Does this on huffington post help your seo aims

[ClaireH-184886]

Hi, i am a huge fan of Huffington post, it is an amazing site, not just saying this because they have mentioned our site over 50 times, but i really like the site. But one question i have which i have noticed over and over again is does the following help with seo, as i am a bit puzzled with it

here is one of their pages

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/16/one-direction-set-to-be-worth-64m-in-a-year-after-worldwide-success_n_1602135.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-celebrity

and the section i am puzzled about is

Follow:

Louis Walsh, One Direction, Simon Cowell, Sony Music, The Sun, UK Entertainment, X Factor, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Uk News, UK Entertainment News

Can anyone let me know why the site does this and what benefits it brings

[EGOL]

Those are links to related topics (category pages) on their site that many people probably click.

Looks like a good idea to me.  Might really increase the pageviews.

[riplash]

Yep, as EGOL said the primary purpose of these links is to increase traffic/pageviews to those pages. If you're a site visitor looking at an article about One Direction, there's a good chance you'll be into more stories about them, their manager, their boss, label, etc etc - so these links are primarily for usability.

In addition, these pages are likely never linked to from anywhere else on the site, so the links are helping to pass a bit of link equity to pages that would otherwise not get much/any. A quick OSE check of the Louis Walsh page reveals 35 backlinks, all from the Huff UK domain, all from related articles, and all with "Louis Walsh" anchor text, too (which helps a tiny bit).

[MarieHaynes]

Yup.  They're going to increase clicks and they are also good internal links.  They likely help the search engines figure out what those pages are about.