The image editor in DALL.E allows you to expand the frame or pan in. You can also erase or retouch an area of the image.

Edit image in DALL.E 2

Click on the Generate button again for AI to regenerate the image based on your changes.

Once you have downloaded the images to your computer you can switch back to the admin area of your WordPress website.

You can now upload the image to your WordPress media library by visiting the Media » Add New page.

Upload image to WordPress media library

You can also add an image directly to your WordPress posts and pages. Simply edit the post or page where you want to display the image.

On the post edit screen, add the Image block and then upload the image from your computer.

Adding image to WordPress post and pages

What is The License Used for Images Generated by DALL.E 2?

You retain the copyright for the images generated by the prompt provided by you to DALL.E 2.

You can use the images anywhere you want including your WordPress website, YouTube videos, eBooks, magazine, and more.

2. Use Imajinn to Generate AI Images in WordPress

For the first method, we’ll be using Imajinn AI to generate images in WordPress.

Imajinn AI is similar to the tools like DALL.E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion. It generates images using artificial intelligence based on the prompt you provide.

First, you need to install and activate the Imajinn plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: The base plugin is free and gives you 10 credits. After that, you can buy more credits from the plugin’s website.

Upon activation, you need to visit the Media » Imajinn AI to configure plugin settings and generate images.

First, you need to sign up by providing an email address and password to create your account.

Register free account

After that, you will be able to start generating images using Imajin AI.

Simply provide a detailed prompt describing the image that you want to generate.

You can also choose from a list of styles, artist style, style modifier filters, and aspect ratio to further customize your prompt.

Image prompt

Below that you can choose to click on the Summon button to launch the Prompt Genie tool.

Based on the prompt description you provided the tool will suggest further prompt ideas to generate the best possible image.

Prompt genie

You can click on the generate button to use a suggested prompt, or continue writing your own prompt by copying ideas from the suggestions.

Once you are satisfied, click on the Generate button to continue.

The plugin will now start generating images using the AI tool running on the cloud. Once finished, it will display four variations of images for you to choose from.

Imajinn generated images

Below each image, you’ll find options to share the image, repair faces (The AI is not great at generating human faces), or touch up the image.

You can also just click on the Save button to store an image in your WordPress media library.

image toolbar

To use the image in your WordPress posts and pages, simply edit the post or page where you want to add the image.

On the post-edit screen, add the Image block where you want to display the image and then click on Media Library.

Adding image to your post and pages

Next, you need to select the image you saved earlier from your Media Library and provide an Alt text for the image.

After that, go ahead and click on the Select button to insert the image.

Image added to WordPress post

The plugin also comes with a Imajinn block that you can add to your post or pages and generate an image inside the block editor.

Imajinn block

What is The License Used for Images Generated by Imajinn AI?

All images generated by Imajinn AI are provided under the free domain or CC0 license.

You are free to use them on your website as you see fit.

We hope this article helped you learn how to use Artificial Intelligence to generate images for your WordPress website. You may also want to see our ultimate image SEO guide and these easy tips to optimize images for speed.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Use AI to Generate Images in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.


October 19, 2022 at 03:41PM

Tuesday, October 18, 2022

How to Create a Simple Event Calendar with Sugar Calendar

Do you want to add an event calendar to your WordPress website?

A calendar is a great way to share in-person and virtual events with your visitors. You can use one to promote your upcoming events, get more people to attend, and help with brand awareness.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily create a simple event calendar in WordPress with Sugar Calendar.

How to create a simple event calendar with Sugar Calendar

Why Create a Simple Event Calendar For Your WordPress Website?

By adding a calendar in WordPress, you can show upcoming events to your visitors.

This makes it easy for people to learn about your upcoming webinars, virtual retreats, online sermons, coaching calls, and more. In this way, a calendar can promote your events and encourage more people to attend.

If you have a membership website or a forum, then you can even accept user-submitted events. This is a great way to build a community, attract new visitors, and keep your calendar updated with the latest events. You’ll also save time since you don’t need to research upcoming events and add them to the calendar yourself.

With that being said, let’s see how you can add a simple event calendar to your site.

