Customizing the Blogger Jump Break and Read More Link

Open the homepage of a typical new Blogger site and scroll. Very often you are looking at seven full posts stacked one after another, each with every photo loaded, and the page weighs 8 or 10 megabytes before a visitor reaches the footer. One small setting, used properly, fixes most of that: the jump break.

The Blogger jump break decides where a post is cut on the homepage, label pages and archives, and what the read more link under that cut says. Combined with the right number of posts per page, it controls how fast your homepage loads, how much readers see before they click and how well your template's design actually shows. Here is how I set it up on client blogs, and where people usually go wrong.

What the Blogger Jump Break Actually Does

When you insert a jump break in a post, Blogger shows only the content above it on any page that lists several posts. Below the cut it adds a link to the full post. On the post page itself, the break is invisible and the reader sees everything.

Many modern themes, including several of the official ones, already create automatic snippets on the homepage: a title, a short excerpt and a thumbnail. In those themes the jump break matters less for layout, but it can still decide which text appears in the excerpt. Older and many third party templates show full posts by default, and that is where the jump break earns its keep.

Inserting the Break in the Right Place

In the post editor, put your cursor where the cut should fall and use the insert jump break button in the toolbar. It appears as a dashed line in compose view. A few placement rules work across most templates:

Place it after the first one or two paragraphs, not after a heading. A heading followed by a link looks broken.
Include at most one image above the break, ideally the featured image. Every image above the cut loads on the homepage.
Keep the text above the break between 40 and 80 words. Shorter looks thin, longer pushes the next post off screen on mobile.
Do not put embedded videos or code widgets above the break. They are the heaviest elements on most pages.

Once you have set this for a few posts, the habit takes five seconds per article. One warning: if you switch the editor to HTML view and paste in new content, the break marker is easy to delete by accident. Glance at compose view before publishing to confirm the dashed line is still where you left it.

Changing the Read More Text

The link under each cut has a default label that depends on your theme. You can usually change it from the Layout page: edit the Blog Posts gadget and look for the post page link text field. Some newer themes move the option to the theme customizer instead.

Generic text such as "Read more" works, but specific text does better. I have seen click through from the homepage rise noticeably when a food blog changed its link to "Get the full recipe" and a review blog switched to "See the full review". Keep it under 25 characters so it does not wrap on a phone, and use the same label on every post so readers learn what it means.

Styling the link

If the link is lost in your design, give it a button style with a few lines of custom CSS: a background color, padding and rounded corners. Our guide to adding custom CSS in Blogger shows where those lines go without touching the template HTML.

Posts per Page and Homepage Speed

The jump break and the number of posts on the main page work together. Both live in the Blog Posts gadget settings on most templates. Here is a rough guide to how they interact.

Posts on main page	Jump break use	Typical homepage effect
3 to 5	Every post	Light, fast, easy to scan on mobile
6 to 10	Every post	Fine if each excerpt has one small image
6 to 10	None	Heavy, slow, long scroll
Over 10	Any	Rarely helpful, pushes the footer out of reach

For most blogs I set five to seven posts, each with a break after the opening. If your homepage still feels sluggish after that, our checklist on why your blog loads slow and what to fix first covers the next steps.

Where Common Advice Misleads You

A popular tip says to cut every post right after the first sentence, so visitors are forced to click through and you collect more pageviews. I disagree. A single line rarely tells the reader whether the post is for them, so many simply scroll past. The visitors who do click are often less interested than the ones who would have clicked after a real excerpt.

The opposite tip, never using jump breaks so readers get everything without clicking, is just as unhelpful on a blog with long posts. It turns the homepage into one enormous page and hides older posts. Give readers enough to decide, then let them choose.

Fixing Old Posts and Template Problems

Adding breaks to an archive of old posts

Blogger has no bulk tool for this. If you have hundreds of old posts, start with the 20 most recent and your most visited articles, since those are the ones that appear on the homepage and label pages most often. Older posts can wait.

The link does not appear at all

Some heavily customized templates remove the code that prints the read more link. Before editing the template, take a full backup, as described in what to back up before changing your Blogger theme. Then compare the Blog Posts section with a fresh copy of the original template, or switch temporarily to an official theme to confirm the break itself works.

FAQ

Does a jump break affect SEO?

Not directly. Search engines index the full post page, where the break is invisible. It can help indirectly by keeping the homepage fast and reducing duplicate text across listing pages.

Why does my excerpt show different text than what is above the break?

Some themes build snippets from the post's search description or the first characters of text, ignoring the break. Check your theme's settings, or fill in the search description for each post.

Can I use a jump break in a page instead of a post?

Pages are not shown in lists the way posts are, so the jump break has no visible effect there. Use it only in posts.

A Five Minute Setup

Open the Blog Posts gadget, set five to seven posts on the main page and change the link text to something specific to your blog. Then add a break after the opening paragraphs of your last ten posts and reload your homepage on a phone. If you can see the start of two posts on one screen, the setup is right.