15 Best and Powerful Ways to Show Related Posts on WordPress

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Related posts section on a blogOne of the most popular ways to increase visitors' engagement on your blog or website is offering contextually related content in an attractive way. Professional bloggers often use related posts section to fulfill this criterion. There are several ways to display related content. Some publishers prefer plain text links while others prefer to include an alluring thumbnail image too. Obviously, the latter approach works quite well. Today, we're going to see some of the best solutions for showing related posts on WordPress post pages. One does not need to be a tech ninja to create such kind of content section. All we need is a flexible and powerful plugin to do the job. I've tested and selected some of the best-related posts plugins available for WordPress platform. Although power users can implement the same without any plugin, general users need to use one of these for offering related content to their readers. If your blog has a very small archive, I'll suggest you wait for some time before using one of these awesome plugins.

Related posts section on a blog

Although one can code a related posts section from scratch, using a specialized plugin for the same makes sense. These plugins are designed to be efficient, reliable, and light on the server resources.

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As far as extracting related posts is concerned, all of these plugins are more or less the same. What makes them different is the type of customization controls available for the user.

Related Post plugin for WordPress Related Post - This handy related post plugin is very easy-to-use and works well with all the themes with responsive designs. It supports a thumbnail image as well as text snippet for each entry in the related content section. Through a handy shortcode, you can easily insert related content wherever you want within your existing design. Apart from using it on regular single post pages, you can also use it on archives pages. The plugin itself is lightweight and works seamlessly on all kind of server environments. Apart from appearance customization, one can also change the number of posts within the section.

Contextual Related Posts plugin for related content on posts Contextual Related Posts - If you have a large text rich archive on the blog. I'd strongly recommend once trying this plugin. As the name suggests, this plugin intelligently scans the posts' content and find the relevant posts on the basis of actual content analysis. It has several advanced features suitable for power users to completely customize the related posts section. Custom CSS style support allows you to easily change the default appearance. It is available both in widget form as well as in the form of shortcode placement. Bloggers can also exclude content on the basis of different criteria for best results.

YARPP plugin for related posts on WordPress YARPP - This is perhaps the most popular related posts plugin with a huge user base. It can fetch related content from posts, pages and from custom post types too. It supports both thumbnails as well as a regular list based related content section. It also includes ample support for customizing the template to match the section with your existing design. One can also customize its content matching algorithm to fine tune the results. Bloggers can also use its awesome feature of displaying related posts within blog feed too. Its PRO version has several more advanced features for much better-related posts section.

Related Posts for WordPress plugin Related Posts for WordPress - This is another lightning fast and impressive related posts plugin. It has both shortcode and widget support to ensure you can embed the related content section almost anywhere on your blog. You can override its automatic content selection process and can manually specify the posts to be shown in the related content section. Even if you have a huge archive of posts, this plugin works efficiently behind the scenes with its own cache to lessen the burden on server resources. The premium version of this plugin works seamlessly on multisite networks too without any issues.

Related content CP plugin CP Related Posts - This is a versatile related posts extension with loads of customization options to get a highly relevant related content section. It supports both manual and automated post selection option for blog posts. Related posts can also be shown on custom post types with custom thumbnails other than the default images already present in the posts. I've tested this plugin on a site and found that its content matching algorithm is quite good and fetches matching content easily. Users can also remove or suppress certain content matching parameters from selective pages to get better and fine-tuned results.

WordPress Related Posts add-on for related content display WordPress Related Posts - Quite similar to YARPP, this is another very popular plugin used by large number of WordPress bloggers. While composing your posts, you can hand pick best posts from the archive from the suggestions given by the plugin. Support for customizing the appearance of the section is also supported by the plugin. It also includes caching support for better performance in shared hosting environments. This plugin also includes several styles of showing related posts which can be activated depending on your preference. It also works seamlessly with responsive designs and templates.

Yuzo - Related Posts plugin for WordPress Yuzo - Related Posts - This plugin has one of the best supports by its developers. It has all the features of a premium related posts plugin and works like a charm with every theme. It's one of the few plugins with the support of RTL out-of-the-box. It also has a helpful visit analytics option to see how well the related posts section is performing. It has both vertical and horizontal alignment options so that related content can fit any design. You can customize almost every element of the related posts section to suit your needs. You can also exclude categories of blog posts where related content section needs to be hidden.

