How to display related posts in WordPress
Want to keep your visitors on your website as long as possible?
Then here is what you have to do – give them content with the highest quality there is. It should be strict and useful with great images and/or other multimedia.
Yes, content is king! This is a well-known fact but is the great content a reason enough so that the visitors could make the precious click-throughs? The answer to this question could be “Yes” but only if your website structure provides the needed usability so that it is extremely easy to click the link to the next great article that is related to the landing page.
So let’s sum it up: you need great content and a great website content structure with links for similar or related posts. Achieve this and your visitors will not leave directly from the landing page and thus won’t increase your bounce rate. You want this to happen for two reasons: one – the high bounce rate is extremely dangerous for SEO and two – the more internal links you have between similar posts and pages – the better.
Now let me share with you how you can achieve this in WordPress!
The first basic and yet extremely important technique is to link manually your posts while writing their content. Actually this is a must! Choose relevant keywords and phrases and don’t forget the title tag. I would suggest that you also make the links open in a new window/tab. And last but not least – these links should be do-follow. You can also do this with links behind images. The idea is that while reading your content the visitors can receive additional information on the topic from a similar or related post without leaving the current page. A little bit of advice – in WordPress 4.2+ the “title” field in the box for adding links is removed so you will need the plugin “Restore Link Title Field” unless you are eager to add the title attribute manually via the text editor.
And while we are still on the basics, let’s not forget the core functionality of WordPress – i.e. the tags and categories. Choose them wisely and this will create additional internal links between your posts and also may reduce the bounce rate.
Now it’s time to talk about widgets and plugins (some of them are combined).
Depending on your WordPress theme you might have different widgets areas. Pay special attention to the sidebar ones as they are most suitable for displaying similar and related posts.
There is a plugin called “Flexible Posts Widget”. After installing it you can add the widget to your widget areas. It comes with many options such as displaying related (similar) content on Posts, Pages, Media or other custom post types. You can also choose to display similar posts regarding their Taxonomy & Term or you can simply override these two options by providing a list of post ID’s that should be displayed.
This powerful plugin can ignore sticky posts on WordPress (if any). You can set the number of posts to display and the number of posts to skip. You can also set the way that the posts should be ordered. And what is more important – this plugin displays thumbnails of the similar posts. Great, isn’t it?
In order to use this plugin to display related content you have to set the Post Type and the Taxonomy & Term. I’d suggest to set this to Category. And if you have Jetpack installed you can set the visibility of this widget to only the posts in the selected category. Thus you can display the most similar posts for each category.
You can also use “Flexible Posts Widget” to simply display random posts which is still OK since this also helps reduce the bounce rate and allows the visitor to see content from other categories that may not be 100% related to the current post but may be important for them.
Another great option is the plugin “Contextual Related Posts” which will provide related posts at the end of the content. It has a special settings section “Related Posts” in the “Settings” menu in the WordPress admin panel. From there you can set where the related posts should be inserted (Posts, Pages, Home page, Feeds, Category archives, Tag archives or Other archives). You can also set the content filter priority and the number of the similar posts that you want to be displayed.
A great option for this WordPress plugin is to set the cutoff period for which posts will be displayed. You can choose from related posts from the last year only or you can entirely disable the limit. Then there are the options for the way of finding related content. For example you can set this to related posts based on the content and the title as well.
Last but not least – you can set a title for the related posts section and the position of the thumbnails (yes, here you can display thumbnails as well) and their sizes. And what is more important – this plugin has a unique design that you can use out-of-the box. And if you want, you can write your own custom CSS. What more could you ask for?
Another great method is described in this post by the crew of WPBeginner. It allows you to display similar posts without any plugins so you may also give it a try as well.
Since I have mentioned Jetpack in this article, I am obliged to say that you can also use it to display Related posts or Top Posts & Pages.
In conclusion I’d like to say that you can also search in WordPress.org for other plugins for similar posts as well. It really doesn’t matter which solution you will choose. What is important is that you have such a solution and it is integrated flawlessly into your website structure.
I hope that this article was useful for you. If you like it, share it with your friends. I’d also appreciate if you comment below and tell me your favorite solution for related (similar) posts.
