WordPress related post plugins can be effective in reducing the bounce rate of your site to a huge extent. Bounce rate is a very important factor for any blog, and you need to do everything to reduce it.
The engagement of users in your site can influence the search result position of your site in the Search engine like Google, so you need to understand the process to improve user experience and make it easy for them to find more content of their interest easily on your blog.
Page builder works for posts, pages, archives, blog page, search page, 404 page and supported WooCommerce pages. For more information see plugin screenshots. Plugin shortcodes. The WP AMP plugin provides a pack of shortcodes which you can use in post content: wp-amp-related – a shortcode for showing related posts.
But before you do anything, you have to make sure that you are publishing quality content which creates value for your user because no matter what you do if your content is not good enough, the users will never stick to your site. So offer them quality content regularly and design your site the way that it can retain visitors on your site.
The related post plugin for WordPress comes as a very handy tool in this regard, as it can show related posts to current topic and engage the user for more time.
Nowadays, most of the modern WordPress themes come with their setting to show related posts. If you are just starting a new blog, you can check our recommended personal blogging themes, or you can go for a Genesis child theme as they are very powerful and SEO friendly.
If you don't like to spend on a premium WordPress theme, we have a collection of best free WordPress themes where you can find some premium quality free themes with tons of amazing features and most of these themes come with their setting to display related posts.
However, if you can't find a quality theme which shows related posts by default. You can use any WordPress related post plugin from this list to achieve that.
Related Posts Pro
A premium related post plugin for WordPress that comes with a beautiful design to show the posts which are similar to the current post. This plugin works perfectly with any content a type like the custom post types, multi-sites, categories, terms, mixed content, custom content, etc.
The plugin is fully responsive and retina ready so that your content looks great in all kinds of devices. It is highly customizable, and with over 200 options, you can change almost everything about the plugin. You have three different layouts to choose from and over 65 different templates to choose from.
Other than normal blog posts, this plugin will work perfectly with WooCommerce products, bbPress forum topics and any other kind of content you wish to place. The plugin is easy to use and comes with comprehensive options panel to define your requirement.
Better Related Posts Widget
This plugin will engage your visitors will related content on your site while they visit any of your articles. You can use this related post plugin in any of the widgetized section of your site including the sidebar.
It offers you the customization options os that you can fine tune the widget as per your requirement. There are multiple options in the settings section such as the option to show the title of the post, option to display the author detail, comment counts, option to show text excerpts etc.
Shareaholic – Related Content
Shareaholic was initially a social media sharing plugin, and the post feature got introduced later. This plugin is quite effective in show related posts to all content on your site; it provides you an option to choose the design of the related post to match your site design.
Overall a very effective, accurate and one of the best WordPress related post plugins.
Related Posts for WordPress
This related posts plugin is especially easy to use. With just one click, you can have Related Posts for WordPress analyze all of your posts and link them together with their advanced matching algorithm. Then, you can go back to any given post and change the related posts manually if you're not happy with what the algorithm came up with.
Also, Related Posts for WordPress creates its own cache, so it won't slow down your site.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)
Another Related Posts Plugin is one of the most popular and widely used related content plugin for WordPress. This plugin comes in free as well as pro versions with some amazing features to customize the related posts on your site.
This plugin can show related content for posts, pages as well as custom post type. So, all kind of content on your site can be covered by this single plugin. The strongly customizable algorithm of this plugin helps you to show posts depending on post titles, content, tags, categories, and custom taxonomies, etc.
The pro version of the plugin offers you feature to pull related content from multiple sites, also provides you lot of customization option to make the widget perfectly fit your current design.
One thing which you need to consider is that Another Related Posts Plugin needs more server resource as compared to another plugin in this category.
WordPress Related Posts
Another very effective plugin in the category, it will automatically add similar content to improve user's engagement on your site. This plugin will enhance the overall SEO of your site by creating quality internal links on your site.
As far as the look and feel of the widget are concerned, it is a fully customizable tool which you can alter as per your requirement. This Plugin supports different styles, thumbnails, includes caching for improved performance.
Contextual Related Posts
A powerful WordPress plugin to enhance user engagement, it provides some amazing features to improve the overall experience of your site. It will pull content based on title or content of the current post to make it relevant to users interest which will increase the possibility of user retention.
