Keep Readers Clicking: Best Related Post Plugins for WordPress

Contextual Related Posts

Contextual Related Posts is an ingenious WordPress plugin that introduces a unique way to keep your readers engaged longer. With over 80,000 active installations and a rating of 4.5 stars on WordPress, this related post plugin plays a significant role in enhancing the user experience on your site. It is compatible with WordPress versions 4.9 or higher, making it a versatile and efficient tool for WordPress developers and agencies.

This related post plugin uses a smart algorithm to evaluate the content or title of your posts, determining the most suitable related posts to display. This not only offers your readers more content to explore but also significantly reduces your site’s bounce rate. On top of that, Contextual Related Posts also provides flexibility in the placement of related posts, with options for widgets, shortcodes, Gutenberg blocks, and even REST API.

Why to Use It

• Smart content suggestions: Uses intelligent algorithms to show highly relevant posts.
• Customizable: Offers multiple display options, including widgets, shortcodes, and blocks.
• Supports custom post types: Adds flexibility for content-heavy websites.
• Automatic caching: Improves site performance without extra configuration.
• Boosts engagement: Helps increase visibility of older posts and reduces bounce rates.

Why to Avoid It

While Contextual Related Posts is incredibly effective, it may not be ideal for sites with limited or poorly categorized content, as it could struggle to provide relevant suggestions. Additionally, some users have noted a slight decrease in site speed when using the related post plugin, which may affect performance on slower servers.

Pricing

As for pricing, Contextual Related Posts offers both a free and a paid version.

• Basic: $49/year
• Pro: $99–$199/year
• Agency: $299/year

Inline Related Posts

Discover the magic of Inline Related Posts, a powerful WordPress plugin brought to you by the data security and privacy compliance company, Data443. With over thousands of installations and a high user rating, this related post plugin is compatible with all versions of WordPress. It’s the secret tool used by leading companies like Entrepreneur, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, Business Insider, and Financial Times to boost engagement and reduce bounce rate on their websites.

The Inline Related Posts plugin works like a charm, placing related post boxes within your content, automatically distributing multiple boxes in all your posts, and detecting line breaks without destroying your paragraphs or headlines. It offers over 20+ combinations of styles for customization. This related post plugin is perfect for WordPress agencies and developers looking to increase page views and user interaction on their sites.

Why to Use It

• Enhances user engagement: Keeps readers on your site longer, increasing page views.
• Reduces bounce rate: Encourages visitors to explore more of your site’s content.
• Easy to use: Automatically places related posts inside your content.
• Customizable: Offers over 20+ style combinations to match your site’s design.
• Trusted by leading companies: Used by top companies for their websites.

Why to Avoid It

While Inline Related Posts is a fantastic related post plugin, it might not be suitable for all. If your website is already cluttered with various elements, adding related posts within your content might overwhelm your visitors. Moreover, the plugin’s customization options, while extensive, might require a learning curve for some users.

Pricing

The best part about Inline Related Posts is that it’s free to download and use.

Related Posts for WordPress

Discover the power of connectivity with the Related Posts for WordPress plugin! With a single click, you can effortlessly link related posts, enhancing your users’ experience and boosting onsite engagement. This related post plugin boasts an impressive number of installations and high ratings on WordPress, demonstrating its reliability and efficiency. It offers compatibility with PHP 5.3 and up, making it a versatile choice for agencies and developers.

Related Posts for WordPress takes the hassle out of linking related content. With its smart installation wizard, you can set the number of related posts and let the related post plugin do the rest. Far from bogging down your server, this related post plugin prides itself on its caching system that keeps your website running smoothly. The premium version of the plugin offers additional features such as full styling control, cross custom post type support, and adjustable weights, making it a worthy investment for enhancing your WordPress site.

Why to Use It

• Easy Connectivity: With just one click, you can connect related posts, enhancing user experience.
• Efficient Wizard: The smart installation wizard takes care of all the hard work.
• No Server Lag: The related post plugin has its own caching system, ensuring your website remains fast.
• Premium Features: The premium version offers additional features like overwritable templates and priority email support.
• Versatile Compatibility: Compatible with PHP 5.3 and up, including PHP 8, 8.1, and 8.2.

Why to Avoid It

While the related postplugin offers many benefits, there are a few potential downsides. If you prefer manual control over related posts, the automatic linking feature may not suit your needs. Also, the plugin’s full benefits require a premium subscription, which may not fit into everyone’s budget.

Pricing

The Related Posts for WordPress plugin offers both a free and a premium version. The free version provides basic linking features. However, the premium version offers a range of additional features.

