Have you seen at the bottom of our posts, it shows you a few other posts that you might be interested in? If you haven’t noticed it before now, take a look at the end of this post. We’ll wait for you, promise.
So that’s a related links plugin. The one that we use on Bonjour, Blogger! is called nRelate, and we like it because it’s pretty simple to use as well as being accessible to not just WordPress but Blogger, Tumblr and any other blog platform that you can install Javascript on – all you need to do is sign up here, confirm your account, agree to the T&C’s, then click Install. You’ll be shown some icons, for which you click the one that relates to the system you use. You’ll be talked through how to install the bit of code into your blog (and if you’re a self hosted WordPress user, it’s literally as easy as installing a plugin and activating it.) nRelate also has a feature where it can create a popup at the side of your page (a flyout) to catch those readers who might not read to the end of your post. nRelate also provides analytics about how many clicks the widget has generated (and how many views it’s had), allows customisation to make the plugin fit in well with your blog theme, and has the ability to generate commission with certain links (if you want, instead of having blog ads!)
Another one you may have heard of is Linkwithin. It’s one of the most popular related post widgets, but bloggers are starting to move away from it because of concerns about how the plugin deals with sending the reader to the next link. (Search for “linkwithin SEO” if you’d like to read up more about this) It’s very simple to install (just a line of code!) and works on Blogger, self hosted WordPress, Typepad and again for any manual installs.
Finally, Outbrain is quite similar to nRelate, where it provides analytics and the ability to generate commission. It also allows you to buy space to advertise your links on other sites – this might be a good choice if you’d like your ads to be targeted to people looking at similar content. Outbrain also looks at how popular a post is, not just the relativity to the post that the reader is currently on, as well as what the reader has been looking at elsewhere and serves up posts that they would be more interested in. (You might think that’s a little creepy though!)
What do you think of related post plugins? Do they make you stick around a bit longer?
We use WordPress Related Posts by Zemanta at Cwtch the Bride but sometimes it picks up the wrong image or doesn’t include one, so I might switch to nRelate for a bit and see if it’s any better :)
There’s a section in each editing post page where you can choose which image is featured – this seems to be where you can set the image for the related posts bit (at least that’s how it works with nRelate!) Is that any help?
We don’t use Featured Images on Cwtch because it changes the way the posts are displayed on the front page from full to truncated, which we didn’t want. Otherwise yes, it’d be very helpful! :)
I wondered about this very feature and was thinking to investigate. Thanks for sharing. Now if you know how to solve the threaded comments issue I have, you’d be my new favourite person! ;)
I just happened upon you – I have added you to list because this is such useful information with out being too techy I know I should be linking to other posts and this article has just given me the kick up the jacksi I need to get me to go and it So thank you
I rarely click on a related post but I know they’re often recommended so perhaps my reading habits are unusual?
I think it depends on the reader and the blog really – for blogs like beauty ones, the reader might be interested in a photo of a product, but with your blog, I think people are more likely to either just read through your archives or look for a specific book review. If I want to read more from a blogger, a photo in the related posts is more likely to get me to click onwards.