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Do you want to know how to add ‘related posts’ to your blog posts in Squarespace to enhance your reader’s experience? If yes, then keep reading this article.
As a long-time Squarespace expert, I often get questions about how to enhance the blogging experience on Squarespace. The great news is that Squarespace is a fantastic blogging platform with a vast degree of flexibility in the way that you can add rich content to your blog posts, customize summary feeds, and add thumbnail images, allowing you to create fully bespoke news feeds on any other page on your website.
The Squarespace blog has not yet transitioned to the heralded Squarespace Fluid Engine format, so your experience with editing posts will differ slightly from other text pages on your Squarespace website. While Squarespace may lack some features found on other platforms (like related blog posts), don’t panic! Tapping into our experiences and Squarespace resource toolkit, we can provide some handy workarounds to make your Squarespace blog stand out in a crowded marketplace.
This brings us nicely to today’s article-
Squarespace’s blogging capabilities allow users to create a unique and personalized experience for their readers. The platform enables you to customize various aspects of your blog, including the layout, content, and visuals, ensuring that your blog stands out from the competition. This customization extends to adding related articles to your blog posts, creating a more engaging and informative experience for your audience.
One feature that users find particularly valuable is the ‘Related articles’ option. In this article, we will explore two methods to add related content to your blog articles on Squarespace, using summary blocks and a plugin from SQSP Themes.
Why Displaying Related Articles Matters:
Benefits for Viewer Session Lengths, Usability, and SEO Performance.
Displaying related articles on your blog offers several advantages that can help enhance your website’s overall performance. By including relevant content alongside your main blog post, you can increase viewer session lengths, improve usability, and boost SEO performance. Let’s take a closer look at these benefits:
Increased Viewer Session Lengths:
When visitors find an article on your blog that they enjoy, they are more likely to want to explore related content. By providing a list of related articles, you make it easy for your readers to continue their journey on your website. This increases the time they spend on your site, known as session length, which is an important metric for gauging user engagement. Longer session lengths can lead to better conversion rates, more ad revenue, and overall website value.
Improved Usability:
A well-organized website with a clear structure and easily accessible content is crucial for usability. Adding related articles to your blog posts, help users navigate your site and find additional content that interests them. This not only enhances the overall user experience but also encourages visitors to explore more of your website. Furthermore, by showcasing related content; you demonstrate that your site is a valuable resource for information on a particular topic; increasing the likelihood that visitors will return in the future.
Boosted SEO Performance:
Search engine optimization (SEO) drives organic traffic to your website. One of the factors that search engines consider when ranking websites is the quality of the content and its relevance to user queries. By displaying related articles on your blog; you can demonstrate to search engines that your website offers a wealth of valuable and interconnected content.
In addition, internal linking – linking to other pages within your website – is an essential aspect of SEO. By linking related articles within your blog posts; you create a network of internal links that helps search engines crawl and index your site more effectively. This, in turn, can lead to higher search engine rankings and increased organic traffic.
Free option: Harnessing Summary Blocks in Squarespace
The first method for adding related articles to your Squarespace blog is free but requires a 2-3 minute setup for each new blog post. This method uses summary blocks linked to other posts via tags or categories. To implement this method, follow these steps:
Add tags and categories to each individual blog post. This step will enable you to control the posts that feed into your Squarespace blog article. This feature is found in the blog settings (cog icon when hovering over a blog post in the left menu).
In the page editor, add a summary block to the desired location within the blog post content area.
Once added, you can now select a page (choose the active blog) and then select ‘filter items’ (optional).
If you don’t filter the items, this section can be used as a ‘recent posts’ area instead. Alternatively, you can filter via tag or category to get this area working as intended.
You don’t have to place related posts at the bottom of the page; they can go anywhere within the editor.
Paid option: Using an SQSP Themes Plugin for your Squarespace Blog
The second method to add related content to your blog articles involves a small cost but is ideal for more established Squarespace blogs as it is fully automated. This method uses a plugin created by SQSP Themes and works with both Squarespace blogs and stores.
The plugin is available for purchase through our Squarespace Plugin Store:
This plugin also uses tags or categories to feed in related posts, but you don’t need to add the summary block to every blog article. This approach saves considerable time for Squarespace veterans who find themselves blogging regularly. The plugin costs $39 for single-use (to use on your own Squarespace website) or $117 for professional Squarespace designers who want to use it for client projects.
Wrapping Up:
Whether you intend on using the powerful, built-in summary blocks feature or prefer to purchase the recommended SQSP Themes plugin, you can easily add related articles to your blog posts on Squarespace, powering up the performance of your blog or news section. Both methods offer different levels of convenience and cost, so you can choose the one that best suits your needs.
About PixelHaze:
Founded by Squarespace Authorized Trainer Elwyn Davies in early 2015, UK-based PixelHaze has become one of the world’s leading agencies dedicated to designing and supporting designers in all things Squarespace. With its background as both an agency and training company, PixelHaze is one of a few companies worldwide that can design websites and provide comprehensive training, wrap-around support, and time-saving Squarespace products specifically for start-ups and small businesses worldwide.
