Do you think your users are leaving your site after reading a post, which they organically found on Google?
Keeping your users engaged with more related posts/content is your job to look into. I would highly recommend increasing the number of PageViews and decreasing the overall bounce rate of the site.
There are two ways to get this done.
- Create related posts section manually: the way I’ve used related posts in GeneratePress theme
- Use related posts plugin for WordPress
In this article, we are going to specifically look into the best-related posts plugins for WordPress. Before looking into all the plugins, let us understand why you need them.
Why Do You Need A Related Posts Plugin For WordPress?
If you wanted to keep users engaged on your site, you’d need to show them related content. We can do this using Internal Linking and via Related Posts.
Although internal linking helps users to correlate a context of the content within your article. Whereas, Related Posts are entirely related to the current post/content your user is going through.
From time to time, showing related posts to users has proven to strategically increase user engagement on WordPress sites. Therefore, increasing your website’s click-through rate per page/per keyword.
There are multiple related posts plugins for WordPress websites. Few of them use similar categories to display related posts. While others put parameters in place for displaying the right type of related content to your audience.
Related Posts Plugins For WordPress
Below is a list of premium and free related posts plugins for WordPress. Add them anywhere on your site.
1.Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin is a popular WordPress plugin with over 100,000 active installs from the WordPress repository.
Supporting both thumbnail and text-display-related posts, this plugin helps in increasing your page views, providing users with valid relevant content.
To match up the relevancy with a current post or page, YARPP goes through checking post title, content, category, and even tags. With the perfect matches, YARPP then displays related posts.
Pros
YARPP is easy to install and works on pages & posts. It comes with multiple features that help in controlling the display of related posts on your site.
YARPP’s templates include text, thumbnails, custom posts, RSS, etc. You can even customize the algorithm to exclude content by categories or tags.
Works on BBpress forums and WooCommerce sites as well.
Cons
It is said that YARPP needs more resources than other plugins in this list. Therefore, be sure to have a handful of resources. This problem goes away with the Pro version of YARPP.
Price: Free
2.Inline Related Posts
If you would like to display related posts within the content itself, rather than showing them on sidebars. Then the Inline Related Posts plugin is perfect for you.
The concept of uniqueness in this plugin is that, instead of showing related content below posts, it brings them within the copy. Meaning all your related content is right in front of the user.
This gives you a chance of applying the perfect related content regarding the concept written within the copy. Inline Related Posts plugin uses display boxes, customize and style them according to your website’s branding.
Pros
Since the related posts are inline, you do not need to perform extra work for increasing page views and by doing additional internal linking. Inline Related Posts offer 20 styling combinations to choose from. Keep trying and preview your style until you are satisfied.
The free version lets you add three related posts per article and the premium version has no limit on adding inline related posts.
Cons
The free version does not allow a featured image thumbnail with the related posts. This plugin is not helpful for users who like related posts below the main content.
Price:
3.Related Posts Pro For WordPress
Well, this is a premium plugin with a lot to offer. It comes with multiple layouts and templates to showcase related posts to your audience.
Related Posts Pro comes with three layouts: Isotopic, Slick & Slide, and Transitioning.
- Isotopic Layout: Gives a neat grid-style layout
- Slick & Slide Layout: Offers a layout with few related posts rolling on a slider
- Transitioning Layout: This allows you to set certain animation effects like ‘Fly-in’, ‘Pop-up’, etc.
Just like the layouts, Related Posts Pro also offers more than 100 elements to customize the related posts sections on your website. They also use a powerful caching system that saves your server resources anytime a page loads and fetches related content.
Pros
One of the plus points with this plugin is that you can set and adjust the relatedness of a post by using a weighted option. This option determines which posts to show to your audience, based on the criteria that you have set.
Highly recommended if you need a plugin that offers more customization options.
Cons
You cannot have another plugin that does the related post work on your site if this plugin is already installed. Together, both plugins will slow down your site.
