The traditional way of adding related posts in a post is by inserting posts related to your current post by using the tag “Read Also”, etc… This procedure can be tedious. The good news is that there is a plugin that can be doing the whole work on your behalf.
Adding related posts within contents helps you to reduce the bounce rate, help your readers to get relevant related content to the one they are currently reading.
Having related posts within your posts will also enable you to increase the page views.
You have to understand that not all of your readers will read the whole content. Most of them will not make it to the bottom, therefore it becomes paramount to have related posts within your contents.
There are few plugins that offer the ability to add related posts within your contents like Inline related plugin.
Step 1: Installation of the plugin
Let us see we can install inline related posts plugin in the dashboard. First, hover over plugins and click on “Add new”. Search for “Inline related posts”. Install and activate it.
Step 2: Setting of the plugin
to configure the plugin, go to “setting” and click on “Inline related posts”. By default, you have the choice of selecting the free version or upgrading the plugin to the pro version. For now, let us focus on the free version. So, move to the bottom and click on “Continue using the free version”.
On the next page, make sure you check the “active?” option. On checking it, you should be able to see other options.
Step 3: Style Setting
In this section, we are going to focus on the look of how our related posts will be displayed in our posts.
- The related text: The first thing we will take a look at is the “related text”. Many bloggers use texts like: “Read“, “Read also“, “Read this“, “Also consider reading“, “you might like“, etc… The choice is yours. By default, the plugin suggests “read“.
- The theme: This determines the look. You have five options. Basically, they perform a similar function. Some are pro version theme (like button, Kangoo, ruby). Shock and minimalist are for the free version.
- Opacity: the opacity determines how faded or not would the posts appear.
- The CSS: if you want to create some margin before and after the related posts, here is the right place.
- Others: They are self-explanatory.
keep in mind there is a preview at the bottom showing you at the exact time how the related posts would look like.
Plugin setting
Leave them as default. The only thing you might like to change is the interval between the boxes. The initial value is 250 words. If you want the boxes to be close, consider decreasing the number otherwise, increase it.
Engine setting
leave it as default. The plugin uses tags and categories to determine the related posts to insert in your posts by default. If you wish, you can change it to “tags” only or “categories” only.
If you want your related posts to have do follow tag, change the Link “rel” attribute value to “dofollow”.
Initially, when someone clicks on your related posts, the post is open in another tab. If you want the posts to be opened in the same tab, change the value of Link “target” attribute to “_self“.
Metabox integration
Do you want to display your related posts on your pages? If yes, check it as well.
Upgrade
Let us talk about the upgrade of this plugin. Below is how your posts will displayed in the pro version. If you wish to display your featured image along with your posts, then, you may decide to upgrade. The “button” theme though does not display the featured image.
CONCLUSION
Inline related posts is indeed a great plugin that helps us reduce our bounce rate and boost our SEO. It also saves us time in the sense that we don’t have to be including inline related posts manually. We really recommend it for all the great feature it has.
