According to studies, 55% of your website visitors spend less than 15 seconds reading your blog posts before leaving the website.
That’s a very short time you have to entertain your website visitors.
Today, we live in a world full of many distractions. People get bored and distracted easily and they are always looking for something new.
So, what kind of strategies are you using to keep the hyperactive website visitors from leaving your website?
Are you using a related posts plugin to let your visitors keep reading more and more about the topics they love? Well, you should install one right away!
What Are Related Post Plugins?
A related post plugin is a WordPress plugin that can be installed on your website to show a list of articles to your website visitors whenever they visit your website to read one of your blog posts.
Each plugin works differently. Some will allow you to show a widget on your sidebar while others show related articles at the bottom of each blog post. Either way, its main goal is to let your blog readers browse more articles related to the topic they came looking for.
You offer them a chance to learn more about the topic without having to search or visit another website while also increasing your website page-views. It’s a win-win situation.
If you’re still not using a related post plugin, here are some of the best plugins you should consider using for your blog.
#1 Related Posts by AddThis
- Price: Free
AddThis is well known for its popular share and follow button plugins. But, the team also has an impressive related posts plugin that integrates quite well with WordPress to show more relevant related posts in many engaging ways.
Best Features
The best feature of Related Posts by AddThis plugin is its modern and attractive design that makes your related posts stand out from the rest of your website content.
In addition, the plugin will also allow you to show related posts in several different styles, including appear on-page scroll, at the bottom of blog posts, hovering related posts suggestions, and more.
Pros
- Beautiful designs to choose from (light, gray, dark, and transparent themes)
- Different options for positioning the widget
- Analytics for related posts and share counts
- Easy to install and customize
Cons
- Slightly affects page loading time
- Customization and Analytics require AddThis account (free or pro)
#2 Shareaholic
- Price: Free
Similar to AddThis, Shareaholic is another plugin that specializes in share and follow buttons. And it also comes with a related posts widget. The only difference is it’s not as customizable or as cool as the AddThis widget.
Best Features
Shareaholic is an all-in-one bundle of share buttons, follow buttons and a related posts widget. The related post widget can be displayed at the bottom of the page with rounded, card, or classic designs. Since this is not a dedicated related posts widget, that’s all the customization you get with this plugin.
Pros
- Easy to install
- Removes the need to install separate plugins for share buttons and follow buttons
- Analytics for shares and clicks
- Basic themes for customizing related post widget
Cons
- Limited customization options
- Outdated designs for related post widget
#3 Better Related Posts Widget
- Price: $7
This premium, yet lightweight, plugin is not as sophisticated as the other plugins in our list. It doesn’t have analytics or lots of themes for styling the design of the widget. However, it provides you with lots of options for customizing the design by yourself.
Best Features
The Better Related Posts Widget plugin features 12 advanced customization options for changing the style of your text, image thumbnails, and plenty more to make the related post widget fit right into your blog.
Pros
- 12 customization options
- Ability to choose to show excerpts, authors, comment count, etc
- Fits in easily with any theme design
- Lightweight design
Cons
- No themes for widget design
- Difficult for beginners to install
- Widget can only be shown on bottom of blog posts
#4 Related Posts Pro
- Price: $15
This is yet another premium plugin designed for showing related posts under your blog posts in style. This plugin can work with many different content types, including custom post types, multi-sites, categories, terms, and more for showing accurate related posts.
Best Features
The three beautiful layout designs are the highlight feature of this plugin. These designs allow you to show related posts in a beautiful polaroid design, a slide-style design, or a large transitioning style design.
Pros
- 65 themes to choose from for the widget design
- 3 post layouts to choose from (polaroid, slide, transitioning)
- Lots of customization options
- Beginner-friendly user interface
Cons
- Designs requires manual customization to make it look better
- Slightly heavier than other plugins when loading
#5 Related Posts
- Price: Free
This is a basic related posts plugin that simply allows you to show a minimalist related posts widget under your blog posts. The minimalism is what makes this plugin special.
Best Features
The plugin is extremely lightweight and easy to install. You won’t even notice the plugin is on your website. Also, it’s minimalist design will easily fit in with almost any blog design.
Pros
- Lightweight and fast loading times
- Simple customization options for changing colors, font size, etc
- Support for Russian, French, Italian, and other languages
Cons
- Outdated design
- Limited customization options
- No pre-designed themes to choose from.
#6 Related Posts by Taxonomy
- Price: Free
This free related posts plugin comes with widgets for both your blog posts and the side-bar for showing other related posts with terms most in common with the page content.
Best Features
The Related Posts by Taxonomy also allows you to insert the widget to anywhere on your website with a simple shortcode as well. Even though it offers limited widget customization options, you can still use your own HTML templates if you know some coding skills.
