• Adding the Related Posts Widget to Blogger/Blogspot Step 1. Log in to your Blogger account and go to Template Edit HTML Step 2.
• Read through to find out how to add related posts widget under your posts in Blogger For this tutorial, we’re going to use Linkwithin services. It’s 100% free and so easy to set up, all you have to do is: Visit linkwithin.com; Fill in the form with your blog’s info; On the next page, click on ‘INSTALL WIDGET.
• A “popular posts” plugin does what it says on the virtual tin. It’s simply a WordPress plugin designed to display a list of your most popular blog posts. The list often takes the form of a widget in a sidebar on your site, but it can also be embedded directly into pages.

1. How To Setup Related Posts Widget For Blogger Posts
2. How To Setup Related Posts Widget For Blogger Link

To do so, navigate to “Edit Posts Edit Pages” and hit the tab that says “New Page”. Now, type a title for your page, say “Forum” and publish the page. You may leave the content part empty. Now, look out for the address bar. Oct 11, 2013 To add related posts in Blogger all you need is related posts widgets which you can create one at link within. Go to linkwithin.com and you will see a space for get widget. Enter your email address, your blog URL, select the platform as Blogger. In width select whether you want 3,4 or 5 related posts for your Blogger to display.

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The more of your content your audience consumes, the more likely they are to become loyal fans of your work. These people will be more likely to share your articles on social media, return to your website regularly and, ultimately, convert to paying customers.

However, this raises a bigger question: How do you get users to read more of your content?

Top-quality content is, of course, a big piece of the puzzle, but an easy-to-navigate website structure is just as important. After reading your article, a visitor will wonder what to do next — should they leave or should they read more?

I’m guessing you’d prefer the latter, right? In which case, it’s your job to make it as easy as possible for visitors to find more content they may be interested in on your site.

One of the best ways to move people around your website is to include related content links at the bottom of your articles — another great method is internal linking.

Related content links are an ideal way to encourage visitors to remain on your website, improving bounce rate, page views and time-on-site statistics — all metrics with a positive influence on your website’s SEO performance. They’re also a fantastic way to inject life into some of your older articles, which have been pushed off your front page and no longer receive the traffic they deserve.

In this article, I’ll introduce you to six of the best WordPress-related content plugins, so you can add the related content function to your WordPress website.

Jetpack (FREE)

Automattic’s flagship WordPress plugin, Jetpack, offers features such as performance tools, analytics, writing tools, comment enhancement and more.

The related posts tool can be found under the traffic section of Jetpack settings. The posts look great, but, from a functionality point of view, there are few customisation options.

In the settings area, you can choose to display a heading above related posts, and define whether thumbnail images are displayed.

Additional options can be found within the WordPress theme customiser.

You can define the heading text and enable and disable thumbnails, dates, categories and tags. The layout can also be changed from grid (horizontal) to list (vertical).

Jetpack’s related posts feature looks great and is easy to use. It’s a good choice if you already have Jetpack activated and want a basic related posts solution, but it is limited.

With no control over the time period in which posts are shown, related posts are frequently outdated. On my personal blog, for example, Jetpack regularly shows articles that are five years old.

Contextual Related Posts (FREE)

If you’re looking for more control over related posts, Contextual Related Posts is a fantastic solution.

The plugin allows you to define a cutoff period for the related posts that are displayed. You can also randomise posts, select which post types are displayed, limit posts to the same post type and exclude categories from results.

Contextual Related Posts offers many layout options too. You can customise the HTML that’s used for your output, and there are around a dozen options related to thumbnails.

The plugin can also display related posts in your RSS feed. The number of posts displayed, the location of the thumbnail and the thumbnail size can all be adjusted for your feed.

The output that Contextual Related Posts generates from the default settings looks great, but where the WordPress plugin stands out is customisation. I highly recommend checking it out if you want to filter the results that are displayed on your website.

