7 Best Related Posts WordPress Plugins For 2017 (With Thumbnails)

These are among the top priorities for any blogger. Most of the bloggers use a simple method to achieve these goals – by showing related posts. If your visitors are leaving the site after reading a single post, you need to use related posts WordPress plugins to make them stick longer.

Using related posts plugins will show links to the relevant posts at the bottom of the post or at the sidebar. This will encourage the visitors to stay longer on your website.

Today I will be sharing a list of best 7 related posts WordPress Plugins. Let’s check the list first.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) is probably the most widely used related posts plugin for WordPress. This powerful plugin supports posts, pages, custom posts types and shows the most appropriate content right after your blog posts.

The advanced templating feature allows you to have full control over the results. As the plugin supports WordPress Multisite, you can show related posts on your network websites too. And this plugin is available in all the common languages.

Jetpack is a very popular multi-purpose WordPress plugin, which also comes with a related posts feature. Once you enable the feature, it will scan your existing post and show the best matching content after your posts. You can choose to show a header and large layout for the related posts.

The great thing about the plugin is that it performs all the analysis and processing on the cloud. That means your server won't experience any additional load.

Contextual Related Posts is another popular plugin for showing related posts in your WordPress blog. Using the plugin is very simple – you just install and activate it, and the plugin will automatically start displaying related posts. You can choose to show related posts from posts, pages, custom post types, attachments, etc.

As the plugin comes with several custom widgets, it is possible to show the related posts on different positions of the page. It is also possible to use the custom shortcodes to show the related posts on anywhere you want.

Excluding specific posts or pages from the related posts is a notable feature of the plugin. It is possible to customize the related posts styling by applying custom CSS.

This is another widely used plugin for showing related posts with your content. WordPress Related Posts allows you to show related posts automatically or choose manually. You can provide a custom text as the heading and choose how many articles should be displayed. It also comes with a few customization options.

There are 7 ready made themes for you to choose from. It is also possible to choose a plain style and apply your own styles by using custom CSS. Other styling options include displaying the thumbnails, the number of comments, date, excerpt, category, etc. You can upload a default thumbnail for posts which don’t have a featured image. If you want to exclude specific categories from the related posts, that is possible too.

The plugin also comes with its own network. You can upload your articles to this network and be included in the related posts section of the posts of other similar websites.

Yozu Related Posts is another popular choice for showing related posts in WordPress sites. This plugin supports all content types including posts, pages, attachments, etc. The plugin uses superior caching technologies for optimizing the load on your server. It also allows you to add related posts manually.

You can choose the top text and the number of related posts to be displayed. There are separate options for disabling the posts on home and archive pages. You can set a default image for the related posts. You will also find options to choose the ordering style and order type.

There are 4 ready made styles to show the related posts. You will also find various customization options for choosing the thumbnail size, background size, image type, margin, padding, hover, etc. Regarding the text, you can choose the size, title length, color, etc.

As the plugin comes with full RTL compatibility, you can use this to show related posts on any supported language.

Shareaholic is usually known for its social sharing options. But it also offers a very powerful related posts option. The plugin can detect the main keywords defined in various SEO or meta tag plugins and find out related posts accordingly. The highly optimized related posts system will make sure that your website is not getting bogged down with unnecessary server usage.

The plugin allows you to choose the place where the related posts should be displayed. You can choose specific locations for post, page, category, etc. Thanks to the built-in custom shortcodes, it is possible to show the related posts anywhere you like.

You can provide a custom text which will be used as the headline. It is also possible to choose a theme for the related posts. The available options include classic, rotated, round, vertical, rounded, only text, card, etc.

Also Read: 10 Best Social Media Sharing WordPress Plugins

If you are looking for a premium related posts plugin, you won’t find a better option than Related Posts Pro for WordPress. This fully featured plugin supports all types of content and provides lots of different ways for displaying related posts. You can choose from 3 different layouts and 65 readymade templates.

Unlike most other related post plugins, this one supports the custom post types created by third-party plugins like WooCommerce, bbPress, etc. That means you can easily use the plugin as a product or topic slider too. The plugin is provided with retina-ready icons, which look great on higher resolution ones.

Smart image parser is another interesting feature of the plugin. This feature will collect the related posts images from various sources like featured image, custom field, excerpt, content, page screenshot, etc. You can block specific keywords for the related posts. The detailed documentation will be very useful in getting started with the various features of the plugin.

Using a related posts plugin is a must for enhancing your reader experience. And now that you have a list of the best-related posts plugins for WordPress, what are you waiting for? Choose one of these plugins and start showing related posts today.

For those who want my suggestion, I strongly recommend Jetpack or Shareaholic. And if you have the budget, Related Posts Pro could be the best choice for showing related posts.

If you find the post useful, feel free to share it with others so that they can learn about these awesome plugins too.