Pros
- Lightweight design
- Shortcodes for displaying related posts anywhere you like
- Ability to include or exclude terms from widget search
Cons
- Limited customization options
- No theme designs
- Outdated design
#7 Related Amazon Products Plugin
- Price: $24
Technically, this is not a related posts plugin. This is a much more advanced plugin that shows related Amazon products instead. If you’re an affiliate blogger promoting Amazon products, this is a plugin you must have.
Best Features
This plugin uses an advanced algorithm to find the most related Amazon products to display under your blog posts to drive more sales. And it comes with 6 modern and gorgeous theme designs. All you have to do is connect your affiliate ID with the plugin and get started.
Pros
- Easily monetize your website and earn more affiliate income
- Beautiful design with 6 layout designs
- Customize fonts
- Send customers directly to checkout or use 90-days cookie
Cons
- Only works for Amazon Affiliate users
Over To You
Keep in mind that some of these plugins are slightly heavier than the others. Some of them may add a couple of extra seconds to your website loading time. That’s something you should avoid at all costs if you care about getting better ranking on Google.
However, it’s a risk worth taking. Because a related post plugins will help you make the most of your website traffic and get more eyeballs on more of your articles. If you enjoyed this guide, you may also want to see our article on mailing list plugins for WordPress.
If you know any other great related posts plugins, leave a comment and let us know.
Hi Devesh
I’ve been trying to decide which related post plugin to use and your article has solved my problem…
“After testing several plugins, it become clear to me that one plugin stood above the rest. That plugin is nRelate related content plugin, which is what I have been using on this site.”
Thanks for that I’ll try it out on a local site first and if all goes well, I’ll go live.
Fabulous post.
Now a days, Most of the people like and built WordPress based websites and blogs. So These plugins will help to who like and start new wordpress based websites. Good job man!!!
Good collection of related posts plugins. i used nRelate for a long time. Nowadays, I prefer Manual Related Posts plugin which lets me to pick related posts while I’m writing. This way, I can display closely related posts. But it works automatically as well.
If you are interested, you can check it here: wordpress.org/plugins/baw-manual-related-posts/
Devesh, thanks for including Contextual Related Posts to your list 🙂
Hi Devesh
You should take a look at sosere. It’s a new one. http://wordpress.org/plugins/social-semantic-recommendation-sosere
Nice collection of plugins. I was looking for this. I am using YARPP, its just awesome. 🙂
I am creating a knowledge base, that includes three types of visitors, and then FAQ questions based on the type of visitor. I would like to MANUALLY include related questions within each FAQ page. This article outlines great Plugins for related content by Posts, but not by FAQ’s. I haven’t been able to find a plugin for this. Do you know of any?
so i’m basically looking for a plugin that would allow me to add suggestions in my sidebar, something like related posts only i would add links manually, links from press, huffpost, upworthy and stuff like that, any suggestions?
I don’t think there are many plugins available with that specific functionality. Though I did found one – http://wordpress.org/plugins/related-external-links/, but it hasn’t been updated in years.
Feel free to reply to this message, if you need any more help :).
thank you for looking at least, i’ve seen that one too but i don’t think it’s gonna work 🙂 sucks i’m not built to create plugins, i’ve got many ideas 🙂
No problem, Mr. Misfit – I hope that’s not your real name :).
Have you tried the plugin? Did it gave you any error? If yes, then you should contact the plugin author to see if he is willing to help you.
i prefer yarp plugin, i use it personally on my blog, and would advise others too.
Which one you are using on your blog?
We are not using any plugins, our related posts section is custom coded in the theme.
Have you tried the plugin? Did it gave you any error? If yes, then you should contact the plugin author to see if he is willing to help you
Hi, I’m looking for a plugin that would show most related (one post only) on the bottom as a pop when scrolled down like the one hard coded in newspaper theme.
Thanks for this review, very informative.
I’m using WordPress Related Post By Sovrn, zemanta but it seems that it is being abandoned. I’m looking for a Related post plugin that will offer me three key features that Sovrn offers:
1. Letting me set the image shown from a custom field;
2. Must be able to set it by code in PHP file;
3. Letting me set some of the related posts by hand. Like if i have a post about Beth Behrs of Two Broke Girls, i will definitely want Kat Denning and Jennifer Coolidge as a Related post. The rest of them can be set automatically.
So far, number 3 on my list is not available anywhere, even from the paid ones…
Hi,
It’s kind of a specific option, it’s unlikely a plugin will have that available. But you could always ask for a feature, whichever plugin fits the rest of your needs the best head over to the support ( or comment section ) and ask them if it’s a feature they’d consider adding. It’s more likely to be added by one of the paid plugins, but you could of course ask for the free plugins as well.
Hey, thanks for the article. Will try some plugins from your list. Just checked YARPP and it is no longer available for download.
Personally, I like Shareaholic for my blog.
Rahul Digital
Just an FYI that YARPP has been removed from the WordPress repository for lack of maintenance.
You better update your list. Yuzo related posts plug-in causes redirecting problems and it has been abandoned by the owner.