How to Add Related Posts to WordPress Pages
Adding Related Content to All Pages of a WordPress Website
Nov 15, 2009
Building a website is a rewarding task that can share information with others as well as bring in a substantial income. One problem that many website managers face is the reality of a high bounce rate and a low level of stickiness. Understanding this as well as one way to improve this fact can not only improve a reader's experience on the website but improve income potential as well.
Understanding Bounce Rate and Website Stickiness
The bounce rate, as some analytic trackers will display, is the number or percentage of visitors who leave the website without visiting any additional pages other than the first one they entered the web page through. So for example, someone searching for information on how to improve bounce rate might click a link, read the information and leave the website. This is a bounce visitor.
Website stickiness refers to how likely any given reader is to continue to read additional pages on a website. The more sticky the website, the more pages a single visitor will view, and the lower the bounce rate will be for that site. One way to improve the website bounce rate and make the site more sticky, is to make the site easy to navigate and include a list of related information at the bottom of each page.
Related Content Widgets and Plugins
There are many different plugins and widgets, often that are free, that will index the blog posts on a site and add a list of related posts at the end of each individual post. This is great for bloggers who can not only add related content to their posts easily, but have the option of choosing which look they like the best. Unfortunately there are not many options for those who have content websites hosted through Wordpress with many pages that are not blog posts.
One way to add related content to each page is to install Searchles Related Content Widget. This is an easy widget to install and customize to any website that will add a list of related content to the bottom of every page, not just blog posts. The downside to Searchles Related Content Widget is that while the widget is free, they place their own advertisements on the widget and while they do share the revenue 50/50, this has the potential to draw visitors away from the advertisements that would make the website owner more income.
While it will take a little bit more work, adding the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin to every page on a website is relatively simple and can improve the bounce rate for the entire website. These directions assume that the website owner is using Wordpress.
- Install and activate the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
- Follow the directions on the Setting page to complete the installation
- Ensure that the cross-relate posts and pages button is checked - this will ensure that both pages and blog posts are included in the related content listed.
- Find the page template for wordpress theme
- Scroll to find the code: <?php the_content
- Insert the following code directly beneath: <div class="post"><?php related_posts(); ?></div>
This code tells Wordpress that it should center the related content as it would the normal body of the page, making everything line up and look nice. It will then place the related posts on every page of the website including pages and blog posts.
More Information:
- Building a Content Rich Website - Information on how to build and add content to a website.
- How to Build a Professional Website - Tips on choosing a web hosting server and domain name to ensure a professional look and feel.
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