Related content, links and SEO are all important considerations for bloggers when including widgets and applications. Related content can help your blog become more sticky (your readers stick around digging in), build good internal linking and help with your SEO. There are many tools for all of the above, two being the Related Content Widget and Twitter Related Content Widget from Searchles (pronounced Circles).
What’s so Important about Related Content
Related content helps your blog become more sticky, if the content is contextually relevant to what a reader is currently looking at. Your goal with related content is to use tools that provide the most relevant content possible. For example, if you’re blogging about cats, related content about dogs may not be your best choice. The links provided to relevant content can also help your internal linking structure and Google’s ability to crawl through your content.
What about the Searchles Related Content Widgets
Searchles offers two related content widgets — the Related Content Widget and the Twitter Related Content Widget through Widgetbox. Both offer the ability to easily add areas of related content to your blog (most blogging platforms).
Here’s a look at the Twitter Related Content Widget, as we tested it here:
And, a look at the Related Content Widget, as it shows here:
The Good, Bad, and the Ugly
Good: Both widgets are easily installed on any blog. You can use the widgets provided, create your own widget and install the code directly, or you can simply use the widgetbox. Feasibly, both serve the important purpose of showing contextually relevant content from your blog and Twitter. They both also offer revenue sharing and customization.
Bad: These types of widgets are NOT best for all blogs. For example, while this is a heavy traffic blog – with a good reach online – this is NOT a revenue building blog or a blog who’s performance is based on traffic, ads, and revenue — it’s a business blog. For my objectives, other forms of related content, that are more effective means for doing so.
Ugly: I’m not a fan of how the default Wordpress plugin and Widgetbox implement. Yes, you can customize and if you know your way around Wordpress with some coding, you could make the changes — most don’t and it’s not worth the money to pay someone to install it in a better way.
The Verdict on Searchles’ Related Content Widgets
Two thumbs up for the traffic-based, “make money” blog. Using the Searchles widgets will get your content indexed on their site. It will also build stickiness with showing pretty good contextually relevant content, and it will also help you with SEO (although, I’ve not tested the value of links it offers).
Two thumbs down for the business, authority blog. There are alternatives that can offer the same contextually relevant content, including more filters to control what you show. There are also better alternatives that allow you to easily customize and integrate with better, less “adsy” placement on your blog.
Suggestions for Searchles
For the plugins and widgets, offer more customization as far as placement. For instance, the ability to make sure it doesn’t show on the home page or on archive pages, when the “Read More” tag is used (it looks awful simply repeating itself at the bottom of each excerpt).
Ad revenue, for those bloggers who do not choose to participate in sharing ad revenue with your company, allow the option to removed the bottom ad/searchles links — there does seem to be non-relevant terms/searches showing.
What shows, especially on the Twitter related content widget, give the ability for the user to customize what shows or what does not show. Offensive content from Twitter users has been shown on the widget when installed. Give more control to the bloggers.
You Still Need to Pay Attention to Searchles
Beyond the related content widgets, Searchles is still one to pay attention to. Did you know, Searchles as a whole is a social search engine, social bookmarking site, video sharing site, and social community of users searching and sharing everything on the Web.
Searchles is a great place to get another “pulse” on what’s being shared in the social web. Outside the widgets, Searchles also offers many opportunities to get your content indexed and shared with it’s many active users.
Dynamic services like Searchles – going far beyond standard search – are becoming more important for everyone marketing online, especially bloggers.
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For future reference, I’ll be leaving the widgets live until this weekend, so you can see them in action. After that, I will be going back to my favorite Wordpress plugins and RSS feeding to integrate related content here.
Thank you Stacy Cohen and Chris Seline for the emails introducing me to Searchles and requesting my review…
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… looking forward to connecting with you!
Maria 
What Others Say About Searchles Widgets
Related Content Widget Wants to Make Your Site More Sticky from Web Worker Daily
Searchles Discovery from Keith Shirley
Searchles: The Future of Search from Search Engine News
Search Goes Web 2.0 from CNet
Searchles Shows Related Comments from Mashable
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