I was just wondering what most people thought about posting full posts on blog homepages, in terms of SEO? What are the pros and cons of doing this? Would you recommend posting the full post on the homepage? or would you recommend posting a small section and then linking to the post?
I'd go with a summary. The advantages: - no duplicate content issues - people that are interested click through to a page where the (adsense) ads are actually targeted to that specific subject - people that bookmark are more likely to bookmark the specific page if that's where they read the full article In general it will make your homepage look more professional.
But I mean how much of a duplicate issue would there be if the full text version only appears on the homepage for a week? I mean there would be lots of blogs out there posting full versions on their homepages, surely not all of them have their actual post page considered duplicate content and reduced to supplemental index because they originally posted it on their homepage as well?
You are right that it's only a short while that the duplicate content is there. But given that google only recaches pages every month or so for most sites, it's a good idea to not risk having the content on two places at once. BTW: IMO this isn't exactly a very important issue. I'd go for summaries for the reasons mentioned, but lots of blogs do full posts and do fine by it as well. It's not something to fret about, IMO. I do think having only the first paragraph or something there is slightly better, but it's not a big difference. There are usability advantages to having the whole thing on the main page: non-websavvy users will just bookmark your homepage and check in every week (or whatever it is).
If you give your individual post pages a unique title tag then you wont get duplicate content issues and Google will pick your post page as the most relevant when people are searching for terms for your post. Look at your question from a usability perspective rather than a SEO perspective. I like to keep full posts on my homepage so people can quickly read them, if the post is more than 2 paragraphs I cut the remaining paragraphs and keep them on the full post page. People like to skim read and that allows them to skim read your homepage and click through to what is really interesting to them.
It works both ways depending on what you are trying to achieve. whichever way you post, google algo is smart enough to recognize it as a blog and treat accordingly. If you are worried about supps/internal dupes, you may consider blocking certain sections of your blog and pass the linkjuice benefits to important pages/posts in line with your seo strategy