As we all know, the longer people stay on your website, the better. It means they are finding a reason to stay. The longer they stay, the more likely they are to
- purchase your products
- purchase your services
- bookmark your site
- tell others about it
- return again later to read more (or watch more, if you’re doing video) of what you have to say
If they just hit a couple pages then leave, that’s not doing you any good.
Show Them Your Related Content
One way of keeping their interest is to show them links that can appear at the bottom of your posts, leading them to other related blog posts on your site. That way they can continue reading more of what you have to say and get a better feel of what you have to offer.
Plugins Can Help You Do This
You can add this feature to your WordPress blog by using plugins. I have been using a plugin called Better Related Content on my this site, ImagePerceptions.com. It works nicely, adding links at the bottom of each post that can take the reader to other related posts.
But I Like This Plugin Even Better – nrelate Related Content!
Today I wanted to add this feature to my photography site. I found a nice plugin that I think works even better, especially for photography sites. This plugin is called nrelate Related Content. The thing I like about this plugin is, not only does it display the Title of the suggested post, but also a thumbnail from that post’s featured image. This is much better at getting your site’s visitor’s attention and will hopefully keep them on your site longer, enjoying your pearls of wisdom, humor, impressive wit and other valuable content.
I’ve set it up on my photo blog and you can see an example of it at work here. Scroll to the bottom of the post to see it in action:
The plugin gives you a good variety of ways to configure it. I went with a pretty simple setup on my site, but you may have other needs for your site.
nrelate Related Content is available for free here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nrelate-related-content/
A note about plugins….
Just remember that plugins are made by different creators and may not always play well with certain themes or other plugins you’ve got installed.
When adding a new plugin that you’ve never used before, always just add one plugin at a time. That way if there’s a conflict, it will be easier to figure out the conflict resolve it.
Have fun!
