Most WordPress themes don’t include a related posts section. When a reader reaches the end of an article and there’s nothing pointing them to more content, they have two options: use the back button or close the tab. Adding related posts gives them a third — one that keeps them on your site and surfaces articles they might genuinely want to read next.
Setting this up takes a few minutes using a free plugin. The main decisions are which plugin to choose, how to configure the matching algorithm, and where to display the results on the page, as covered throughout the step-by-step guide to building a WordPress website.
Quick Answer
Related posts are automatically generated links to other articles on your site, displayed near or after the main content. WordPress doesn’t include this feature by default — you add it with a plugin. Most plugins build a match score for each pair of posts based on shared categories, tags, and word overlap in the title and body text, then display the highest-scoring matches as a “You might also like” section.
How the Matching Algorithm Actually Works
It’s worth understanding the mechanism before configuring it, because the settings only make sense once you know what they’re adjusting. Content-based related-posts plugins like YARPP score every pair of posts on your site by comparing overlapping words in the title, body, tags, and categories — words that appear in both posts, weighted more heavily if they appear in the title, push the match score up. That score then gets compared against a threshold you set: below the threshold, the pair isn’t considered related enough to show together.
This is also why the feature genuinely needs a decent-sized library to work well. With ten posts on a brand-new site, most pairs will have very little text overlap, so either nothing clears the threshold or everything does regardless of actual relevance — the algorithm has too little data to distinguish a good match from a coincidental one. By fifty or more posts, patterns emerge cleanly and matches stop feeling arbitrary.
Why Related Posts Matter for SEO and Engagement
The most direct benefit is a lower bounce rate — the percentage of visitors who view only one page before leaving. Every reader who clicks through to a related article extends their session and generates an additional pageview.
From an SEO angle, related posts create automatic internal links between topically connected articles, spreading link equity across your library rather than concentrating it on a handful of well-linked posts. A post published eighteen months ago may be just as useful as your most recent article — related posts bring it back into circulation without any ongoing effort.
Choosing a Related Posts Plugin
Three plugins are worth considering for most sites, and it’s worth checking each one’s own update history before committing, not just its feature list:
- YARPP (Yet Another Related Posts Plugin) — the most configurable free option, with 100,000+ active installs and a 4.8-star rating. It’s the plugin most sites should start with for its match-threshold control, but it’s worth flagging honestly: as of this writing its last update was over a year ago and it’s officially tested only up to WordPress 6.7, a couple of major releases behind current core. That doesn’t mean it’s broken — plugins that only touch post-matching logic often keep working fine across core updates without needing a new release — but it does mean testing it thoroughly after any major WordPress update rather than assuming compatibility. Available in the WordPress plugin directory.
- Jetpack Related Posts — if Jetpack is already installed on your site, enabling this from within it requires no additional plugin, and it benefits from Jetpack’s own frequent update cadence as part of a much larger, actively maintained product. Less granular matching control than YARPP, but a safer default if you’d rather not track a second plugin’s maintenance status independently.
- Related Posts for WordPress by Shareaholic — simpler than YARPP and easier to configure. Less control over the matching algorithm, but it works reliably for most sites and requires minimal setup.
In most sites I build, I still start with YARPP for the match-threshold control — but I now treat that recommendation as conditional on checking its plugin page for a compatibility update before installing, rather than assuming it’s still the obvious default the way it was a couple of years ago.
How to Set Up Related Posts With YARPP
Start by installing and activating YARPP from the WordPress plugin directory. Once active, go to Settings > YARPP.
Display setting: Under “Related Posts,” leave the option set to “Automatically display related posts.” This appends the section to every post automatically, without requiring any shortcodes or block placement.
Match Threshold: This is the setting that directly controls the scoring mechanism described above. A threshold of 3 or 4 works well for most sites — higher values demand a closer word-overlap match, which means fewer but more relevant suggestions. Start at 4 and adjust if you’re seeing irrelevant results or too few matches.
Number of related posts: Set this to three or four. More than four starts to feel like a list rather than a recommendation, and the extra posts are rarely clicked.
Thumbnails: Enable this option if your posts have featured images. It makes the section more visually engaging and improves click-through rates, particularly on mobile. If only some of your posts have featured images, the section can look inconsistent — either enable featured images across all posts or leave thumbnails off.
Save settings, then open a few posts to check the suggestions manually. If the related posts look irrelevant, increase the match threshold by one and recheck. If too few posts appear, lower it slightly.
Where to Place Related Posts
After post content is the most effective and most common placement. Readers who reach the end of an article are primed to continue — they’ve already demonstrated interest in the subject. This is the default YARPP setting and works well without any additional configuration.
Within post content using a shortcode: some plugins let you place a related posts block mid-article, typically after the second or third section. This captures readers who may not finish the full post. Use this sparingly — too many interruptions dilute the reading experience.
Sidebar placement works as a supplementary option on sites with a traditional blog layout. It’s less effective than content-based placement because most readers don’t read the sidebar closely, but it adds an additional touchpoint.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Setting the match threshold too low produces suggestions that aren’t genuinely related. A reader who clicks through and finds the content doesn’t match what they expected will leave immediately — that’s worse for your engagement metrics than no related posts at all.
Enabling related posts too early is a common mistake on new sites — see the matching-algorithm explanation above for why a library under roughly twenty posts doesn’t give the scoring enough signal to work with. Set a high threshold in the meantime, or wait until you have enough content.
Assuming an unmaintained plugin still matches current WordPress behaviour. A related-posts plugin that hasn’t shipped an update recently can still function fine, but its compatibility claim is now a guess rather than a confirmed fact — worth an occasional manual check on a staging copy after a major core update rather than treating it as permanently solved.
Ignoring the mobile layout is easy to overlook. A related posts grid that looks tidy at desktop width can appear squashed or broken on a phone. Check the mobile view after enabling the feature and reduce the number of columns if needed.
Related Posts vs Manual Internal Links
Related posts plugins are automatic. Once configured, they require no ongoing work and scale naturally as your library grows.
Manual internal links within post content are more precise — you choose exactly which articles to connect and the anchor text reflects the specific context. A well-developed internal linking strategy for your WordPress website uses both approaches: automatic related posts at the end of each article for broad coverage, and one or two manual contextual links within the body where the connection is especially useful.
If speed is a concern, be aware that enabling thumbnails in related posts adds a small number of additional image requests per page load. If you’re working hard to optimise WordPress speed and performance, disable thumbnails or lazy-load them to minimise the impact.
Conclusion
Adding related posts to WordPress takes less than ten minutes and pays off in lower bounce rates and more pages per session as your library grows. Install a plugin that matches your maintenance tolerance — YARPP for the finest control if you’re comfortable checking its compatibility status yourself, Jetpack Related Posts if you’d rather lean on someone else’s update schedule — set a match threshold that filters out irrelevant suggestions, and review the output on a few posts to confirm it’s working as expected.
Etienne Basson works with website systems, SEO-driven site architecture, and technical implementation. He writes practical guides on building, structuring, and optimizing websites for long-term growth.