If you have installed a sitemap on your wordpress blog, there is a quick way to ping Google and alert the search engine that you have posted new content.

This may be a good idea if you have a blog and you do not publish on a regular basis. It may be a few days before the google-bots discover you have published new content. Ping Google and tell them you have an updated blog.

A few weeks ago I received an email from Oliver and the guys over at nrelate.com. Oliver asked me to try out a related post plugin that they had developed. His email to me was timely because I was looking for such a plugin. I had been using the YARPP plugin, Yet Another Related Post Plugin. I have had trouble with this plugin on some of the wordpress themes I was using. Some sort of [...]]]>

A few weeks ago I received an email from Oliver and the guys over at nrelate.com. Oliver asked me to try out a related post plugin that they had developed. His email to me was timely because I was looking for such a plugin. I had been using the YARPP plugin, Yet Another Related Post Plugin. I have had trouble with this plugin on some of the wordpress themes I was using. Some sort of conflict had caused me to just disable it. On the right wordpress theme, YARPP a great plugin.

I looked into the Nrelate plugin and decide to give it a try on some of my sites. What attracted me to the plugin was the fact that it displays text or visuals for your related posts. Personally, I like the visual display. If you have used a photo in the post, nrelate will usually display a thumbnail of the photo. My first thought was that it would probably keep a reader on your site longer.

If you have not placed a photo in your post, you can set the plugin to display a default photo. Nrelate gives you the option of thumbnail size also, from 100 pixels up to 150 pixels.

You can enter your own title like I did here on Bloggerlens. Mine says “Check out these awesome articles -.” You can change the text to whatever you want.

When you install the nrelate plugin initially it may take a while for the plugin to retrieve all the data from your site. Just be patient and check back in a while.

One thing I have noticed about the nrelate plugin is that it doesn’t always pull a photo from my post. At times, it uses a generic photo. The generic photos look ok, but this does not happen often.

You can also set the plugin to show related content from other sites. That’s pretty cool if you have a network and you want to keep your readers on your own sites as long as possible.

Nrelate also offers an option to join the nrelate ad network from the dashboard. You can select an option to show ads under the related posts. Honestly, I have not looked into this at all so I can’t comment on it other to say that it’s there. Maybe someone can comment who knows more about it.

I could keep telling you about the features of the nrelate plugin but let’s get to some statistics. I’ve been running the plugin on several sites for about 23 days now. I made a comparison on these 3 sites for the prior 23 days without the plugin vs. the 23 days since installing the plugin and using the photo thumbnails feature.

Adsense Doubled
My adsense revenue doubled. It’s not a lot, because these are not sites made for adsense, but I am pleased with that.

My bounce rate decreased substantially on 2 of the 3 sites. One site went from a 62% bounce rate to 52%. One site went from a 52% bounce rate to 11.4%. The 3rd site remained neutral.

I have to assume that for the long term, I will increase readers on my sites and I will make more money.

You should conduct your own tests with this plugin, you may be very pleased with the results.

If you are a little rusty on installing a plugin on a wordpress blog, it’s very simple. Watch the screencast below.

2010 Bloggerlens.com

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When you log in to your WordPress dashboard, somewhere on that page you will see a list of WordPress plugins. Some of them are new and being promoted by WordPress. I saw one the other day called Fast Secure Contact Form. I was in need of a simple and fast form to place on some of my sites. I installed this one here on Bloggerlens in just a few moments.

One of the things [...]]]>

When you log in to your WordPress dashboard, somewhere on that page you will see a list of WordPress plugins. Some of them are new and being promoted by WordPress. I saw one the other day called Fast Secure Contact Form. I was in need of a simple and fast form to place on some of my sites. I installed this one here on Bloggerlens in just a few moments.

One of the things that I like about the claims that the plugin developer makes, Mike Challis, is the fact that this WordPress form reduces spam emails. The form itself supports Akismet and includes a captcha. You can build multi-forms and insert them anywhere you want with just a piece of short code into your html editor.

