Each Week, we’ll review a popular open source plugin - whether it’s the latest add-on for Mozilla, or some sweet little bell (or whistle) for Wordpress.

Thanks to a post seen on Matt Cutt’s blog, we’ve been taking a look at Mitcho’s “Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.” The thing is: It’s not “yet another” plugin. This little powerhouse has a plethora of interesting features.

My favorite option was the ability for admins to view the ‘relatedness’ score of the posts. I’ve always wondered how these little gizmos score the posts. Much like the mysterious Google algorithm, I’m sure they take a variety of factors into consideration, but as far as I can tell YARRP looks more closely at the title and body text using a SQL query keyword analysis.

Of course, another reason I love this plugin is the fact that you can alter the algorithm yourself! You have the power of Google at your fingertips! Don’t like the way posts are scored? Simply disallow tags or categories in the YARRP scoring algorithm!

Not fond of the total number of posts being displayed (heck, if you like to produce a lot of content, your related posts could start to get multitudinous!) No problem! YARRP allows you to select the total number of posts to be displayed.

You can also place the related posts box anywhere in your Wordpress template. This is invaluable if you prefer to have your related posts displayed as a floating div in your post, or even in the sidebar.

Overall, upon testing the plugin on my own experimental blog, I’m having great results. There is a heated debate in SEO circles whether or not interlinking will help you SEO-wise, but I’m sure it couldn’t hurt, and I’ve personally seen well-placed related links bring me up in the rankings.

I’ve been a Search Engine Optimizer maestro for a while. What I’ve realized is that no amount of underhanded techniques, link building trickery, or paid strategy will ultimately get you where you want.

Content is king, of course. But links are queen. And in order to reconcile the two, one must realize that good, relevant, and interesting content always wins when it comes to building links.  I have pushed, and pushed… and pushed for a few pieces that I thought were interesting. Sadly, they fizzled out in the bones of social bookmarking gravestones.

But every once in a while, I put out a piece that — while technically a little inept, and in my opintion: unininteresting. What surprised me about those pieces was the fact that they gained a rabid following in the social bookmarking sphere. Why? Sometimes you will never know. But the sure strategy to getting ranked will continue to require one simple task-at-hand: What will MY users find INTERESTING.

If you have that pinned down, then it’s a sure win.