How to Create a Simple Event Calendar in WordPress

The easiest way to add an event calendar to WordPress is by using Sugar Calendar. It is the best WordPress calendar plugin and has everything you need to create multiple calendars, set start and end times for your events, sync with Google Calendar, and more.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Sugar Calendar plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, head over to the Calendar » Settings page. Here, you can enter your license key into the ‘License Key’ field.

Adding a license to Sugar Calendar

You’ll find this key by logging into your Sugar Calendar account. It’s also in the email you got when you purchased Sugar Calendar.

After that, click on the ‘Verify’ button to check that your license key is valid. Finally, you can click on ‘Save Changes’ to store your settings.

Verifying the Sugar Calendar license in WordPress

Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to create a calendar by going to Calendar » Calender.

Here, click on the ‘Calendars’ tab.

Creating a new calendar in WordPress

You can now click on the ‘Add Calendar’ button.

This opens a popup where you can type a title into the ‘Name’ field. Sugar Calendar lets you create multiple calendars, but it only adds a single calendar view to your site. Visitors can switch between the different calendar views using a dropdown menu.

That being said, the ‘Name’ should help visitors tell the difference between the various calendars.

Giving your simple event calendar a name

Similar to child pages, you can arrange calendars in parent-child relationships.

Children appear beneath their parents in the WordPress dashboard, so this can be a useful way to organize your calendars. This is particularly true if you have lots of different calendars.

All calendars are parent calendars by default. To create a child calendar, you’ll need to open the ‘Parent’ dropdown and then choose the calendar that you want to use as the parent.

Next, you can add an optional description. Depending on your WordPress theme, this may appear next to the calendar on your website, but not all themes show the calendar description. If you do add a description, then always check that it shows up on your WordPress website.

Finally, you may want to add a color that will appear next to the calendar in your WordPress dashboard. This color-coding can help you group related calendars together, or easily identify a particular calendar.

Organizing the calendars on your WordPress blog

To add a color, simply click on the ‘Select Color’ switch and then make your selection using the controls that appear.

When you’re happy with the information you’ve entered, click on ‘Add New Calendar’ to go ahead and create your first Sugar Calendar.

Creating a color-coded WordPress calendar

You can create multiple calendars simply by repeating the same process described above.

Adding Events in Sugar Calendar

Once you’ve created a calendar, you’re ready to add events to that calendar.

To start, select the ‘Events’ tab and then click on the ‘Add Event’ button.

Adding events to your WordPress blog calendar

You can now add all the information about your event, such as date and time, duration, and whether or not it is recurring.

First, you’ll want to go ahead and give the event a name.

How to add events to an online calendar

Then, add a start time and end date. If the event will last all day, then you can simply check the ‘All-day’ box.

Another option is to set a start and end time, as you can see in the following image.

Adding a date and time to an event

By default, Sugar Calendar creates all events as one-time events. However, some events are recurring. For example, you might run a webinar every Monday morning or have a monthly meetup for all the volunteers at your nonprofit organization.

To create a recurring event, simply select the ‘Recurrence’ tab, and then choose an option from the ‘Repeat’ dropdown, such as Daily, Weekly, or Monthly.

Create a repeating event in WordPress

You can also set an optional ‘End Repeat’ date, which is when the event stops recurring. For example, you might only plan to run webinars until the end of the year.

If you’re organizing an in-person event, then you can also select the ‘Location’ tab and type in where this event will take place.

Creating an in-person event with a location

Next, enter some information about the event in the ‘Details’ box.

This works exactly the same as the WordPress classic editor so you can add images, videos, and formatting.

Adding an optional description to an event

You can also add a featured image, which will appear on the event’s page. This can make the page more engaging and may also be used in search results and on social media news feeds.

To add a featured image, simply click on ‘Set featured image’ and then either choose an image from the media library or upload a new file.

How to create an event with a featured image

In the ‘Calendars’ section, find the calendar where you want to add this event.

You can then click to select its radio button.

How to add an event to a calendar in WordPress

You can also create a new calendar in this section, simply by clicking on the ‘Add New Calendar’ button.

This adds some settings where you can give the new calendar a name and assign it an optional parent calendar.

Creating more digital calendars for your website

Once you’ve entered all the information, just click on the ‘Publish’ button.

You can repeat this process to add more events to the calendar.

Putting Your Events Calendar on Your Website

You can add a calendar to any post or page using shortcode. If you’ve created multiple calendars then visitors can switch between these different calendars using a dropdown.