See you again, friends!
Why you should use WordPress?
Each person who decides to have a website encounters one problem: which CMS (Content management System) to use. There are two options: custom or open source CMS. Custom CMSs may provide you with more functionality for your specific needs, but they also have much higher cost and only its developers will feel comfortable working with it on a developer level. It would prove to be an impractical choice in case you later decide to redesign your website. Also, if you plan to migrate the content of your website in the future you’ll encounter difficulties in the migration process.
If you decide to use some of the more popular open source CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or Magento you have to choose according to your functionality needs and your design preferences.
Some great CMSs for E-commerce websites are Magento, Summercart, Opencart and WordPress. If you have a blog or a news website or you want to build a corporate website, WordPress and Joomla are both good choices. They are very versatile in their functionality and design. It would be better using WordPress if you have a blog or a news website. Joomla is very suitable for business websites.So you have to pick according to your needs.
Why you should use WordPress
WordPress is the most versatile of all the CMSs. With it you can achieve almost everything. There are great plugins that enable additional functionality when you need it. Also, let’s not forget the huge market for both free and premium WordPress themes. These are some of the reasons why 25% of all the websites worldwide are built on WordPress.
Let’s say you develop a great website with quality content, you drive a lot of traffic to your website and you decide to sell your website for a good price. If this is the case, using WordPress would be a big plus for you. If you browse through Flippa auctions (Flippa is one of the biggest websites for selling and buying websites and domains) you’ll notice that almost every website for sale is built on WordPress.
Having the biggest community means that you’ll have bigger access to resources, support and potential clients. There are literally thousands themes and plugins available for WordPress, both free and paid. Last but not least, let’s not forget the intuitive WordPress backend.
Along with its popularity and great usability, WordPress as well as all popular Open Source CMS platforms has one negative side. Being Open source means everyone has access to the WordPress directory structure. This leads to increased security threat, because this way all your important directories and files like wp-config, htaccess etc. are common. There are measures you can take in order to decrease and remove those weaknesses. Another disadvantage of WordPress is that due to its popularity it becomes an excellent target for spam user accounts and comments. To protect yourself you can add Captcha to you registration and Comments. This way you can block spam. Another good solution is to change the URL address of your wordpress registration page. There are also great plugins for fighting spam like Akismet.
Let’s summarize: You have to choose the CMS you’re going to use according to your needs and knowledge. If you want versatility and added functionality WordPress is your choice to go.
Facebook for business explained
Facebook is a great way to promote your content but you have to know how to do it the right way.
The first major thing you have to consider is that Facebook is constantly changing. What works for you this month can prove useless the next one. You have to learn to adapt and know this –Facebook are playing the game for the money. When you create a Facebook page you don’t have direct access to the people who liked your page. Facebook is just renting them to you. This means you can be kicked out any time without any warning and you can’t do anything about it.
How Facebook ticks?
Every time when you write with one of your friends, Facebook counts this as an interaction called edge.
The more you interact with your friends– send messages to them, like or comment their posts – the bigger your edge rank with them gets. Basically it means that if Friend A with whom you interact frequently and Friend B with whom you interact rarely post a picture in the same time, you are going to see first the picture of Friend A. Because you interact more with Friend A, Facebook considers him more important to you. So we can say that this is some kind of a competition.
Most of the people using Facebook constantly like pages, photos, statuses and etc. This means that the competition for their Facebook feed is greater.
Facebook gives priority to your friends. Very little of the Facebook pages that the users had liked are showing in their feed. We have to consider as well that the edge rank decays over time. So you can’t rely on old and frequently circulated content.
The same rules as the ones mentioned above are applicable for Facebook pages with one tiny annoying exception- you are actually outgunned in this game. Your Facebook page posts are not equal to the posts from the Facebook users. This means that if displayed at all your content will be displayed in the end of the feed of the people who liked your page.
So if you want your content to be seen by users who have liked your page you have two choices: providing good quality content and Facebook advertising.
Does high quality content matter?
