Related Posts Plugins. Do They Increase Dwell Time?

For the bloggers here: are related posts plugins actually working?

I’ve been using an efficient related posts plugin, but looking at the stats, only 1 of the 5 recommended posts had any meaningful traffic – and that was because it was from the previous day.

Plugins like this catch me personally – I always open related posts in new tabs – but the stats suggest they’re not working for readers here.

I wonder if a sidebar widget with pictures would work better. I’ll try it and report back.

One other note: I’ve left my pageview numbers visible here deliberately. I get very low traffic by most standards. But on that traffic I get around 20–30 comments a day. That is the value of value-based blogging.