An event calendar on a WordPress website

We’ll add the calendar to a new WordPress page, but the steps will be similar no matter where you’re adding the calendar.

First, go to Pages » Add New in your admin panel. If you want to add it to an existing page, simply click ‘Edit’ under its name on Pages » All Pages.

Then, give your page a title and add any categories and tags that you want to use.

You can then click on the ‘+’ icon to create a new block and type in ‘Shortcode.’ When the right block appears, click on it to add it to the page.

How to add a shortcode block to a page or post

Next, copy the shortcode[sc_events_calendar] into the shortcode block. For more details, please see our guide on how to add a shortcode in WordPress.

You can now publish or update the page to make the calendar live on your website.

A calendar, created using Sugar Calendar

To see more information about an event in the calendar, simply click on it.

This will open the event’s page showing the time, date, and any other details.

A webinar event page, created using Sugar Calendar

Sugar Calendar also has a widget that you can add to any widget-ready area of your WordPress theme. This is an easy way to add a calendar to every page of your website or WordPress blog.

The widget also lets you set a default calendar, which will be selected in the dropdown menu. This gives you more control over which events visitors see.

To add a widget in WordPress, simply go to Appearance » Widgets. Here, click on the blue ‘+’ button.

The WordPress widget editor

You can then type in ‘Sugar Calendar.’

There are a few different Sugar Calendar widgets, so make sure you select the ‘Event Calendar’ widget.

The Sugar Calendar widget

Now simply drag and drop the widget onto the area where you want to show the calendar.

At this point, you can add an optional title and change the size of the calendar.

Configuring the Sugar Calendar widget

To change the default calendar, open the ‘Calendar’ dropdown and then choose an option from the list.

By default, Sugar Calendar will show the current month when the page loads, but you may prefer to show a different month instead. To make this change, simply type a new date into the ‘Default Month & Year’ field.

How to set up the Sugar Calendar widget

Once you’re finished, don’t forget to click on the ‘Update’ button. Your Sugar Calendar widget will now show up on your site!

We hope this article helped you learn how to create a simple event calendar with Sugar Calendar. You might also like our article on the best email marketing services and best push notification software, so you can keep your users updated about new events and activities.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Create a Simple Event Calendar with Sugar Calendar first appeared on WPBeginner.


October 18, 2022 at 11:52PM

Full Post vs Summary (Excerpt) in WordPress Archive Pages?

Are you wondering whether you should use an excerpt instead of full posts in your archive pages?

A summary helps provide a quick glimpse to your visitors about your content. Users can read through the short excerpt and decide if they’d like to view the entire blog. However, using the full post may get more eyes on the content because it doesn’t require extra action on the user’s part. But which is better?

In this article, we will compare full post vs summary (excerpt) in your WordPress archive pages.

Full post vs summary in your WordPress

What is an Excerpt and How to Add It in WordPress?

An excerpt is a short summary of an article that you can display on the archive pages in WordPress. The excerpt also has a link that users can click to read the whole article.

If you have limited space on your WordPress site, then excerpts are great for showing descriptions of your content.

By default, WordPress will use the starting 55 words of a blog post and show it as an excerpt. However, you can also manually add an excerpt.

Adding Excerpts in WordPress Posts

First, you’ll need to add a new post or edit an existing one. Once you’re in the WordPress content editor, you can click the ‘gear’ icon at the top right corner to open the settings panel.

Next, scroll down to the ‘Excerpt’ section and add your text in the ‘Write an excerpt (optional)’ field.

Add an excerpt in WordPress

When you’re done, simply publish or update your blog post.

Adding Excerpts in WordPress Pages

If you need to add a summary to a WordPress page, then you’ll notice that there’s no option to add an excerpt. However, you can simply add the following code to your website:

add_post_type_support( 'page', 'excerpt' );

To add the code, you’ll need to install and activate the WPCode plugin. For more details please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, head to Code Snippets » Add Snippet from your WordPress dashboard, and then select the ‘Add Your Custom Code (New Snippet)’ option.

WPCode Add new Snippet

Next, you can enter a name for your code snippet.

After that, simply paste the snippet in the ‘Code Preview’ area and select the ‘PHP Snippet’ from the Code Type dropdown menu.

Add code snippet for excerpt pages

From here, you can scroll down to the ‘Insertion’ section and select where you’d like to add the snippet on your site.