Contextual Related Posts plugin is extremely easy to use, and it will start showing similar content automatically on your site and feed at the end of the current post once you activate the plugin. You can also place the widget in any widgetized area of your theme to make it even more comprehensive and to experiment with the layout.
This plugin comes with strong caching feature and output is automatically cached as visitors goes on browsing through your site. It's a complete tool which can read and showcase content from post, page, attachments or even custom post types.
This plugin support thumbnails, shortcodes, widgets, custom post types, caching and CSS styles.
Related Posts by Zemanta
Another very powerful WordPress related post plugin by Zemanta, the best part of this tool is that admin can curate and show customized related posts to drive more traffic to specific posts. This feature will especially help to drive users to your profit-making articles.
If you don't want to manually select posts then this plugin good enough to show related content automatically using its algorithm.
It also provides you option to insert in-text links recommendations from popular sources such as Wikipedia, IMDB, and YouTube. Overall a very useful and feature rich plugin to show related posts.
As far as the style is concerned, it comes with some beautiful ready to use themes with different thumbnail sizes. If you don't want to use those you can manually customize the look and feel of the widget with custom CSS and other advanced settings
CP Related Posts
A simple related post plugin which can show related posts depending on content, title or abstract, including the tags assigned to the articles.
You can also set related post manually for each post if you want to drive more traffic to some particular post.
Easy Related Posts
Easy Related Posts is a very simple and easy to use a plugin which can display posts related to the one a user is currently reading in the main content area as well as in sidebars through a widget.
It offers you three beautiful and ready to use responsive themes for related content which you can customize if required. And it gives you some option to include and exclude particular content based on post ID, you also have full control of the excerpt length, thumbnail sizes etc.
Another feature which can be useful for user engagement is the eye-catching pop-up block with related content to attract your visitor's attention.
Author Recommended Posts
This plugin gives you lot of control on your hands to manipulate the related post area, you can search and select a related post as per your choice from posts, pages or custom post type to promote that particular content and drive more traffic to those articles.
You can add, reorder, remove selected posts for display via the simple drag and drop interface. And you can show the recommended posts vertically or side-by-side depending on the structure of your theme
Jetpack Related Post Module
Last but not the least, the related post module of Jetpack. This powerful plugin by Automattic is a collection of a number of useful modules to perform different activities on your WordPress site.
Showing related post is one of the components of this powerful plugin and it's very effective. The Related Posts feature scans all of your posts, analyzes them, and lets you show contextual posts your visitors.
Related Post for WordPress
This is a free WordPress plugin that can help you display your related posts beautifully to your visitors. This amazing plugin will automatically link one post to another so that it gets displayed once your visitor is done reading a post.
With this plugin, you can display your posts on the sidebar and even edit, add or remove a post manually from the widget. It also has some awesome shortcodes that allow you to display your related post anywhere in the middle of your content.
Yuzo Related Post
Yuzo is another free plugin that can help you show your related post in style. This plugin has been designed with minimalist style and loaded with great features to boost its performance.
You can edit each and every part of this theme and allows you to display the related content both vertically and horizontally. You can also limit showing your related posts in a specific page or post on your website.
Inline Related Posts
This is another option that you may want to test to let visitors know about the related content on your website. This plugin like the others in the list can help you reduce your bounce rate, increase attention and help boost your page views.
The plugin also allows a lot of customization to make your content appeal your visitors. The best thing is that it offers a live preview to help you decide which look to finalize without having to go back and forth to check the preview.
Related Posts
Here is another free plugin that you might want to consider for your website. With this plugin, you can use customized thumbnails on your site that can be arranged in a specific order. You can also go ahead to choose a vibrant color or a good size to make them stand out.
It even allows you to specify the number of related posts to be displayed, the start date, categories etc. This plugin is compatible with tons of other amazing plugins too. So you can use it without having to uninstall any of your favorite plugins on the site.
Related Post by Taxonomy
Although a free plugin, this one has been jam-packed with tons of amazing features that will let your site remain updated all the time. With this plugin, you can choose the way you want to display your posts.
This may be in the form of an excerpt, a link, full post or even in terms of thumbnails. You can also limit the search term by number or by date. This plugin does not slow down your site and works beautifully with other plugins too.
Conclusion
Related posts are very important and unavoidable component of any website because they pay a vital role in engaging your visitors and reduce the bounce rate of your site.
All the above-mentioned WordPress related post plugins are tried and tested so that you can use them on your site without any issue.