Related Posts Thumbnails Plugin for WordPress is another good plugin to check out. Its output is similar to Contextual Related Posts, and it provides some useful filtering and styling options.

WordPress Related Posts Plugin by AddThis (FREE)

AddThis gives website owners a host of social media and engagement tools. This includes social media sharing buttons, list building and tip jars.

The related posts WordPress plugin helps you to integrate AddThis’s related posts tool into your website.

In the advanced settings area, you can enable sharing and click tracking, and enter your Google Analytics ID and Twitter username. A variety of loading options are available too, such as the script location, which action hooks are used and whether asynchronous loading is enabled. Custom JSON code can be added too.

While the plugin website settings are defined in your WordPress admin area, you need to customise your related posts on the AddThis website.

Related posts can be inserted in one of three ways: You can display related posts as a slider; in the footer; or within your content area (inline).

Items can be displayed horizontally or vertically, and you can define how many articles are displayed. There’s an option to hide related posts on mobile or desktop, but what I love is the ability to promote a specific page on the first related post slot.

Unfortunately, there are no filtering options to only show articles from a specific category or specific time period, so related posts aren’t as targeted as other related posts solutions on this list.

If you’re looking for a simple hosted related posts alternative to Jetpack, WordPress Related Posts Plugin by AddThis fits the bill. It’s easy to use, gives you multiple ways to display related posts, and the output looks great.

The main downside is that it offers no control over which posts are displayed in your related posts box.

Related Posts for WordPress by Bibblio (FREE/$19-plus)

Bibblio is a related content service that was designed to increase your website traffic. The free plan allows up to 25,000 views per month, and up to 500 articles to be stored. The cheapest premium plan costs $19 a month, and increases views to 50,000 and stored articles to 5,000.

Once you’ve signed up, you’ll be given a client ID and client secret that will enable you to integrate the service into your website using a WordPress plugin. You’ll then be asked whether you want existing posts and future posts to be recommended.

In the next tab, you’ll be asked to set up your module, which you can optimise for improved page views or for relevance only. Related posts can be displayed in showcase, grid, column and row layouts.

The title and headline can be modified too, and you can change what information is displayed on the article thumbnail.

You can go back and adjust settings at any time, and one of my favourite features in this area is the ability to change the time period for post recommendations.

Analytics are displayed in the main overview page, although you have to jump over to the main Bibblio website to see all of the statistics.

Related Posts for WordPress by Bibblio is a versatile solution that offers many unique layout options. The main downside of the plugin is that the free plan is limited to one module and 25,000 views per month. Beyond that, you’ll need to sign up to one of the premium monthly plans.

Inline Related Posts (FREE/$27)

If you want to display related posts inside content, check out Inline Related Posts.

The plugin lets you insert up to three related posts boxes into your content, and an interval can be set between each box so you can space them as you see fit.

You’ll be pleased to hear related posts can be restricted to a defined number of days for posts.

There are two basic styles available in the free version. They look good, but, unfortunately, they can’t display images from your posts.

The premium version, which retails from $27, adds three additional styles that incorporate featured images. They look more professional and should increase page views.

Upgrading also lets you add an unlimited number of inline related posts to articles, but I believe most website owners will be content with three boxes.

If you feel WordPress Related Posts Plugin by AddThis isn’t giving you the control you want over your inline related posts, Inline Related Posts is the plugin for you.

Related Post By PickPlugins (FREE)

Another useful related posts plugin to consider is Related Post By PickPlugins. From a functionality point of view, it sits in between a basic solution, such as Jetpack, and a feature-rich solution, such as Contextual Related Posts.

The plugin allows you to insert related posts into multiple post types via shortcodes or a PHP function. Clicks can be tracked, and you can change the headline and how many items are displayed.

Related posts can be displayed in a grid, list or slider. For each item, you can set the width, alignment, margin and padding.

In the layout section, you can define how the thumbnail, title and excerpt look. A number of pre-defined thumbnail sizes are available, and you can select a maximum height for images.