Related Posts by Zemanta plugin for contextual content on posts Related Posts by Zemanta - This is yet another powerful related content plugin with multiple options to fetch interesting content either from the blog or from the entire web. It can also include in-text links from various popular web services. It has nice themes both for desktop and mobile devices. If you have a working knowledge of CSS, you can easily customize the section with your own style. Bloggers already using nRelate plugin can easily transfer the plugin's metadata into this plugin. It also works seamlessly with HTTPS blogs. It's one of the easy-to-use plugins even a layman can readily use without any hassle.

Relevant - Related Posts plugin for WordPress posts Relevant - Related Posts - For displaying related content, this powerful plugin can use special metadata (managed through post editor) apart from using regular content filters like tags, categories or post title. It has several handy configurable options like limiting the number of posts to be shown and providing custom text for the section label. You can use both the widgets and regular horizontal related section anywhere on your site. You can easily use this plugin with different languages through a simple 2-step process. The admin interface of this plugin is very user-friendly and is ideal for nontechies too.

Plugin for related content on the basis of taxonomy Related Posts by Taxonomy - This flexible plugin can display related content in different ways ranging from a simple image thumbnail to a full post body. Users can easily exclude or include relevant search parameters to ensure the best possible result set is fetched from the database. One can also limit the search on the basis of date range or on the basis of a total number of posts to search. You can use your own custom HTML template for displaying the related content section. Power users can also make use of the available filters to customize the plugin's behavior. Its handy shortcode has over a dozen attributes.

Lite related content plugin Related Posts Lite - Through this plugin, you can easily embed related content section both in the header and footer of the primary post body section. It works with custom post types too without any issues. As the name implies, it is very resource friendly with a very light footprint on the web server. It also has a unique smart fill option to compensate the blank slots left in the related posts section. Its smooth sliding display fits almost any design and works perfectly on mobile devices too. It also includes several ready-made themes for instant use. It also has an automated caching module for quick display.

Inline Related Posts extension for related content Inline Related Posts - If you're struggling to increase the pageviews on your blog, this plugin is an ideal solution for you. It enables you to intelligently insert related content sections right within the post body to immediately attract the attention of the reader. You can customize the number of inline related sections you want to embed within the content. These sections can also be decorated visually so that they match with your existing blog theme. The plugin smartly detects line breaks and places all the sections at appropriate places to avoid clutter. This plugin is best suited for focused niche blogs with large archives.

Related content plugin for WordPress CMS Related - If you prefer to select the related posts manually, this plugin lets you do that on every type of post. You can select related content on static pages too. Through its handy drag and drop interface, you can easily arrange the order of manually selected posts. Advanced users can easily build their own custom section resembling a carousel. It also has an inbuilt support to work seamlessly with popular multilingual plugins like WPML. It is available in several languages. The plugin offers 3 distinct ways to embed related posts within the site. Power users can also take advantage of some of its options.

WP Simple Related Posts plugin WP Simple Related Posts - This efficient and blazing fast plugin fetches related content on the basis of categories and tags. It is also translated into Japanese and Thai languages. You can easily use custom CSS to change the appearance of the related content section. Users can also embed related posts in the form of a widget at the desired location. Its blazing fast and the admin controls are obvious and easy-to-use. Even if you have a huge archive, this plugin will run efficiently without putting any load on the server resources. Do once try this simple yet promising plugin for showcasing related content on your blog.

Display related content with Modern Related Posts Modern Related Posts - This plugin is ideal for graphics-intensive responsive designs. It shows a highly customizable sliding carousel to display related content. It has full touch 'n' swipe support on mobile devices. Apart from appearance customization, one can also customize the way it searches for related posts. Sites using themes made for wide screens will find this plugin extremely handy as it displays large image entries for related posts. Despite its advanced design, the content loads quite fast. I liked the sheer number of options and ways to customize the look and feel of the related posts section.