Sure, content is king but if you don't provide useful parts with the content, you can say that the emperor is naked.

Seriously, wouldn't you find it odd to see nothing else than the title and the content on a page? Unless you're promoting minimalism on websites (like :mnmlist), you should be focusing on interactivity, monetization or enriching / extending the content in some way. In this post, we're going to go through how to achieve it.

I've come up with eight different sections that could / should be displayed along with the content and I will show you how to use each of them effectively. In this quick tip, we're starting off the famous "Related Posts" section.

"Related Posts" to Steer the Attention

If people enjoy a post, they would enjoy other posts related to the one they just read, right? Probably.

Have you ever finished a post and immediately started another one, and it went like this for hours? I know I did. There's a reason that there are web services ready to offer "related posts" widgets from the blogosphere and pay for the clicks: People like to read post after post. It's easy to click a link to related content and read it - people could read every single post, just by bouncing from one post to another.

Although, this could lower the comments you get since the reader would head over to the next post immediately, not even checking the comments. That's why, it would be wiser to put the "Related Posts" section after the "Comments" section. That said, this could also lower the clicks to the "Related Posts" section if your audience don't really like to comment.

So, you need to make a decision: If you care about page views more than getting comments, put the "Related Posts" section right after the post content. If not, put it after the "Comments" section.

Displaying a Simple "Related Posts" List

There are literally hundreds of options you can choose from when it comes to "related posts", but as far as I can see, Pippin Williamson's "Related Posts by Taxonomy" offers a very simple solution to find and serve related content within your blog. The plugin gets your post's first 3 tags (or items from another taxonomy that you specify) and searches for posts that used the same tags. Simple, right?

You can download it, maybe edit it a little for your needs (to fetch 10 posts instead of 4) and display a nice list of related posts under your post content. It's a great WordPress plugin and a hassle-free solution to display related content.

Yes, content may be "king" but a lonely king is a weak king, and people might not respect that "king". Content without relevant links, info boxes or comments would be boring, don't you think?

Stay tuned for more sections to display after the content! Meanwhile, you can help me extend the list by letting me know what else could be used to enrich the content in the comments - which is one of the sections I'll be talking about!