Next, click on the ‘Location’ dropdown menu and choose the ‘Run Everywhere’ option under ‘PHP Snippets Only.’

Run the snippet everywhere

After entering the code, you can click the toggle at the top to activate the snippet and then click the ‘Save Snippet’ button.

This will add an ‘Excerpt’ meta box in the settings panel in your WordPress editor, where you can easily provide a short summary for your page.

Save and activate code snippet WPCode

Please see our tutorial on how to add excerpts to your pages in WordPress for more information.

That said, let’s see the advantages of using a summary vs a full post in archive pages.

Benefits of Using Summary vs Full Post in Archives

When optimizing your site for a better user experience, choosing between excerpts and full posts in archive pages can play a huge role. You want users to easily browse the website, find what they are looking for, and improve search engine ranking.

With summaries, you can provide an improved user experience. It helps users find the content they want to read. Plus, it keeps your page organized and allows you to display multiple posts on a page. This would be very difficult if you show full posts in archives.

That said, here’s a closer look at why we recommend using summary (excerpts) vs full posts on your WordPress site’s archive pages.

1. Improves Page Load Time

Did you know Google now uses your site speed as a ranking factor? The search engine will rank fast-loading websites higher than the ones that take a lot of time to load fully.

By using excerpts on your archive pages, you significantly improve the page load time.

Imagine an archive page that shows 10 posts per page. If each of those 10 pages is 500+ words long with 5 images each, then your user has a lot to scroll through. The page will also load slower than normal.

By using excerpts, you can significantly improve the user experience.

Here’s a preview of how a short summary appears on WPBeginner when you view the archive pages.

Preview summary on WPBeginner

Users can load and browse through our category, tags, date, and other archive pages quickly and easily. As for search engines, you will see a boost in rankings for archive pages and improvement in WordPress SEO with faster page load times.

2. Prevents Duplicate Content

By showing excerpts on your archive pages, you can prevent being flagged for duplicate content in search engines.

For example, WordPress by default has category, tags, date, and author archives. Publishing full posts in archives will make each article appear at full length on several different pages on your site.

Even though search engines are quite smart in finding canonical URLs for each post, they can still flag the site for duplicate content which will affect your search engine rankings.

3. Increases Pageviews and Reduces Bounce rate

Using summaries or excerpts can reduce the bounce rate and increase pageviews. Users can click through to the full post in order to read the entire article.

If you just have full posts displayed in the archive pages, then people will not see any other elements that are on the blog page itself, such as a popular posts widget inside the post or page content.

By displaying the full post, users might just leave your site after looking at a single page instead of clicking around.

A summary makes your archive page more engaging and allows your readers to see find more content easily.

Disadvantages of Using Summary vs Full Post in Archives

1. Short Excerpts Provide Poor User Experience

If you don’t set an excerpt for blog posts, then WordPress will automatically create a summary using the first 55 words in the article. This is too short, and sometimes your sentences will be cut in half, resulting in a poor user experience.

You can always change the excerpt length in a WordPress theme, but that doesn’t fix the problem entirely.

One solution is to write a custom excerpt in the content editor before publication. Another solution is to write short, catchy introductions that will most likely make the user interested and can easily work as excerpts.

2. Hidden Content

Some users prefer to read everything on one page rather than having to go to a different page to read the entire article. This is useful if you have short blog posts that don’t contain many images.

These users are likely to stay on your site longer, even if they don’t click on any other pages, which is also a metric that Google uses to determine search engine rankings.

Should You Use Full Post or Summary in Archive Pages?

If your articles are short and do not contain a lot of images, then you can get away with displaying full posts on your archive pages.

However, in most cases, we always recommend using a summary or excerpts for your archive pages. Most WordPress themes come with a built-in option that allows you to choose between full posts vs excerpts from the settings.

Excerpts provide a better user experience and make your site look clean and organized. You can boost user engagement, increase pageviews, and show multiple articles on your archive pages.

We hope that this article answered the question of whether you should use a full post or summary in your WordPress archive pages. You may also want to see our guide on how to move a WordPress from HTTP to HTTPS and WooCommerce made simple.

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The post Full Post vs Summary (Excerpt) in WordPress Archive Pages? first appeared on WPBeginner.


October 18, 2022 at 06:02PM