There’s a dedicated page for slider settings.

The number of columns for desktops is set at four, tablets at three, and smartphones at two. You can, of course, modify these. Slider speed, pagination, navigation, background colours, and other slider options are available too.

Related Post By PickPlugins doesn’t give you any control over the related posts that are displayed to visitors, but, if you’re looking for a simple solution with some cool styling options, it’s a good choice.

Honourable Mentions

For the purpose of this article, I tested more than 20 WordPress related posts plugins on my test website and on my personal blog (i.e. a live environment). In this section, I’d like to share some great related WordPress plugins that just missed the list.

Other Related Posts WordPress Plugins to Consider

If you’re looking for control over your output, you may want to check out Similar Posts, a plugin that allows you to customise the HTML in your output template. Dozens of tags are available to help you to control what posts are displayed and how everything looks. The nature of this plugin does mean that it’s less user-friendly than the alternatives, but advanced users will like it.

Related Posts by Taxonomy is an interesting solution that lets you insert related posts via widget or shortcodes. You can choose to display single or multiple taxonomies, exclude or include posts, and limit what’s displayed by number or date.

If you’re looking for a premium solution, check out Related Posts for Distinct Posts. Retailing at $30, the plugin supports thumbnails of different sizes, and lets you select whether post meta information is displayed. The related posts that are displayed look professional.

Custom Related Posts is a basic related posts plugin, but it does have some cool features, such as importing relations via XML format and native support for the Gutenberg Block Editor.

Another basis solution to check out is CP Related Posts. It’s quite unique in that it allows you to display how similar the related posts are using a star rating system or bar.

Final Thoughts

If you’re struggling to keep users on your website, adding related content function is a proven way to get people to stick around, resulting in more page views, longer visitor duration and reduced bounce rate. Perhaps even more importantly, when a user views more of your content, they’ll be better able to appreciate what your website is all about, which can also boost subscriptions, social shares and even conversions. Basically, all the good stuff!

All of the plugins featured today are capable of adding a fully functional related content section to your website. However, they all look and work slightly differently, with different strengths and weaknesses, so take your time and pick a favourite.

Used/using any of these related posts plugins? Which do you think is best?

TOP DEALS

When readers leave your website on the first visit, it increases your bounce rate. A high bounce rate means lower search engine rankings. Google and other major search engines take user experience into account when ranking a website.

Google’s goal is to display the highest quality web pages that offer the best solution to the user’s query. And if your website has a high bounce rate, Google will drop your site like a stone. So, if you want to get on the first page and stay there, you need to make sure people spend more time on your site and bounce less.

Now, there are a lot of ways to increase the number of pages people visit on your website. But the easiest of all is to display related posts at the end of every post. This will not only reduce your bounce rate as people might click through to read another post or two but will also increase the time people spend on your website. Both of which are a quality signal for Google. And of course, it will increase your page views.

If you want to display related posts on your blog, you can either manually add the code to your theme or use a WordPress plugin.

Let’s explore both options:

Contents

• 14 Conclusion

Option #1: Manually Add Related Posts Functionality

If you are not interested in installing a related posts plugin on your website, you can manually add related posts functionality to your theme.

To add the functionality manually, you will have to add the following code to your theme:

You can use this code anywhere in the single.php file of your theme. But we recommend adding it right after your content. Most themes wrap the main content of the post in a <article> tag. To display related posts after the contents of your posts, paste the above code after </article> tag of your single.php file.

Now, add the following code to your style.css file:

The above code will handle the design part of the related posts displayed below your posts.

The end result will vary depending on the theme you are using. Here’s what it might look like:

The above code will pull posts related to the same tags as used by the current post. When using this code, you will have to make sure that you tag all the related posts using the same tag.

Option #2: Use a Related Posts Plugin

This is the easiest option of all. All you have to do is install a related posts plugin to your website.