• Personal: $49 per year
• Business: $79 per year
• Developer: $139 per year

Related Content By PickPlugins

Get your website visitors hooked with the “Related Post” plugin by PickPlugins, a robust tool that showcases related content under your post content, be it a single post, page, or custom post types. With over 20,000 active installations and a 4.5-star rating on WordPress, this plugin is compatible with WordPress versions 4.0 and above. It’s an excellent tool for WordPress agencies and developers looking to boost user engagement and extend the time visitors spend on their sites.

The “Related Post” plugin by PickPlugins brings a new level of customization to your related posts. You can choose to display related content under excerpts or content by archive pages like tag, category, date, author, search page, and custom taxonomy pages. It also supports various layouts, including grid, slider, and list styles. The plugin is sure to enhance the user experience by offering relevant, engaging content to your audience.

Why to Use It

• Increase User Engagement: Displaying related posts keeps your readers engaged for longer.
• Boost SEO: More internal links contribute to better SEO rankings.
• Flexible Customization: Choose where and how to display related posts.
• Advanced Features: Manually select related content and set the maximum number of posts to display.
• Analytics: Enable click tracking to see which posts attract the most attention.

Why to Avoid It

While the “Related Post” plugin offers numerous benefits, it may not be suitable for everyone. If you have a smaller site with limited content, finding related posts might be challenging. Also, if your site is already slow, adding this plugin could potentially slow it down further due to the additional queries it needs to run.

Pricing

The “Related Post” by PickPlugins offers a free version with basic features. However, for advanced features like displaying related posts on popups, custom HTML after each element, and custom link targets, you need to subscribe to their Pro version.

• Personal: $9
• Plus: $49
• Freelance: $89
• Agency: $129

YARPP – Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Laying the foundation for an engaging, dynamic website is no easy task, but with the power of the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP), you can take your WordPress site to the next level. This highly customizable, performance-oriented plugin is the key to increasing visitor engagement, page views, and SEO by introducing your audience to other relevant content on your site. With more than 10 years of development under its belt and over 6 million downloads, it’s safe to say that YARPP has made its mark in the realm of related posts plugins.

YARPP boasts an advanced and versatile algorithm that considers post titles, content, tags, categories, and custom taxonomies to find related content from across your site. With inbuilt caching, it makes subsequent queries super efficient and fast. It also offers custom templates and styles, giving you full control of how results are styled and displayed. Thanks to its wide range of placement options and compatibility with all languages, custom post types, taxonomies, and WordPress Multisite, it’s a plugin that can truly cater to your individual needs.

Why to Use It

• Advanced and Versatile Algorithm: Ensures the most relevant content is displayed.
• Efficient Inbuilt Caching: Speeds up queries for faster performance.
• Custom Templates and Styles: Offers personalized display options for your site.
• Wide Range of Placement Options: Provides flexibility in where related posts can appear.
• Multilingual Support: Compatible with various platforms and languages.

Why to Avoid It

Be aware that YARPP might not be suitable for smaller, less complex websites as its advanced features may be overwhelming. Plus, it requires at least PHP 5.3 or greater, MySQL 5.6 or greater OR MariaDB 10.1 or greater, and WordPress 3.7 or greater to work effectively.

Pricing

YARPP offers a free plan currently.

Related Products

Introducing the ‘Related Products – Product Recommendations for WooCommerce’, a powerful plugin designed to showcase related products in your WooCommerce store. With over 10,000 active installations, a 4.5-star rating, and compatibility up to WordPress 5.8.2, this plugin is a go-to resource for WordPress agencies and developers. It effectively helps increase average order value by drawing customers’ attention to other products they might be interested in, thereby boosting sales.

This plugin offers you the ability to disable default WooCommerce related products functionality, choose custom related products, set up related products for the entire store or individual products, exclude selected categories or out of stock products from showing as related products, and much more. It even allows you to override your theme’s default related products template and import related products using the default WooCommerce importer.

Why to Use It

• Increases Average Order Value: Encourages customers to add more items to their cart by showcasing related products.
• Boosts Sales: Suggests products based on customer behavior, driving more purchases.
• High Customizability: Allows customization of the related products section to suit your needs.
• Broad Compatibility: Seamlessly integrates with WooCommerce 9.1.4 and WPML.
• Increases Customer Retention: Enhances retention by suggesting products that match customer interests.

Why to Avoid It

If your product range is limited or highly niche-specific, using this plugin may not be beneficial. Secondly, if your store doesn’t have a diverse range of products, the plugin might end up showing the same set of related products repetitively, which could be off-putting for customers.

Pricing

The plugin offers both free and premium versions. The premium version offers more advanced features and is available in three subscription plans

• Single site-$69 per year
• 5 sites -$99 per year
• 25 sites-$199 per year