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The concept of related content is simple: show the visitor a list of other pages that might interest them. To see this in action on my site, view my previous post: A new profile picture.
On the right-hand side you'll see "Content with similar tags". At the very top is Getting personal: 9 things you might not know about me. I think that's a good match.
So, how does it work?
Tagging is the key
Tags are keywords that can help visitors to find a page in future. For instance, my post "A new profile picture" has the following tags:
about page, profile page, photo, ben barden, personal
"Getting personal" has the following tags:
getting personal, about page, ben barden
Related content compares the tags on the current page with the tags on other pages on the same site. These two pages were matched up because they both use "about page" and "ben barden" as tags. Note that tags can be single words or phrases.
Exposing visitors to other content
Once a site has more than a few pages on it, you can't expect everything to be listed on the front page. As a site grows, it can become quite difficult to jump from a new page to an old page, even if the site is well organised.
Related content goes a long way to addressing this problem. If you tag your content carefully and consistently, you may even surprise yourself with what comes up.
Think of it as a mini search engine that displays the results right on the current page. Of course, you can still search if you can't find what you're looking for, but it's good to point readers to other posts that might be of interest.
Under the hood
In Injader, related content is built-in - no need to install a plugin. Just add a small bit of text to your page template and a list of related content will show up on every post.
You can configure how many items are displayed - on my site, I allow a maximum of 10 items. You may see fewer than 10 items if I use tags that haven't been used on a lot of other posts.
The posts with the most matches will appear at the top of the list, as they are considered to be the most relevant.
The drawback
The only problem I can find with related content is that it relies heavily on user input. So if you don't tag your posts well, or you don't tag them at all, it isn't going to work.
Still, it's a highly valuable inclusion on any site, and well worth checking out on my site if you haven't used it already. Maybe I should include it in my feed as well.
What do you think?
Do you use related content on your site?
Do you click the links when it appears on other sites?
Which do you prefer, related content or searching? Or do they both have a place?
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Tags: related content, search engines, tagging, discovery, navigation, relevance
Posted by Ben on August 04, 2008 19:00 / Edited: August 09, 2008 17:22
Comments
Nice post Ben. I'd love to try this again some time. I did but I made a mess. My posts are multilingual, I write in both norwegian and english and the server detects which language to show. When I enabled a "related content" plugin it made a real mess. Cause all my post titles are [english]English title[/english][norwegian]Norsk tittel[/norwegian] and I mix the tags, both english and norwegian.
I hope to find a sollution for this once, I think I have to mod it to include the [language][/language] stuff. :)
Personally, if I'm reading along in a post, I may or may not click links embedded in the content if it's going to interrupt my reading. I may or may not scroll back up to check out the links when I'm done.
If, however, the links come at the end of the post as additional reading, I'm probably going to check them out to learn more on the same topic.
But that's just me.
And this is one area in which my own blog is highly deficient. Thanks for getting me to think about it more seriously.
Tee hee. I like to think I had something to do with giving you the idea for this post (even if I didn't explicitly tell you to). I only noticed the 9 things post after I commented on your new photo.
I like it when people list related content, and I'm so glad I was finally able to install the plugin (thanks to Saph). Now if I could only finish updating my tags so all my content will really be related!!
I'll have to look for one of these for Blogger.
To be honest, unless people are very systematic and rigorous with their tagging, it doesn't work too well. I rarely follow the links now because so often it's a wild-goose chase.
Thanks for the comments everyone.
Oyvind, sounds like a tricky problem, I'd suggest running two separate sites perhaps as subdomains - but that'll be an extra admin overhead for you. I'm not sure what else to suggest...
Atms, it really does depend on good use of tags. I do think that if the post title is good, you should have some idea of where you're going before you click the link. Although the tags control what content shows up, I think the title is equally important.
So you're not going to confirm or deny my ego (for thinking that this post had something to do with me)? Please? hehehehe
Oh and there's some kind of special occasion coming up this weekend isn't there? =P
Oops. I read your comment but somehow missed replying to it, sorry! You gave me a nudge, certainly.
hehehe ok...
So who wants cake on Saturday? Or would you prefer a pie? hehehe
This is great information and I really should put it to use in my blogs. I've been reading a lot of blogs lately where these principles have been incorporated and found myself clicking what's related. If I'm clicking, then my readers might do the same! :)