Using a WordPress plugin to do the job is far better than hard coding the functionality into the theme you are using. When you manually add code to a theme, the related posts will stop showing up as soon as you change the theme or install a new theme update. Moreover, a plugin will also handle the design part, unlike the manual option.

While this is the easiest option, one thing you should know is that most related post plugins are resource intensive. This means you might have trouble running them on your website if you are on a shared web host.

If you are on a shared web host, you can easily get around this problem using the Manual Related Posts plugin. It’s a simple tool that allows you to select posts related to a post.

Jetpack

If you use the Jetpack plugin on your site, you already have the functionality for related posts – you just need to enable the module by visiting “Jetpack” > “Settings” > “Traffic” and turning on the related posts section. You can then choose whether to include the header text and images. You can then customize the “related posts” text by visiting “Appearance” > “Customizer.

The good thing about using the Jetpack plugin to handle your related posts is this processing happens off-site on the WordPress.com servers so this plugin is safe to use on shared hosting and you can be sure it won’t slow your site down.

Features:

• Built-in to the Jetpack plugin
• Processing happens off-site so safe for shared hosts
• Change the text in Customizer

Price: Free

Related Posts

Related Posts is a free plugin that adds related posts right after your content. It displays related posts arranged in columns along with their thumbnails. You can customize the background color, border color, text size, text color and excerpt length. It also allows you to customize the thumbnail size and the type of relation.

You can choose from multiple types of relations including tags, categories and tags, categories, and custom taxonomies. This plugin also allows you to randomize the relation of the related posts.

Features:

• Displays related posts with thumbnails.
• Allows you to customize background color, border style, text color, text size, and title and excerpt length.
• Displays related posts in columns.
• Multiple relations to choose from.
• Light-weight plugin.

Price: Free

Related Posts By AddThis

Related Posts By AddThis is a free tool by AddThis. AddThis is a free suite of tools that help you increase your website traffic. When you sign up for AddThis, you get access to multiple tools including Content Recommendation.

The Content Recommendation tool helps you display recommended (related) content from your website on every post.

This plugin helps you display two different types of recommendations. One is called What’s Next which is displayed on the bottom right or left side of your website. It shows up when the user starts scrolling through your content. The other is called Recommended Content Footer. As the name suggests, it displays related content at the end of your posts.

The best part about this plugin is that the resource intensive login doesn’t run on your website servers. Instead, it runs on AddThis’ servers.

Features:

• Two different types of recommendations available.
• Analytics for content recommendations.
• Multiple designs to choose from.
• Offers multiple free tools when you sign up.

Price: Free

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) is a free WordPress plugin. It offers a unique algorithm to help improve the accuracy of the related posts displayed. Unlike other plugins, YARPP uses its own algorithm that takes into account more than just tags, categories and custom taxonomies.

YARPP also allows you to display sponsored content which is a great option if you are looking to increase the revenue of your blog.

While YARPP is one of the best related post plugins, it is also one of the most resource consuming related post plugins. Because this plugin consumes a lot of resources, it’s blocked by most Managed WordPress Hosting providers including WP Engine and Media Temple.

Features:

• Uses a custom algorithm that improves the accuracy of content recommendations
• Offers a template system to help you customize all aspects of the design.

Price: Free

Related Posts by Taxonomy

Related Posts by Taxonomy, as the name suggests displays related posts by taxonomy. It’s a lightweight plugin. It comes with dozens of customization options. You can display posts with thumbnails or as plain old links.

This plugin doesn’t offer much customization options and the design is a bit outdated. But it still gets the job done. If you don’t like the default design, you can create your own HTML templates for the plugin.

Features:

• Shortcodes allow you to display related posts anywhere you want.
• Allows you to include and exclude terms from the search.
• Displays posts with the most terms in common first.

Price: Free

Yuzo

Yuzo is a totally free WordPress plugin. It is one of the most popular related post plugins for WordPress. It offers a lot of customizations options. You can customize the thumbnail size, background color, height, width and many more other details.

