How to Show a Longer Post Excerpt for Non-Members and SEO

Entice your website visitors into opting in for your membership program, and improve your website’s search engine ranking – all in one – with this code recipe.

About the Code Recipe

Unless you are manually setting the post excerpts, WordPress will default to only showing the first 55 words in a post. You can extend the length of the excerpt by using the WordPress excerpt_length filter.

This method allows you to show non-members as well as search engines more of the content that is restricted for your members. This potentially can be a fantastic way to pique the interest of website visitors, as well as, help your website rank even better with your favorite search engines.

The Code Recipe

Adding the recipe to your website

You can add this recipe to your site by creating a custom plugin or using the Code Snippets plugin available for free in the WordPress repository. Read this companion article for step-by-step directions on either method.

Author: Andrew Lima

Andrew Lima is the Director of Operations at Paid Memberships Pro, with a strong background in WordPress development. Certified in various programming languages, Andrew has been building WordPress websites since 2014.

He finds it rewarding to help PMPro customers build successful businesses and enjoys seeing their growth over time. Andrew values PMPro’s commitment to strong core values and ethics, which makes working with the team a genuine pleasure.

Outside of work, Andrew enjoys discovering new hobbies, experimenting in the kitchen, and immersing himself in video games.

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