WordPress related post plugins are important if you want to reduce number of visitors leaving your site after reading the first post.
Whether you are reading your favorite news site or browsing through some blogs, you cannot help but notice one thing at the end of almost any article.
Thumbnail pictures and article headlines usually with a heading like “you might be interested in“, “related posts …”
There is ample reason why so many website owners show you related posts or articles. You as a visitor will spend more time on their website, increasing the number of page views.
Increasing page views and reducing bounce rate is a big challenge for site owners. Showing users related content has proven to be an effective way of getting more page views.
You can easily show related posts on your site using a plugin if your WordPress theme doesn’t already have built-in option to show related content.
Or you can choose to install WordPress related post plugin which will automatically link the related articles below any new post, doing all the work for you.
Free WordPress Related Post Plugins
If you’re struggling to keep users on your website, adding related content function on your website is a proven way to get people to stick around.
Even more importantly, when a user views more of your content, they’ll more appreciate what your website is all about.
This can lead to increase in subscriptions, social shares, and even conversions.
However, there is so much plugins for WordPress to show related content. Most look and work slightly different, with its own strengths and weaknesses.
It is hard to pick one when there is big competition in related post field.
I have chosen 4 currently, by my opinion, best free WordPress related post plugins and made comparison at the end of this post (if you are lazy to read just skip until end). So, let’s get started.
1. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (FREE)
A plugin with interesting name called Yet Another Related Posts Plugin aka YARPP is one of the most popular WordPress related posts plugins.
It supports both thumbnail and text (list) display of related posts.
The plugin allows you link to posts relevant to the current article, either at the bottom of the post, or in the sidebar. It works well with pages and custom post types too giving you more flexibility.
The algorithm for determining whether a post is related takes into consideration the body content, title, tags, and categories assigned to the post.
Despite its popularity YARPP has major drawback. The plugin is incredibly resource-intensive, putting significant strain on your database through inefficient queries and badly integrated caching.
This is a big enough problem for a number of managed WordPress hosting services which added YARPP to a list of blacklisted plugins.
The pro version of the plugin solves this problem by performing heavy-lifting on YARPP’s own servers.
![Inline related posts pro free download Inline related posts pro free download](/uploads/1/2/5/5/125515815/728823608.png)
YARPP is not compatible with WPML plugin. If you are going to create a multi-lingual WordPress site, then you should choose Polylang. Polylang has posted a tutorial for using YARPP with Polylang.
Plugin comes as Pro version too which is also free. It just requires you to sign up.
Pro version brings possibility to earn money from displaying sponsored content, customize thumbnail layout, get detailed reporting….
You can mix and match YARPP Basic and YARPP Pro to get the best of both features.
PROS
- Accurately and automatically chooses relevant posts
- Allows showing related posts as thumbnails or text display
- Supports post, pages, custom post types, and RSS feed display
CONS
- Very resource intensive if you are running large site
- YARRP is blocked on some hosting providers
- Cant show related posts in content
2. Yuzo Related Posts (FREE)
Another good free related post plugin is Yuzo Related Posts. It has a comprehensive set of features like thumbnail views, horizontal views with thumbnails, list views, built-in cache, etc.
As well as being one of the quickest plugins around, Yuzo is also one of the more stylish, utilizing a beautiful, minimal design with over 50+ customization options.
Because you’ll want to craft a related post section that draws attention and really fits with the rest of your website, Yuzo supports extensive customization capabilities.
For a start, you can list your related posts either vertically or horizontally.
Throw in infinite colors for backgrounds, custom text, and custom thumbnail dimensions, and you have an elegant, versatile plugin on your hands.
You can add your related posts to any widget area. The plugin supports posts, pages, and custom post types.
You can manually add posts to the widget if you’d prefer. For added social proof, Yuzo can also display a visit counter next to each post.
It’s as easy to install and it will accurately choose your previously written articles that are related to the current one you’re working on.
You also have the ability to choose your posts that will be displayed as related content manually so there’s a greater chance your visitors will be interested in staying on your site.
It doesn’t offer revenue sharing from advertisements.
PROS
- Easy to use and setup
- Users can choose different styles
- Caching
- Customizable widget with lots of options
CONS
- It is fast, but it is not lightweight
- No option to show related posts inside content
3. Inline Related Posts (FREE)
Related posts inside post content are becoming very popular. They move traffic all around posts. Even posts that have been written years back but that are related to the article being read.
