You may not have noticed how long your home page is. Take a minute to go look at it. Does it seem to go on forever? How often do you think people actually scroll all the way to the bottom to see that new ad or badge you’ve displayed in the sidebar, or – even more important – that great post that’s now buried under the weight of everything above it?
Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk (flickr)
How to Manage the Length of Your Home Page
You can control how long your home page is. If you use WordPress, WordPress.com or Blogger, you can do this by
- Reducing the number of posts that show up on the home page,
- Making use of the <–More!–> tag in your posts when you draft them, and
- Reducing the number of widgets/gadgets in your sidebar.
How many posts should you display on your home page?
My suggestion is to display your 5 most recent posts on your home page. If you don’t write regularly, though, you might display only 2 or 3, or even 1. The reason you would display fewer entries if you don’t post regularly is so that it isn’t as noticeable. If readers show up and discover that you average about 6 months between posts… that might not be such a good thing for your blog. Tip: if you don’t write regularly and don’t plan to, remove the date from your posts, on your homepage as well as on the post’s main page.
The ‘More’ tag
The ‘More’ tag cuts off your post at a point that you choose and displays a link with the text “Read More” (or something similar). When a reader selects that link, the rest of the post is displayed.
Where to put the ‘More’ tag: If your post has an image towards the beginning of it and the image is meant to draw attention the post, place the ‘More’ tag at some point after the image. If your post has a natural pause, such as a rhetorical question, place the ‘More’ tag after that. I like to put ‘More’ tags right in the middle of an important concept. Placing it in the middle of something useful will get your readers to click through and continue reading the post! Don’t give away the juiciest part of the article before the ‘More’ tag. Encourage them to read more.
Using more than one ‘More’ tag: You can use as many ‘More’ tags as you want. If you’ve posted a chapter of a novel you’re writing, you should try using the ‘More’ tag several times, so that your reader doesn’t have to do a lot of scrolling. You’ll notice that this technique is used often on major magazine and community sites, like iVillage.com and the BabyCenter.com.
Using the ‘More’ tag on pages: On WordPress.com and WordPress blogs, you can also use the ‘More’ tag on pages.
Keeping your sidebar under control
If your sidebar is longer than your post content, you should take some things out of it so that they end at the same place. It’s OK to have a longer post section than a sidebar section, but you don’t want it to be the other way around.
More is not better: Just because you can rock out your sidebar with as many widgets as you can think of, you really don’t need to do that! Use your sidebar for navigation, promotion/advertising, and opt-in boxes. Whatever you do with it, just try not to duplicate functionality, and then you will save space. For example, you don’t need two or more search boxes, one will do. You also don’t need an archives list in your sidebar if you use WordPress. You can create an Archives page. It’ll save you space for something else you’d rather put there.
Tips to Get More Eyeballs on Your Old Posts
If you’re concerned that making your home page shorter will affect the visibility into your other posts, don’t be. 
There’s no excuse for a never-ending home page. Check out this video post on ProBlogger.net: 5 Tips for Getting Readers Viewing Your Old Blog Posts or try any of the strategies below.
To make your older entries more accessible to your readers, try using the following in your sidebar(s):
- Placing a popular posts widget or a recent posts widget.
- A list of your blog’s categories in the sidebar.
- The Killer Recent Entries plugin (for WordPress) to select a specific category that contains the posts you don’t want your readers to miss (such as ‘Best Of’ or ‘Recommended Reading’)
- A search box
Your Turn
Does all of this make sense? Sometimes it’s good to ask. Questions? Do not hesitate to ask. Opinions: always welcome.
About Tia Peterson
