If you have a WordPress blog, there’s a new plugin called Related Websites by Blog Traffic Exchange (BTE). The plugin has two major functions: (1) shows related posts within your blog, and (2) shows related posts from other blogs within the exchange.
How Does Related Websites Plugin Works
The related articles function is easy enough to understand. It is similar to other related articles plugins but using a unique algorithm. All it does is show the most relevant articles within your own blog to create greater cross promotion opportunities.
On the other hand, the related websites portion is where things get interesting. It shows relevant articles from other blogs — as of April 18, 2009, there are more than 75,002 posts across 543 approved blogs. The articles shown are based on a super high relevancy proprietary algorithm. Here’s the description from the BTE web site.
The Blog Traffic Exchange is an cloud based service based on the SEO concepts behind various blog related posts plugins. Using proprietary chaos and relevancy algorithms in conjunction with the Sphinx open source full text index engine, the Blog Traffic Exchange exists to increase your blog traffic by exchanging readers with other members.
Additionally, here are a few things to note about the articles being shown on your site:
- The exact articles shown change with each page load
- Links are standard HTML do follow links
Key Benefits of Related Websites Plugin
The full potential of this plugin may not be apparent immediately, so I want to elaborate them here:
1. Get Highly Relevant Referral Traffic From Other Blogs
When you’re part of the exchange, your articles are show across the network. This gives your blog and articles a lot of exposure. Since your articles are shown on other relevant articles, you can be sure that any visitor you received will be interested in your content.
2. Expose Your Blog To New Readers
Most people tend to read a limited number of articles. Even prolific bloggers tend to stay within a confined circle. This plugin breaks that confinement. With BTE Related Websites, you are linking to and linked from quality blogs that you many have never heard of. This means that there are many opportunities to gain new readers.
3. Get More Search Visitors
Since links are standard do follow links, this plugin does help with your search engines ranking. Overall, I have seen about 20% improvements in my search traffic since I started using this plugin. However, you’ll also notice some fluctuations with your SERP positions because these links are not permanent.
4. Get Relevant Keyword-rich Supplementary Content
Since you have the option to show up to 50 words excerpt from related articles, you can use this to enhance your content. This additional content give search engine spiders more to chew on, and these titles and excerpts are usually packed with relevant keywords. Overall, this helps you improve your keyword density with little effort.
5. Other Benefits
There are also other benefits that you don’t get immediately, but you’ll grow to appreciate once you use the plugin for a while. Here are a few:
- You’ll learn how to write better titles that are attention grabbing and keyword rich.
- You’ll learn how to make the most of your first 50 words so that you can gain more readers and improve your articles relevancy.
What About Quality?
- Each blog is manually approved by BTE owner, Kevin.
- Articles with less than 50 words are filtered out of the exchange.
- Articles with blacklisted words (this list is not public) are filtered out of the exchange.
- You can send complaint to Kevin if you find a problem.
- Lastly, you can stop using the plugin at any time if you are not satisfied with it.
Definitely give Related Websites plugin a try if you haven’t already.
