Joomla blog layouts can be tightened up and made more compact by using the "Read More" directive after your first and opening paragraph. Joomla displays the blog layout showing the content before the "Read More" button and the complete article when the title or "Read More" button is clicked. Joomla shows the complete article in its own page including the introduction paragraph repeated. An alternate way of using the opening paragraph is as a "teaser" paragraph that DOESN'T show in the complete article.
Reasons to use the "Read More" button:
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The keywords for your blog article are replicated in two places, the blog layout and the article page layout; increasing your overall site keyword density. Remember, if you have five articles in your blog layout and you use the "Read More" you will create an additional FIVE pages of indexed content. Also, in the blog layout, the top article in the list is the most important content as far as the search engines are concerned. By shrinking the overall size of the blog layout page, and adding a page per article, you are increasing the "importance" of each article's opening paragraph.
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The "Read More" button adds an additional and valuable internal link on your site that helps your SEO ranking.
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The "Read More" button compacts blog layouts and makes it easier for the surfer to browse your content by avoiding the content they don't wish to see, and clicking through to that content they are interested, in without scrolling down long lists of paragraphs on your blog page.
Reasons to use a "teaser" paragraph:
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A "teaser" paragraph can be more "bouncy and salesy" as necessary. It should be attractive enough to your reader to make them want to read the entire article. The "teaser" is the article selling paragraph, and the introduction paragraph leads the reader to the rest of the article.
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It is up to you whether to show or hide the teaser in the article view. Hiding a "teaser" paragraph removes duplicate content. After all, the reader has already been sold on clicking to the complete article and doesn't want to read the "teaser" again. The "teaser" can be thought of as an article abstract.
How to setup "teaser" paragraph blog and article layouts:
The same configuration process can be used to format your blog and articles to "hide" the "teaser" paragraph. The "Advanced Information" tab in the blog menu configuration is used to set the default behavior of the blog. The image to the right shows the drop down settings for the "Intro Text" parameter. Set this to "hide" to show the "teaser" in the blog and "hide" the "teaser" in the full article view, for all articles in the blog. Note, if you haven't written your articles with a "teaser" paragraph meant to be hidden, any content before the "Read More" button will be removed from the full article view. You will need to ensure your articles are written correctly.
Alternatively, you can set the same advanced parameter in the article setup, protecting the format of your content already written.
Contact me if you need information on about how to format your blogs and if necessary to set up templates that will make it easier to ensure your article layout has a site theme.