How to Insert Inline Related Posts Inside WordPress Post Content?

In our earlier article, we have explained how to insert related posts in WordPress website. There are plenty of free and premium plugins to insert related posts in WordPress. However, inserting related content inside a WordPress post is not an easy task using many of the regular related posts plugins. In this article, we will explain how to insert inline related posts in WordPress.

After Content Related Posts – Traditional

Many plugins will insert the related posts automatically at the end of content. Placing related posts after content has the following problems:

• After content area is highly congested with author bio, tags, categories, advertisements and comment link. These other widgets will reduce the possibility of users clicking on related posts.
• Lower visibility – may users will not even scroll until the end of your content especially when you have lengthy blog posts.
• Too many related posts – many WordPress site owners show related posts containing 4 to 10 posts links. This will affect the click through rate, as most of the links are generic and not completely related to the article on the page.

Inline Related Posts – Conventional

Inline related posts is a single post link inserted between post content. This is completely different approach than the traditional after content related posts.

• You can insert related posts between paragraphs. Therefore, users do no need to scroll to the end.
• Inline related post contains single post link, which can increase the click through rate.
• You can allow other widgets like author bio and comments to freely occupy after content area.

There are many popular websites use inline related posts to increase the page views and hence the revenue generated from advertisements.

1. Inline Related Posts Plugin

This is an effective way without much effort to insert inline related posts in WordPress site.

• Login to your WordPress admin dashboard and navigate to “Plugins > Add New” section.
• Type “inline related” in the search box and locate Inline Related Posts plugin.
• Click on “Install” button and then “Activate” to add the plugin to your site.

After installing and activating the plugin go to “Settings > Inline Related Posts” section. There are very few settings to enable inline related posts on your site.

Style Settings

First check the “Activate?” box under “Style Settings” section to enable the inline posts on your site. The plugin offers only two themes with the free version – you can choose either minimalist or shock theme. Customize the text, background and colors to adjust the post as per your theme’s layout. You can view the instant real time preview of a random posts based on your settings.

Plugin Settings

The “Plugin Settings” offers important options to control the visibility of inline related posts.

• Enable or disable inserting in already existing posts. If you disable this option, inline posts will be inserted only inside new posts.
• Free plugin allows you to insert maximum 3 related inline posts per article.
• You can show the latest articles by entering the number of days in “Only posts of last N. days”.
• Choose the word interval between related your inline related posts.

• Insert at the end of post if the word count and number of related post matches.
• Choose whether to enable on posts or pages or both.

Engine Settings

Under “Engine Settings” section, you can customize the link attributes.

• Choose the base for your related posts to show from tags, categories or from both.
• Add nofollow attribute to related posts links if you need.
• Choose to open the links in the same or new tab.

Metabox Integration

Here you can enable the metabox integration for posts or pages. Choose the option, based on your settings to enable on posts or pages. The plugin will add an option “Posts without related posts” in post editor. You can enable this to exclude individual posts from showing inline related posts thus bypassing the global settings.

Viewing Inline Related Posts

After finalizing your settings, click on “Save” button at the bottom to make your changes live. If you have selected to show inline related posts on existing posts then open any of your old post the a separate browser tab. Otherwise, you have to publish a new post to view the related posts. It should look something like below:

After testing with multiple sites, we have found the plugin inserts related posts inside “Columns” and other irrelevant places. Hope the developer will fix this type of issues soon.

The pro version of the plugin allows you to showcase inline related posts with multiple themes including featured images. It will cost you $27 for single site integration and you can insert unlimited related posts per article.

2. Using Advertisement Plugins like Ad Inserter

The disadvantage of Inline Related Posts plugin is that it does not allow third-party code like Google AdSense Matched Content ads. You can only show the posts indexed from your own WordPress site’s database. This may slow down your database queries when the page is loaded. If you prefer to insert inline related posts from third-party codes like AdSense Matched Content, Taboola or Outbrain then try using Ad Inserter or similar advertisement plugins.  

• First install and activate Ad Inserter plugin on your site.
• Go to “Settings > Ad Inserter” and paste the JavaScript code of your related posts widget.
• Choose “Posts” to display the related posts only inside post content.
• Choose before or after paragraph for “Insertion” and enter the % to show before/after every % of article. For example, in the below screenshot we have selected “After paragraph” and show related posts after every 30% of the content.

• You can preview the related post and adjust the CSS alignment by choosing different styles.
• The plugin also allows you to insert on taxonomies and control the number of insertion based on number of words on the article.

When using single ad block, sometimes you may see the same related post multiple times displayed on your content. If you notice this issue, create multiple ad blocks with Ad Insertion plugin to show related content after 30%, 60% and 90% respectively.

3. Manually Inserting Inline Related Posts with Gutenberg Reusable Blocks

If you do not want to use plugins then try the manual way of inserting inline related posts.

• Make sure you are using Gutenberg editor for creating and editing content.
• Create a new paragraph, heading or use “Group” to combine multiple blocks together.
• Customize the text and background colors of your block.
• Click on the three dots button and choose “Add to Reusable blocks” to save it as a reusable block.

• You can insert the reusable related post block wherever you want and convert it into a regular block for editing the content.
• Change the link as per the article’s content and publish your post.
• Below is an example of showing inline related posts using Gutenberg reusable blocks.

This works smoothly when you have less number of posts. Otherwise, manually inserting a relevant link will be a big task and you may need to have an internal link suggestion tools like Yoast SEO premium. In addition, the placement of insertions may not be uniform in all the posts unless you manually insert in similar positions.