WordPress SEO Tutorial updated February 2014 WordPress by default does not include the ability to automatically link related posts together. It’s unfortunate because the vast majority of Related Post WordPress Plugins I’ve tested (tested a LOT) get it wrong, not from an SEO perspective per se (most aren’t great SEO wise, but they are OK), but inefficient in the way they generate the related posts (poor PHP coding/database management) which means we can’t use them since page speed is an important SEO metric and most related posts plugins slow a site down. If the WordPress core team added a related posts feature it would be efficient, maybe that’s why there isn’t a WordPress core related posts feature? One related posts […]
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Related Post Plugins
hi,
I tried 2 related post plugins on stallion and both shows double repeated content of the related posts. Please example below:
—- using Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
—- using Contextual Related Posts plugin
If I switch the theme to Talian from Stallion, the plugin works fine, no repeating.
Would you please check it out and how i can fix the repeating related posts?
Related Post Plugins
WordPress Related Posts Plugins
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
WordPress Related Posts Plugins
Contextual Related Posts Plugin: 3 Performance Tweaks
Maybe against your advice here Dave I have actually been running the Contextual Related Posts plugin :)
I have been trying to optimize my related posts the last couple days, and came up with a few ideas that might be helpful for those who are running this plugin.
Some of these may be obvious to people who have spent more time with this plugin, but for others who maybe never paid as much attention to the settings (that was me :) ) these may be helpful.
1) Set cutoff period to later (the “Related posts should be newer than” setting). I noticed lately that some of my pages were showing less than the 4 related posts that I have set as a maximum. Some were even showing one or zero. In the “General” settings I had this set for a 1095 days cutoff time (3 years) which I believe is the plugin default.
However I created a lot of evergreen content 4 years ago which generally gets a lot of views, and which I realized was now being excluded from related posts since it was beyond the 3-year cutoff period. By setting the cutoff period longer (in this case, 1825 days or 5 years), posts which had few related posts before began showing the full 4, and those evergreen posts were now included again. I guess I’ll have to remember to set this back later, or maybe even just increase it to something like 10 or 20 years to make sure these posts stay in the related posts circulation.
2) “Find related posts based on content as well as title.” I had this off, meaning the posts which were being generated as related posts were sometimes only lightly related to the primary post. By switching this on, I believe the related posts now generated are more closely related to the primary posts and thus potentially more engaging for the reader looking for something to click on after finishing the article.
3) “Cache output.” Related to 2), I did not have the cache output enabled. The plugin author recommends enabling this if you are going to use the “find related posts based on content” setting mentioned above. After checking before and after, after enabling all of these settings, both the queries and time each page requires is now the same or lower than what I was getting before I made these 3 changes.
For those that are running this plugin and haven’t dug into the options, maybe this will be useful. It does seem that the cache output option helps. I am also running a general cache plugin (Hyper Cache) but may be switching to Total Cache.
Contextual Related Posts Plugin: 3 Performance Tweaks