There is one really annoying advice that you have been constantly given. Post original and high quality content. With great regret I have to agree with that one. If you want people to like your content and to interact with it by giving likes, writing comments and etc., it has to be very good. This way you can achieve an organic engagement. And more importantly you can form a group of passionate followers.
Sadly, in most cases great content is not the only precondition for success. In most cases you have to combine good quality content content with Facebook advertisement.
Facebook’s advertisement and promotion options
Facebook advertising is the way of Facebook saying “we own these people and you have to pay in order to have access to them”. So yes, in a way Facebook own us. Maybe someday they will become too greedy for their own good but we will see what the future holds. Although you have to pay for it, Facebook advertising is relatively cheap and offers great ways for targeting. After all, Facebook knows your interests just like Google stores every search query you make. This way you can target your audience more precisely according to their interests and hobbies.
Paying for Facebook likes?
Let’s say you write a blog or you own an E-commerce website. You can target users interested in the things you offer. My advice to you is: choose your audience carefully and don’t ever buy Facebook likes. Facebook has an inbuilt option for promoting your website. With great regret I have to inform you that it’s a waste of money. – Why? Because there are thousands of people from some Third World countries receiving payment for simply hitting the like button. As a consequence you get people who don’t care for your content and they are lowering your engagement and reach. Facebook considers these metrics when you post something on your page. The lower they scores the fewer people your content is being shown to.
There are websites offering real likes but you have to consider that they are affected by the same “fake like plague”. The results are the same and even worse as if you were using Facebook’s promoting option. You are paying more for something you can do yourself.
In summary, we need high quality content for great engagement, as well as determination and a budget for Facebook advertisement.
A piece of advice: Facebook is a great tool for advertisement but you need to develop all your marketing channels at the same time: Google, Google+, Twitter, Youtube etc. This way if you lose one of your networks you can still remain in the game – shaken but still alive.
Understanding Facebook and promoting your content on it
Understanding Facebook
As the world’s largest social media network, Facebook is being subject to a lot of competition. The news feed is limited and it isn’t possible to display every post from every page a user follows. Facebook uses an algorithm to determine what content to make visible in a user’s news feed. It’s a complicated process and not all of the elements that form the algorithm are being brought to public knowledge. The elements already known include the following:
· The post type (text, photo, status, link, etc.) the user finds the most interesting
· How much engaging is the post to the audience
· Posts being reported as spam or being hidden by the user
· A user’s interaction with Facebook ads
· The Internet speed and the device of the user
EdgeRank
EdgeRank, the original news feed ranking system, used by Facebook is still a part of the present news feed algorithm.
Every friend’s action on Facebook appears in the newsfeed. Facebook calls these actions Edges.
EdgeRank is the algorithm that ranks the Edges and displays the ones scoring well.
Why should I care?
Facebook ranks all stories according to their EdgeRank score. The stories with the highest score appear at the top of the user’s newsfeed. If according to the algorithm a status update is boring to a particular user, that status update will never be even shown to him.
How does EdgeRank work?
The EdgeRank is unique to each user. The algorithm was revealed at Facebook’s 2010 F8 conference. It consists of the following 3 elements:
1. Affinity score
2. Edge Weight
3. Time Decay
Affinity Score
The Affinity Score calculates how connected a particular user is to the Edge( the action). It takes into account 3 things:
1) The strength of the action
2) How close is a particular user to the one who took the action
3) How long ago did the action take place
Two users, interacting with each other on Facebook have different affinity scores relative to one another.
EdgeWeight
Each action has a different weight, reflecting the efforts required for the action. The actions include liking, clicking, commenting, sharing, tagging and friending. Apart from clicking, every action creates a potential story. The principle of the EdgeWeight is simple: the more interested in the content a user is, the more effort he or she puts into a specific action, connected to that content. That is why commenting is worth more than liking and liking is worth more than clicking and posting photos and videos, instead of links scores your story higher. Simply viewing a status update in your newsfeed does not include any form of interaction and does not count toward the affinity score.
New Facebook features usually have a higher EdgeWeight. The intent behind that is to promote the features to the users.
