Does Adding a Related Post Section Help Your Blog? We Tested It

We already bash a large occupation with interior linking connected the Ahrefs blog. But we wondered if adding a related posts conception would assistance america and whether users would use it.

Our selling squad was reasonably divided connected whether we should person a conception similar this and whether it would help. I’ve had large results with this personally connected sites with a batch of content, and I was convinced it would assistance the Ahrefs blog.

In December 2022, we added the “Keep Learning” conception astatine the bottommost of the posts utilizing a fashionable related posts plugin for WordPress. Here’s what it looks like:

When I looked backmost to cheque what happened, the results were okay, but thing spectacular. We saw a flimsy uptick overall, but based connected the trend, I couldn’t reason it had thing to bash with the interior linking.

Two algorithm updates rolled retired during the play we added the related posts: a Helpful Content Update and a Link Spam Update. This made the trial information messy, but we decided to permission it for a portion anyway.

After a fewer months, the taxable came up to region the related posts from the site. Some radical conscionable didn’t privation it, and others didn’t deliberation it had overmuch impact. I didn’t entity to it due to the fact that I was funny to spot what would happen.

When we removed it, we saw immoderate postulation losses to a batch of pages. This time, the inclination indicated it was related to the interior links that were removed.

Even though we waited until aft a Core Update to region the related posts, Google rolled retired different Helpful Content Update close aft we removed them. Once again, the information for this trial was a bit messy.

I waited a fewer months, and this time, I checked our analytics and noticed that erstwhile we had the related posts section, radical spent much clip connected the tract and viewed much pages. Users were really clicking these related posts!

We decided to adhd it back, but lone connected English pages. We wanted to amended the lucifer prime earlier adding it backmost to different languages.

This acceptable up a bully divided trial due to the fact that we could present spot the quality betwixt however the English pages were impacted vs pages successful different languages.

Things looked good. We saw much postulation and it seemed to somewhat correlate to the pages that got much interior links.

This time, we had nary update, truthful we had a existent trial with a power group. The results for English blog posts were positive.

The results for the non-English blog posts were benignant of mixed, but we had a batch of posts that mislaid postulation here.

I decided to spell backmost further, from erstwhile we removed the related posts conception until present (about a period and a fractional aft we added the conception backmost to English blogs).

The English blogs showed a beardown correlation this time. It decidedly seemed that having the interior links helped with their traffic.

The non-English blogs were beauteous mixed, but determination were a batch of losers and not arsenic beardown of a correlation.

The results talk for themselves and are precisely what I expected to see. We saw immoderate summation from having these other interior links successful the related posts section, but not a batch of interaction since we already nexus good internally.

My champion conjecture arsenic to wherefore we spot immoderate interaction is that often, the related links are pieces of contented that we wouldn’t people nexus to from wrong the blog content.

On blogs that aren’t arsenic good optimized arsenic ours for interior linking but person a batch of content, I would expect to spot adjacent much impact.

That’s it for now. We’ll astir apt adhd the related posts backmost to the non-English posts astatine immoderate constituent this year. I’ll update the nonfiction with what happens erstwhile we bash that, but I would expect a tiny bump for the content.

For much ideas connected getting interior links, work Internal Links for SEO: An Actionable Guide.

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