Related articles as a way to keep readers

There are quite a few ways to deal with leaving blog posts too early:

• Improve message readability - i.e. discarding long (boring) blocks of text in favor of shorter ones and using nice formatting
• no internal linking
• using visual content - graphics grab attention and make content, especially text, much more engaging

For more tips, see our article on reducing bounce rates.

There is another interesting and very useful option for eliminating this overage. Namely, these are related posts to which this material is devoted.

What are related posts?

Similar posts are other articles related to a topic similar to the one you are currently reading. In other words, these are related articles.

Using them can have a big impact on bounce rates.

For example, when you read a text, you are at the end of it. In this situation, you can either leave the site or simply move on to the next article. By providing the reader with similar content, there is a good chance they will want to click and view the next article.

That's it meaning of related posts.

Ways to present related posts:

1. Tiled and Grid Standard

The above form is the most classic example of linked posts. Its advantage is transparency and well-exposed images.

Also, as in this case, it can be slider, so you can provide users with many more entries than what they see at first glance.

By the way, I invite you to our other article, where we discussed Hick's law. It's about the paradox of choice - interesting reading.

2.List of entries

Similar to the first method, but this time we use a list. Post titles are definitely more colorful here, so if you can formulate interesting titles, this way of presenting related posts can be very effective.

3. Very "economical"

Such sections are usually placed at the end of the article. This is because it is such a natural place for him. However, nothing prevents you from using the so-called sidebar for this purpose. In this case, these are articles without graphics, but here more attention should be paid to placement. It might make some sense, although it would be nice to pin this sidebar so that it follows us as we scroll down the page. Although here the question arises - will it not be too disappointing?

4. Insert next article

A very interesting option is docking at the end of the next article. The image above is a screenshot of the end of this text. As you can see, when you get to the end of the content, you immediately have the next theme loaded. In the case of really interesting content, you can get carried away reading article after article. This is certainly an interesting solution that can have its benefits.

5. Operate with words

Here's also a good example of a related post where it's mostly nicely presented.

However, it is important to pay attention to the title of this section here. It is direct, effective, encouraging and calling to action. This is by far a better form than the stiff and gaudy Related Entries that don't reveal anything in particular. Much better to write something like: See other articles; See what else we've written; You may be interested in...etc. This shape is much more human and convincing.

Looking at all the examples, it seems like the best way is to combine all the ideas and dress them up. Related posts should definitely be built with these guidelines in mind:

• First of all, images are used for content , as they are often eye-catching and simply add to the positivity of the presentation.
• Show at least three articles, but do not overdo it with the quantity (it is more difficult to make a choice).
• Select this section just enough so that it doesn't blend in with the rest of the elements.
• Use more interesting substitutes than meaningless Related Entries.

By using these guidelines, you are sure to encourage further interaction among users.

WordPress plugins that add a related posts section

With the WordPress CMS, it's easy implement such a section in your own blog. You can even successfully do it yourself. All you have to do is choose one of the plugins and the multitude of plugins will make your head spin.

So it's important to know exactly what you want from this type of plugin. They differ in the content selection algorithm and display capabilities in a specific place.

Thus, you can more or less degree to decide where such a section will be inserted. It's also nice to be able to use a shortcode to insert a related posts section anywhere. For example, in the middle of the article content.

In turn, the selection algorithm itself is the second determining factor. Entries can be suggested, for example, based on:

• entry content
• title
• category
• tags
• browsing history
• you can define your own keywords words
• you can manually set articles for each entry

So there are a whole bunch of ways.

Of course, it's best to set everything manually, but what if someone has already published l a few hundred articles?

That's it.

In fact, if you look at the determinants above, any of them can work.Only selecting by category may be too general, as the categories may simply be too broad. In this case, the use of tags (there are usually several of them) seems more appropriate. Although, on the other hand, tags are not always used. As you can see, everyone should adapt the settings to suit their needs.

The final determining factor is the customizability of appearance. This is also important because sometimes predefined templates are simply truncated and do not allow for changes.

The list of plugins is below , which will allow you to add related posts to your site:

• Contextual Related Posts - lots of options, perhaps one of the best free plugins.
• WordPress Related Posts Plugin - AddThis is one of the freshest suggestions, very fast and growing in popularity.
• Bibblio is a paid solution, although there is a free plan (limited of course) . It's worth checking what you can get by paying for this feature on your site.
• Related posts - this plugin has a lot of options for appearance, so it's an interesting suggestion.

Related blog posts - summary

With this dose of knowledge, you can definitely make an informed choice in favor of one of the plugins.

Moreover, it is worth doing in order to keep the site audience longer and get more and more visits.

Moreover, all of the above steps are at a basic level, so any blogger can successfully use the materials provided.