Gadooney.com

Short answer: no.

Longer answer: If you use an excerpted link (or any “Click for the rest of the entry” type of link to keep the post on the home page shorter and more concise), you’re not really affecting the ability of search engines to find and index the content in the post, assuming you’re using a typical blog structure.

Most blogs are set up so that a certain number of recent posts are featured on the home page, in addition to every post having a permanent home in the archive. Since the permanent home contains the full text of the post, search engines almost always find and index the content there, so you really don’t have to worry about using excerpted links, and the content they may “hide” on posts on the home page.

One consideration, though, is that your home page is typically spidered much more frequently and content there usually ranks higher in search engines, so if you’re targeting more “newsy” niches (i.e. posting blow by blow updates of the Britney saga or American Idol results), you’d probably want the full text of each post to appear on the home page. If your content is more timeless, using excerpted links is pretty much a non-issue, and one that neither helps nor hinders you.

Much craziness abounding of late, especially ramping up with possible real estate investments getting rolling, and the markets taking a dump yesterday didn’t exactly easy my stress levels any.

On the affiliate front, I’ve been keeping my head down, cranking out pages on existing sites, and launching a few trial, experimental sites that are soaking up lots of time. I’m finally getting some Google love to the first batch of new sites I’ve been detailing here (including this site), which is nice to finally see.

I’ve also been more active in monitoring other affiliate-oriented sites and blogs, something I’d let fall a bit to the wayside in the last year or so. It’s definitely hard to sort through the clutter, as there’s a massive amount of crap out there, but you definitely find more than a few nuggets of gold if you’re patient and keep an eye on stuff.

To that end, here’s some links to useful blogs/sites that deal with affiliate marketing and/or general webmaster/SEO topics:

• ShoeMoney
• Problogger.net
• Matt Cutts
• JohnChow.com
• Net Business Blog
• Blue Hat SEO
• Dave Turnbull
• TylerCruz.com
• Web Publishing Blog