Price: $22 – One-time payment
4. Contextual Related Posts
Contextual Related Posts is a free plugin allowing you to display a list of related content generated based on the title and content of the post.
The related posts generated via Contextual Related Posts can be displayed using shortcodes or widgets. You get support for custom post types and it also allows the exclusion of certain categories.
Just install and activate the plugin, you do not get any customization options.
Pros
Contextual Related Post is free, and it also allows you to display related posts within the content. It supports posts, pages, and custom post types. They have improvised on the performance by using a powerful caching system.
Cons
Contextual Related Posts find related posts using current post title and content. That is not so good if you are using tags and categories on your website. There aren’t any customization options. If you’d like to customize the appearance of related posts, you might need to use custom CSS.
Price: Free
5. Bibblio
Bibblio is an artificial intelligence-driven toolkit that delivers recommended content to readers across all devices.
It is the perfect solution for publishers like you to bring out related content for your audience. Making user engagement one of the top priorities. Unlike other related posts plugins, Bibblio uses machine learning algorithms to learn and improve its recommendations.
Other than that, you get flexible layout options for displaying related posts and an analytics dashboard to see which related content is performing.
Pros
With all the features said, Bibblio also lets you select different algorithms to display posts according to popularity or relevance. You get to prioritize recent posts over older posts and also create content groups.
The biggest plus point of Bibblio is that the processing of related posts happens on their servers, followed by caching, then displaying results on your website.
Cons
The free plan is good if you have less than 500 content items (posts/pages/custom posts). Then, prices start from $19 onwards. Each month, Bibblio only serves 25,000 recommendation calls (delivering a set of recommendations is one call) for free.
Price: Free, $19/month – $29/month
6. Jetpack
Jetpack from Automattic is your best bet if you need an all-in-one WordPress plugin offers. It gives you a related posts module called Jetpack Related Posts. That performs related content analysis, processing, and displaying right from its servers. Meaning you do not have to worry about your site’s performance.
Jetpack includes image thumbnails to the related posts, supports custom post types, and allows you to select how many related posts you want to display.
Pros
Jetpack related posts plugin is 100% free. They use WordPress’s infrastructure to display related posts, you just need to activate the toggle in the Jetpack interface.
Jetpack comes with code hooks that help you in customizing related posts.
Cons
You have to install the full Jetpack plugin to use its related posts feature. There is no customization for changing the look and feel of the related posts.
Price: Free
7. Related Posts By Taxonomy
Related Posts By Taxonomy is a free plugin that finds related posts from every category on your website. Not only category, but it also looks into tags, and post type (content-wise).
As far as the relatedness of this plugin is concerned, the post which shares the most commonality with the current post is displayed at the top (above other related posts). You are allowed to use Related Posts By Taxonomy under the post section, as a shortcode, widget, or sidebar.
Pros
This plugin supports multiple display styles like with or without image thumbnails, links to title below image, excerpts, etc.
There are more than 20+ shortcode attributes to showcase the related posts exactly how you want. Related Posts By Taxonomy lets you limit the search by post meta.
Cons
If you want to change the look and feel of the related posts section fetched by this plugin, then you will need to know how to code and apply code in the theme’s files.
Price: Free
Conclusion
If you are a content creator or a writer, the priority should be to keep your users engaged with your content.
Give them related posts wherever necessary. If you think you need to serve related content inline within the main post content, go for that strategy. Otherwise, have related posts below the main content.
It will give a good boost in user engagement and also help in reducing the overall bounce rate of the website. Eventually, all this counts in SEO improvement. Thereby, giving more traction to all of your keywords.
I hope this guide on related posts plugins for WordPress has been beneficial for you.
Hello Ankur,
Displaying related posts on our blog increases the engagement and traffic to our website. I am using Jetpack on my website. Glad to know about other plugins for this task.
Thanks for sharing this post with us.
I’m glad you found the article useful. The only reason I step back with JetPack is that the bundle comes with other plugins as well. Sometimes we do not need all of those.