Yuzo offers a beginner-friendly interface that is both easy-to-use and powerful at the same time. It is one of the fastest related post plugins available. It caches all the data to save resources and speed up the process.

Features:

• Lightweight and less resource consuming.
• Dozens of customization options.
• Offers a beginner-friendly interface.
• One of the fastest options available.
• Caches to save server resources and time.

Price: Free

Contextual Related Posts

Contextual Related Posts is a resource intensive plugin. And just like YARPP, it is blocked by most Managed WordPress Hosting providers including WP Engine and Media Temple.

This plugin won’t cause much of a problem on a small site. But as the number of posts increases, this plugin might slow down your website and consume more resources.

This plugin comes with dozens of customization options and uses a custom algorithm to improve the accuracy of the suggestions. You can customize the design by creating your own HTML templates.

Features:

• Comes with support for Shortcodes allowing you to display the widget anywhere in your content.
• Offers a widget you can add to the sidebar of your website.
• Uses caching to save resources and speed up the process.
• Automatically displays related posts after content. No need to edit the template files of your theme.
• The algorithm finds posts from the title and/or content.
• Exclude posts from certain categories. You can also exclude posts and pages by ID.

Price: Free

Related Posts Pro

Related Posts Pro is a popular premium plugin that displays related posts after your content. It offers dozens of customization options and comes with three beautiful layouts. It comes with 65 pre-designed templates for each layout.

With this plugin, you can also choose to display related posts from custom taxonomies created by different plugins like WooCommerce and bbPress.

Features:

• 65 beautiful pre-designed templates to choose from.
• Three different layout options available.
• Offers a clean user-friendly backend.
• Offers optional navigation buttons for the related posts.
• Allows custom post types from different plugins including WooCommerce and bbPress.

How To Setup Related Posts Widget For Blogger Posts

Price: $15

How To Setup Related Posts Widget For Blogger Link

Better Related Posts Widget

Better Related Posts Widget is a premium WordPress plugin. It allows you to customize the thumbnail size, text color, number of items, and widget titles. It also allows you to display multiple instances of the same widget on the page.

You can choose to display Author Name, Publication Date, Number of Comments, Post Thumbnails, and Excerpts. It allows you to choose the taxonomies to display posts from and caches the suggestions to speed up the process and save server resources.

Features:

• Customize the size of a thumbnail, the length of excerpts, the number of items shown and the widget title.
• Display author name, the number of comments, excerpts, post thumbnails and publication date.
• Beginner-friendly user interface.

Price: $7

Inline Related Posts

Inline Related Posts allows you to display related posts in between your content. You might have seen this kind of suggestions on popular news websites such as Business Insider, Wall Street Journal, and Forbes.

It’s a totally free plugin. While this plugin will help you improve your bounce rate and get more traffic, you will need to install an additional plugin if you want to display related posts in your sidebar or after your content.

Features:

• Allows you to choose when and where the suggestions are displayed.
• A great way to decrease bounce rate and increase traffic.

Price: Free

Related Posts for WordPress

Related Posts for WordPress is a free WordPress plugin. It offers dozens of customization features. You can customize almost all aspects of the design. It not only adds related post suggestions after your content but also allows you to add them to your sidebar. You can also use the shortcode to display suggestions anywhere in your posts.

Features:

• Allows you to use shortcodes to display related posts anywhere in your content.
• A beginner-friendly interface.
• Offers a widget to display related posts in your sidebar.

Price: Free

Conclusion

Displaying related posts in your content is a great way to reduce bounce rate and increase page views. Moreover, it also helps you automatically interlink the posts on your website. While using a plugin will give you a lot more functionality, it will also consume more resources so you should watch how your site responds if you are on shared hosting or choose a plugin such as Jetpack which does the processing on their own servers so won’t affect your site speed.

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