When you run a WordPress website, you’ll want to get as many eyes on it as possible. If you master the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you shouldn’t have any problem getting visitors to see your blog posts. However, there are no guarantees that those same users will stick around to check out the rest of your content.
Writing excellent content is the first step, therefore, but you also need to optimize your website to get people to stay longer. This is where related posts sections come in. This feature enables you to present similar content to your visitors organically, encouraging them to check it out.
Why Related Posts Sections Are an Excellent Addition to Any Blog
In this article, we’re going to talk about what related posts sections are, and how they can help improve your website. Then we’ll teach you two ways to set up a related posts section in WordPress using plugins. Let’s get to it!
Whether your goal is to sign visitors up for paid programs, promote your products, build your brand, or something else entirely, engagement will be a determining factor for your blog’s success. To measure engagement, it helps to pay attention to metrics such as click-through rates, the number of comments on each article, and the amount of time visitors spend on your site.
That last metric is particularly important. After all, the more time people spend on your blog, the better your chances will be of turning them into repeat visitors. There are a number of simple techniques you can use to get visitors to stay around longer, such as adding a related posts section to your website. Here’s why this approach works:
- It makes your users’ lives simpler. Related posts help visitors find more content they’re interested in without having to look for it themselves.
- You can promote less popular content. Related posts can help drive traffic to content that would otherwise be overlooked.
As for what constitutes ‘related’ content, that’s up to you to determine. Most plugins that add this feature to your site will promote content with the same category or tags as the post a visitor is currently reading. For this reason, you should pay close attention to how you organize your content, in order to achieve the best effect with your related posts.