Importance of using excerpts

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.

Is there no downside to adding an excerpt to your pages? What about duplicate content? In this Ask Yoast, we discuss 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!

The importance of using excerpts

“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.”

 “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.”

“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!”

Read more: How to create the right metadescription »

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