Are your users leaving your site after reading the first post? Increasing pageviews and reducing bounce rate is a big challenge for site owners.
The best way to keep users engaged on your website is by showing them related content. It has proven to be an effective way of getting more pageviews.
It also helps users discover content that they may not be able to find otherwise. Many popular blogs use this strategy to increase the time users spend on their time.
You can easily use this strategy on your own WordPress site. There are many related posts plugins for WordPress that can automate the whole process for you.
However, these plugins use different approaches to find related content. For example, some may display posts in the same category as related posts, while others may use multiple factors to increase relevancy.
In this article, we will show you some of the best related posts plugins for WordPress with their pros and cons.
Video Tutorial
If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.
1. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin aka YARPP is one of the most popular WordPress related posts plugin with more than 200,000 active installs. It supports both thumbnail and text display of related posts.
Pros:
YARPP uses a built-in algorithm to find related posts. It has a great template system, allows for thumbnails / text display, supports custom post types, and RSS feed display.
Cons:
If you are running a very large site, then YARPP can be very resource intensive. The pro version of the plugin solves this problem by performing heavy-lifting on YARPP’s own servers.
YARPP is not compatible with WPML plugin. If you are going to create a multi-lingual WordPress site, then you should choose Polylang.
Lastly, YARRP is blocked on managed WordPress hosting providers like WP Engine.
2. Contextual Related Posts
Contextual Related Posts is another WordPress plugin to display related posts. It tries to improve relevancy by contextually matching posts. It can display related posts as thumbnails and text.
Pros:
For text only related posts, it works out of the box and has a simpler settings page. It tries to use images inside a post as thumbnail when no featured image or post thumbnail is found.
Cons:
The plugin does not come with any template to display thumbnails. Instead it just displays thumbnail images in a bulleted list. Users can add their own CSS to style it, but beginner level users may find it difficult.
Just like YARPP, this plugin also does not scale well on larger sites. Managed WordPress hosts like WPEngine has blocked this plugin to be used by their customers because on larger sites it will slow down your site.
3. Related Posts for WordPress
Related Posts for WordPress plugin is a lightweight alternate to more popular related posts plugins. It performs all the resource intensive tasks in the admin area and uses cache to display related posts.
Pros:
Related Posts for WordPress focuses on performance. It is faster and does not slow down your website. It supports thumbnail and textual display of related posts list.
There is a widget and shortcode which you can use anywhere to display related posts.
Cons:
If you had been using other related posts plugins, then you might miss a few extra features.
4. Related Posts by Taxonomy
Taxonomies in WordPress are used to sort content into different terms. Categories and Tags are two default WordPress taxonomies used by most WordPress blogs.
Related Posts by Taxonomies plugin allows you to display posts using the same taxonomy terms. For example, you can select to display posts by ‘Category’ or ‘Tags’.
The plugin will then display related posts filed under the same category or tag as the one currently displayed.
Pros
Easy to use and gives you limited control on what is displayed as related to each item. It event works for custom taxonomies and post types, this allows you to display related items for other content items as well.
You can display related posts in posts, with or without thumbnail, or in a sidebar widget.
Cons
The plugin offers limited options than some other related posts plugins. It only uses taxonomy terms as a metric, which means your results may not be the best related posts.
5. Inline Related Posts
Inline Related Posts is different than other plugins in this list. Instead of showing related posts below content, this plugin shows them inside your articles. This kind of inline display of related content is quite popular on news and blog sites.
Pros:
Displays related posts when users are more engaged in the content and are more likely to click. It has easy setup and allows you to control where you want to display inline related post links in your content.
Cons:
If you want to display related posts at the end of each post, then you will need to install another plugin. Two related posts plugins on one site can be very resource intensive.
Bonus Tips
You may have noticed that we have repeatedly mentioned that related posts plugin can be resource intensive. It is possible that some of these plugins may not work well on a shared WordPress hosting.
In that case, you can use Custom Related Posts plugin. This plugin allows you to manually add related posts to a post. The link relationship work both ways, so if you add an old post as related post to a new one, then the old post will also display the new post as related.
Another option is to manually display related posts with thumbnails without using plugins.
We hope that this article helped you find the best related posts plugin for your WordPress website. Check out this guide for more tips on how to increase pageviews and reduce bounce rate in WordPress.
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Has this changed since 2015? Is there any easiest way to add related blog posts at the end of a blog post because I have no knowledge related to web design/ developer.
While there may be newer plugins options, the plugins should still fit your needs
You might want to refresh this one. I was looking for a “related posts” plugin and found this page, but it looks like it is about 4 years old.
Thanks for your recommendation, we’ll certainly take a look at updating this article but some of the plugins should still fit your needs
Hi,
thanks for this article.
What plugin are you using for related posts on wpbeginner.com?
For the moment that is something custom, you can see what plugins we use on WPBeginner on our BluePrint page here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/blueprint/
You better update your list. Yuzo related posts plug-in causes redirecting problems and it has been abandoned by the owner.
Thank you for letting us know the need to update this article
Thank you.
I want to alert you. Yuzo Related Posts has been hacked
Thank you for letting us know, it appears the plugin author is working on fixing the problem.
thanks for the related posts plugin collection
You’re welcome
Nice collection of plugins. I was looking for this. I am using YARPP, its just awesome.
Hey Rahul,
Thanks for the feedback.
Hi there, thank you for your post.
Actually, I am using a theme which there is a portfolio section. And I’ve created a custom post type as a blog.
Now I am trying related both and I wonder if that’s possible to do and if has a plugin could do that?
The idea is write posts and matches that into the pages.