Time Decay
The time of the interaction is another key component of the algorithm. If a user interacts with someone a lot, but not so much lately, the influence of the user’s affinity score starts to decline. In short: the older the story gets, the more it loses points. Facebook measures this by multiplying each action by 1/x, where “x” is the amount of time since the action took place.
When a user logs into Facebook and visits his newsfeed, among the stories posted most recently, the ones with the highest score appear. So, a status update made by a user will show up on the newsfeed only if it has a higher score compared to other newsfeed stories that happened at the same moment.
How do I check my EdgeRank score?
Facebook keeps this algorithm a secret. Instead a user can measure the effects of EdgeRank by checking how many people he reached. Since the engagement impacts the EdgeRank, the user can also measure the engagement that he or she gets with the help of a Facebook analytics tool.
Since there is no such thing as general EdgeRank score, each user has a different affinity score with a page.
Facebook Changes
Last June Facebook announced they would be limiting organic news feed impressions for brands, so as to provide users with a “higher quality content” in the news feed. The social media believes that users don’t want to see this promotional content in the news feed. This applies to organic content only, not ads. Facebook defines any of the following as being promotional:
1. Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
2. Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context
3. Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads
Manipulative practices such as like-bating (posts that ask fans to complete specific actions) and posting spam and frequently circulated content are subject to restrictions, as Facebook updated their news feed spam algorithm. Another tactic that Facebook banned in 2014 is the like-gating. Many pages like-gate their content by requiring users to like pages before they can gain access to special content.
How to promote my content
Many marketers rely on Facebook reach to measure whether their efforts are paying-off. Reach is the number of Facebook users who see a page’s published post – and it’s been steadily declining in 2014 due to Facebook algorithm changes. Business that are new to Facebook assume that the majority of fans see their posts and it comes as a shock when they realise that’s not the case.
Things you have to avoid:
Buying fans is not a good business tactic. First, they don’t add real value and second, a little or no engagement to a page with numerous fans is a signal to consumers that they are fake. The less of engagement also means that Facebook will be less likely to display your content by making it visible to/ for the real fans.
- Avoid “click-bait” text.This refers to post that are heavy in words like “Click here”. This may reduce your reach.
- Avoid posts containing appeals encouraging people to take a specific action or purchase something.
- Don’t overpost or underpost. Content should be posted on a regular basis and not more than 2 or 3 times a day.
Things that will help you:
- Post content that leads to high engagement. Businesses should post as much original content as possible. Low-quality posts diminish the overall organic traffic. When you’re posting content with low engagement rate, it serves as a signal to Facebook, saying “My fans don’t find that interesting enough.”
- Include an image, link or video with your post. Do so in order to make the post more interactive. It is proven that 40% of users will respond better to visual images.
- Post at non-peak times. At times of the day when little content is being shared, your posts will be more visible.
- Add a call to action for increased likes or shares. If you want more likes and shares encourage fans to like and to share your content.
- Engage your community with questions
Facebook Insights
Using Facebook Insights can help you learn more about your audience. It’s a proprietary analytics platform with different data sets. Facebook Insights consists of five metrics: Likes, Reach, Visits, Posts and People.
Likes show how many people have liked your page within a given time frame. It also provides information on the number of people who “unliked” your page, as well as on the proportion of paid versus organic likes.
Reach is indicative for the number of people who have seen your posts. It also displays metrics like comments, likes and shares, indicative for the engagement of the audience.
Visits gives you a breakdown of which pages (tabs) were visited (i.e. timeline, likes tab, custom tabs, etc.) and also which referring sites (external) brought people to your Facebook page.
Posts provides an analysis of your content by using indicators (metrics) such as post type, engagement of the audience, total reach and time of the day.
People gives information on the demographics of your audience according to their gender, spoken language or location. It also compares people reached versus people engaged.
Facebook Insights gives brands a complete picture on the performance of their page.
It is important for brands to create online communities and to connect with their target audience through social media. However Facebook does not foster free promotion regardless of the quality of the content or the level of engagement of the audience. Paid ads and sponsored posts are a good option for promoting your content. With Facebook advertisement you can target your ads specifically to the audience that is interested in your content and services.