You can check the form to see if Akismet is working. Here is a screen shot that confirms mine is working.

If you only have a page where you are listing your email address, you should be warned that spam bots can grab that easily and you will start receiving all kinds of unwanted email.

If you want to see it in action, just look at my contact page.

The form has been downloaded over 500,000 times so far and that seems like a pretty good testament to the contact form. Every site, in my opinion, needs a contact form.

Check it out. Maybe it will be useful on your blog as well.

All comments are moderated. Spammers go somewhere else, you are wasting your time.

Lately, I have made some personal reflections concerning my hyperlocal blogs that have resulted in changes to the way I’m doing business. I have faced some cold hard facts. The first icy cold fact that basically bitch slapped me in the face, is I have finally realized I am not Superman. We all like to think we are, but running a hyperlocal blog or several, is very hard work if you want to do it [...]]]>

Lately, I have made some personal reflections concerning my hyperlocal blogs that have resulted in changes to the way I’m doing business. I have faced some cold hard facts. The first icy cold fact that basically bitch slapped me in the face, is I have finally realized I am not Superman. We all like to think we are, but running a hyperlocal blog or several, is very hard work if you want to do it correctly.

For almost a year now I have been running 4 hyperlocal news blogs. Until recently I have had some help running the sites and producing content. Times and people do change and for the past little while, I have found the day-to-day responsibilities mainly falling into my lap.

If you have any experience in hyperlocal journalism, you know that we are all experimenting in this new frontier sometimes refered to as citizen journalism. Each day brings on new ideas and thoughts. What worked last week may not be working this week. A fantastic, can’t lose idea of a new revenue stream can sometimes, more often than not, fall flat on it’s face. One day you can experience amazing highs followed by amazing lows in just 24 hours. All of this, and you just keep on plodding because after a while, hyperlocal blogging becomes a part of you. The benefits far outweigh the negatives.

I have decided to consolidate 3 of my hyperlocal websites into 1 main site and create community tabs that will cover the different geographical areas that I want to cover. Running multiple sites can be hard to keep fresh content on the main page of every site. By creating community tabs, it is much easier to always have fresh content on the front page of my “flagship” site.

Create Community Tabs for different geographical areas in your community.

Create Community Tabs for your Hyperlocal Blog website.

You can visit my hyperlocal blog in Monroe, NC to see how I’m doing this on my site.

The community tabs are actually “Pages” I created in WordPress. I created a page and named it one of my communities. I am able to write articles (posts) and have them show up directly on a specific page. I have the ability to let the new article show up on the main page, community page or both. I was able to do this with 2 WordPress plugins I added to my site.

How To Create A WordPress Post and include it in a WordPress Page

Here are the links to the 2 plugins that allowed me to exclude articles from the main page and publish them to a WordPress “page” I created. Another words, how to include a WordPress post in a page and exclude it from appearing on the main page of your site. I’m sure there are many more ways or more plugins that will do the same job, but I found these and so far they are working just fine for me. If you know of more, pleast list in the comments below.

• Ultimate Category Excluder
• Include WordPress Posts in Pages

Matt McGee at Hyperlocal Blogger has recently written a similar article about how he is creating hyperlocal topic pages. Matt is using SEO on his topic pages to drive additional traffic. Check it out if you would like to see how he is creating “authority pages.”

Everyday I am seeking ways to make my life easier and more simple through technology. I may never totally make it but I want to eventually make as much passive income with my hyperlocal blogs as possible. Consolidating 3 sites into one will certainly help me as I move forward.

2010 Hyperlocal Blogging

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For the past couple of weeks I’ve had to do some WordPress Troubleshooting.

I’ve been having a little bit of trouble with one of my sites and I’m happy to say I have found a solution to my problems as of today.

I have no idea what tomorrow will bring however. I use WordPress on all of my sites. The 2 problems I’ve had recently were aggravating the hell out of me.