Thank you
Hi, I have a video blog (no text at all) and I want my related posts plugin to show a thumbnail that it the video or video thumbnail. I can’t use featured images because that just ads a huge image above the video and is confusing. Do you know any plugins that have this feature? Thanks!
I must commend you on your website. This is one of my go-to websites for tutorials. Lots of great content and so informative. You provide lots of options for each tutorial and I love that! It always works. Thanks.
Hi Shevy,
We are glad you find WPBeginner helpful
Don’t forget to join us on Twitter for more WordPress tips and tutorials.
Please mention, which plugins work with bbpress, and which don’t I tried using YARPP. It does not work with bbpress.
Hi Adarsh,
We don’t test plugins for compatibility with bbPress. You can report the conflict to authors of both plugins.
can you somehow add related pages/posts to pages??
Thanks
Yes you can.
Hello Thanks for these helpful Plugins. I need a Plugin to show related Posts at the above of Post Page. Would you please tell me any plugin for this?
Thanks in Advance
Inline related posts worked for me thanks Syed.
Related post for wordpress is great and i will implement this on my website soon.
What about Related Posts by Jetpack?
related post by jetpack lol…..well you can use it well i am not blaming anyone of them, but according to me use contextual related plugin
Thanks. I see what am searching for. I mean something like the ‘inline related posts’ that show your post inside articles.
Hi
I read your comments on Yuzo that i use for over one year and the dev has been really helpful
it absolutly not slow at all
i do not know how did you run your test on what server but really this is super fast
thanks
Cons:
It is inevitable not to compromise on speed when you are offering this many features. It is fast, but it is not lightweight.
These are all great plugins, however, as noted in the article, they are all data intensive. in fact, some hosting environments (WP Engine) will not even allow a lot of these plugins.
The “Manual Related Posts” plugin looks interesting.
It’s also possible to code a “Related Posts” function without using a plugin. This technique uses tags to relate posts to eachother.
Don’t really know that something of this stuff exists. I’m using the default one , which I think is not good enough for my site. I will lay my hands on some of this plugin.
Thanks
Personally, I like Shareaholic for my blog.
Kim Gaynor
I guess JetPack is quite good enough for most bloggers.
Hi,
Just wanted to update that since this post, Contextual Related comes with an inbuilt style to display the posts as users want. Additionally an aggressive cache makes the plugin super fast after the first load.
Lastly, you can also specify any manual posts for users who prefer the additional finer control.
Great list.
You should consider Related Post for WordPress plugin in this list. I found it light and nice. And related post from jetpack is great too.
You can try Related Posts by Zemanta
So which one best?
I’ve used and loved nRelate, but am still searching for a conquerable replacement now that nRelate is no longer.
Found out, nRelate just discontinued their service! Sad indeed.
I hate to be one of those people that just says “Great post!” … but this really was exactly what I was looking for today! Love the pro/con approach. Thanks!
I think Outbrain is best.
Outbrain is crooks they show 6 outbound links which is actually more links than your site. So actually you are doing a free service for them to send your traffic to it. There are better plugins than outbrain crook crap.
I just want to say that YARPP does not deserve to be No1 related post plugin for wordpress.
I don’t know which one to choose but, after whole day struggling with YARPP (all basic stuff) I decided to give nRelated a chance and take a guess, all works without my interfering at all.
I have installed plugin, and wait for about 5 minutes nRelated to reindex my site 1k+ posts. I check his functions and style and I saw that it is much more ‘user ready’ plugin than YARPP.
That is my opinion and I wanted to share it with you guys.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin is the best.
Thanks! I’ve one question. plz, tell me, what’s the plagin at your comments?
See our blueprint for the list of plugins and tools we use on WPBeginner.
But i can’t find any plugin related to “related post plugin on your plugin blueprint page and you have related post features after your article. so what plugin do you use for related post on your site?
Hi,
you may also take a look at SOSERE: http://wordpress.org/plugins/social-semantic-recommendation-sosere/
such a nice list thank you i use Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
holy useful article
Is there any plugin which can fetch posts from another similar websites on the basis of minimum 5 comments on them?
For e.g. I have technology blog then plugin search technology blogs from internet and give result of that posts which have more than five comments and post author comment.
As a user, seeing a related post after reading an article indeed encourages me to read on about something, but only if that something is interesting enough.
But anyway, thanks a bunch for this list of plugins that will take care of the technical aspects of relating posts.
Thanks for this list! I’m trying to decide between YARPP and nRelate. For YARPP, you mentioned the site size issue, but what do you consider to be a “large” site? And for nRelate, does it have a template system too? I’ve installed and played with Contextual Related Posts, but as I AM a beginner user, I am having trouble getting the thumbnails to look good.
YARPP – if you have a few hundred posts on a shared hosting account, and you are getting 1000+ visitors a day then your host will probably shut you down. nRelate can be styled by targeting CSS classes, and its definitely more scalable.
Great list, already using the 1st one though.
Using YARPP is really great, and with 2.4 million downloads the author’s will be encouraged to update and upgrade it forever. User engagement at it’s best. Good post btw wpbeginner.
So which one of these is your favourite?
My choice is nRelate Related Content. It proves to be very reliable in work and fast with accurate related content to articles… and free too. Thumbs up!
Thank you for featuring Contextual Related Posts in your list above.
We use Disqus as a commenting system that also provides a similar posts functionality in one of our client websites. Works like charm. I wish we can use Disqus’ similar posts system and Jetpack’s commenting system.
Thank you for another great list! Which one are you using here?
We’re using a manual solution.
please how can you help or assist me with this manual solution, can you assist me with the code so i can edit for my site?