Instead of showing related posts below content, this plugin shows them inside your articles.
This kind of inline display of related content is quite popular on news and blog sites.
Because the related posts are found at the end of a post, many readers don’t see them because they don’t read to the end of the post.
Inline Related Posts plugin effectively solves this common problem by automatically putting related posts inside content. Without need to manually put it via shortcode.
You are free to change the appearance of how the related posts will appear in your posts.
Customization options are great and you can set related posts to blend with your site design.
There are two free themes available and more with Pro version.
You can select how many links you want to add in each post (maximum is 3) and enter the amount of words that should be used as gap between related post links.
In some cases, you may not want an individual post to display inline related posts. Luckily, using this plugin you can easily exclude each post from showing related content.
The plugin is pretty easy to set up. Just select how many boxes you want to add to each post, and the minimum number of words between each.
It lets you use categories, tags, or categories & tags to find related posts. Users have the option to add “nofollow” to related post links.
You can also customize the text and colors from the backend.
Inline Related Posts is only plugin that successfully puts automatically related posts inside your post content.
I find this plugin best free WordPress plugin for displaying related posts inside content on WordPress site. I use it on all of my sites and you can see it in action on KasaReviews.
I would just like to see option to show posts vertically too.
Pro version comes with additional beautiful templates which allow usage of thumbnails.
Though this plugin doesn’t show related content after post, it has option to insert a related box at the end of the post (just one).
Users can also overwrite the global settings inside the single post using shortcode.
I have contacted author of plugin and he assured me plugin will be extended with more features as well as cool footer related boxes with multiple posts or slideshow box.
PROS
- Displays related posts automatically inside content
- Automatically detects line breaks (without destroying your paragraphs or headlines)
- Option to add “nofollow”
- Customization in order to blend with site design
CONS
- If you want to display related posts at the end of each post, then you will need to install another plugin
- Only works for posts and pages
- Limit to maximum 3 related posts
- Cant choose to show more than one related posts one below other
- Thumbnails only in Pro version
4. Contextual Related Posts (FREE)
Contextual Related Posts is another WordPress plugin to display related posts. It tries to improve relevancy by contextually matching posts.
It can display related posts as thumbnails and text. The plugin allows you to place related post links at the bottom of your article or at specified points of your article by using a shortcode.
The plugin also supports related posts in a sidebar widget. As well as the standard thumbnail image associated with the article, Contextual Related Posts also allows you to include a short excerpt below.
You can set the number of characters you want to be visible in excerpt. Your related posts can be fully re-styled using custom CSS.
Contextual Related Posts considers only the title and body content when searching for related posts. It completely ignores tags and categories.
You can, however, select how many posts you want to appear, as well as how recent they should be.
To increase your control over which posts appear, the plugin allows you to select specific posts and categories to exclude them from the related posts section.
And, for those of you working with pages or custom post types, you’ll be pleased to hear that both are fully supported.
![Wordpress Wordpress](/uploads/1/2/5/5/125515815/424547007.jpg)
Unfortunately, the plugin suffers from the same problem as YARPP. It is very database-intensive, and this has led to a number of the managed WordPress hosting services blacklisting it.
It also includes caching to help reduce the load on your server. Just install, activate and you’re ready to start displaying related posts on your site.
PROS
- It tries to use images inside a post as thumbnail when no featured image or post thumbnail is found
- Ability to include short excerpt
- You can select how many posts you want to appear, as well as how recent they should be
- Includes caching
CONS
- The plugin does not come with any template to display thumbnails
- You need to manually via shortcode add related posts if you want to show it in content
- Ignores tags and categories when searching for related articles
- This plugin does not scale well on larger sites
Premium Related Post Plugins For WordPress
While free plugins to display your own related posts can be enough for most WordPress website owners, there are others who wish to use premium/paid plugins which have more features provided.
Related Posts Pro for WordPress ($15)
What does this plugin do to justify that premium price? Well, for a start it is incredibly user-friendly, plus it comes with a whole host of customization options giving you the flexibility to tweak the aesthetics of your related posts.
The plugin supports three unique layouts:
- Isotopic – Adds a large related posts section (up to 20 items) in standard columns and rows.
