Related Posts Widget for Blogger

I have discussed before about the importance of providing various navigational aids for your reader, like a list of recent posts or a list of categories. A list of related posts is another important feature that should be implemented in each and every blog.

The longer you keep the visitors on your blog, the better. When a visitor reads a post on a particular category, it is natural to assume that he will probably be interested in other posts under the same category. This will improve the page visits and the length of the time a visitor spends on your blog.

I have discussed about the importance of tags in one of my previous posts Why should I tag my posts? In addition to the benefits discussed, tags help to extract a list of related posts for your current post. I have tried a few widgets for related posts available for free on the net. I have listed them below. Feel free to explore further on the respective sites:

1. Hoctro’s Place: This seems to be the starting point for others, who came out with few modifications. Even though there are some enhancements from others, which I have discussed below, I still like Hoctro’s version. It requires the code to be copied to just one location. It comes in handy as a widget. You just need to modify the default URL to your blog’s URL. If you like to set the maximum number of posts to be displayed, then there is an option to change this.

2. Jackbook.com: This is a slightly modified version from Hoctro’s. The advantage here is you need not modify the code to point to your blog. The process is already automated. Jackbook also overcomes one drawback in Hoctro’s version, which displays the current article also under the related posts. Another change is that the related posts will be displayed only on the item page and not on the home page. In Hoctro’s version, you could choose to do both. If you are not familiar with HTML, then I would recommend Jackbook’s version, as it is very simple to install.

3. Purplemoggy: This is a bit difficult compared to the above two, as it requires the code to be copied/ modified at a few places. I tried once, but it didn’t work for me. I am not sure why it is so. But, you can try to see if this works for you.