Comment on WordPress SEO Related Posts Plugins by SEO Dave.
There’s built in support for some WordPress Related Posts Plugins, for example the Contextual Related Posts plugin I made an SEO version free download at WordPress SEO Plugins that fixes a code error in the original plugin, also changed the default settings to be better SEO’d (if you use that one there’s no setup needed, just activate and Stallion does the rest).
I’ve added built in code for two WordPress related posts plugins, looks like the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin uses the same hooks as one of them and so is using the Stallion built in code.
What you’ve done is set the option for the plugins to automatically insert the code below the post, that’s the one with the heading “Related Posts”, the one lower down with heading “Related Articles to Title of Post” is the Stallion built in version (better SEO’d). If you turn off auto insertion the top one (not as well SEO’d) will be removed.
For the Contextual Related Posts plugin I advise downloading my SEO version (which has a code fix) and using the reset to defaults option, this will set the SEO defaults I’ve added and you’ll have SEO’d thumbnails etc… and only one version of the related links.
When I was checking out related posts plugins I didn’t like the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin, forget why.
When running the Contextual Related Posts plugin be aware it can generate a lot of extra database queries on the home page, especially if you add more than 10 archived articles on the home page. Looks like the plugin author has the related posts plugin grab the data for the related articles to all the posts on the home page (by default 10), which is not needed since you don’t show related posts on the home page (basically needs a code fix so it only works on posts and pages).
When logged in check your home page at the bottom, will indicate the number of database queries, turn the plugin off an on and compare, if it adds a lot of queries that slows the site loading don’t use it. Added database queries to the footer of Stallion so we can do quick checks on plugins etc… I was using a folding categories plugin on a site with 65,000 posts that was adding hundreds of database queries to all pages!
Damn shame you can’t use the Contextual Related Posts plugin on every site as having thumbnails is a good SEO feature, I use that plugin on sites that either don’t have many articles shown on the home page (you can set it to less than 10) or has a static front page. For autoblogs the database overheads are too much, so use the other related posts plugin from WordPress SEO Plugins.
David