- Slick and Slide – A carousel of related posts
- Transitioning – Displays a single post at any given time, before seamlessly transitioning to the next with transition animations
All layouts look clean and stylish. Plugin comes with a 65 different templates. Each template is styled with different colors, buttons, typography, and design.
This impressive versatility allows you to select something while keeping touch with the rest of your website.
A related post section is supposed to help visitors find the content of most interest to them. Related Posts Pro takes this one step further by adding an easy-use filter to the top.
Filter provides visitors option to filter by title, relevance, taxonomy, and post type. This allows the visitor to dig deeper as they look for the good stuff.
Plus it comes with eye-catching animations which accompany the filter.
The plugin works with posts, pages, and custom post types. It determines the relevance of each post via a ‘smart algorithm’ that extracts and compares keywords from your content.
Super Post – WordPress Premium Plugin ($10)
Super Post is all-in-one solution that gives you full control over post queries. It can be used to display specific post from categories or post tags or another taxonomies, portfolios, etc.
You can use shortcode editor to generate the shortcode and display it in the content section. It is also possible to show related posts in a sidebar thanks to widget.
Widgets come with highly customizable control panels and with support for multi widget even in the same sidebar.
You can make any specific post sticky, showcase recent or most commented posts, rating and likes and easy post share via Twitter, Facebook, Google + and Email with counter.
Other features:
- Time based post selection.
- Pagination display posts per page or load more post via ajax.
- Comments – display or hide the comments number with custom icon.
- Custom icon for post date and author.
- Thumbnail height and width. Show or hide post thumbnail.
- No thumbnail image – an option for using additional image if post has no thumbnail.
- Email sharing – share post via email.
- Social sharing – share posts via popular social sites like Facebook, Twitter etc.
- Template styles comes with 3 predefined template styles.
- Intro and Outro text, if you want to add additional text or HTML.
- Custom Style & Script if you want to add additional CSS style or JavaScript per widget ID.
How to add WordPress Related Posts Without Plugins?
There are a number of reasons why you should always try to use WordPress’ built in code and services, rather than a plugin.
The main benefit is that you don’t have to rely on a third-party (the plugin developer) for your blog to function.
There are many cases of popular plugins being abandoned by their developers, leaving countless site owners stuck with outdated and potentially vulnerable software.
Another reason is that you’re not running the risk of using a bloated plugin that can slow your site or even worse, contain a malicious piece of code.
Click for more info on how to add related posts without use of plugin.
Manually add related posts to a post:
As already mentioned, related post plugin can be resource intensive. It is possible that some plugins may not work well on a shared WordPress hosting.
In that case, you can use Manual Related Posts plugin. This plugin allows you to manually add related posts to a post.
The link relationship work both ways. If you add an old post as related post to a new one, then the old post will also display the new post as related.
WordPress Related Post Plugins Comparison
YARPP vs YUZO vs Inline Related Posts vs Contextual Related Post
- Related post content
- Related posts in sidebar
- Thumbnail view of related content
- Show related posts from certain time frame
- Display related posts from external WordPress sites
- Prevent related posts from displaying per post/page
- Compatible with multilingual site
- Reporting about your related content list
- Templating system to control how results are displayed
- Responsive
- Displays pages, posts, and custom post types related to the current entry
- It seems there is lack of support for this plugin according to comments in WordPress plugin repository
- Displays posts, pages and custom post types
- It seems plugin is often updated and author responds to questions
- Displays related content on posts and pages
- Plugin is updated frequently and plugin author responds to questions
- Lets you include posts, pages, attachments or any other custom post type
- It seems plugin author regularly answers on questions and provides updates
WordPress Related Post Plugin Final Words
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 into paying customers.
However, this raises a bigger question: ‘How do I get users to read more of my content?’
Top quality content is important. But an easy to navigate website structure is just as important. After reading your article, a visitor will wonder what to do next.
Do they leave, or should they read more of your content? I’m guessing you’d prefer the latter. Then it’s your job to make it as easy as possible for visitors to do so.
One of the best ways to move people around your website is to include related content links inside content or at the bottom of your articles (with the use of internal linking).
Related content links are an ideal way to encourage visitors to remain on your website. In doing so, this will improve your bounce rate, page views, and time on website statistics.
All metrics with a positive influence on your website’s SEO performance. It’s 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.
Now to you dear readers. Do you use any plugin to showcase related posts or does your theme already comes with that option? Let me know in comments below!