I’ve been seeing advice all over popular blogs about the benefits of guest blogging. Everyone seems to agree (and rightly so) that it’s a good strategy to get traffic, and more than that, name recognition.

But looking at the latest Problogger poll, the majority of Problogger …

You’ve probably been there: you spend hours writing a great blog post, get some good feedback on it, and (justifiably) feel like a brilliant blogger. But then, a week or two later, the post has been replaced by newer entries on the front page, effectively relegating it to the dark corners where readers seldom venture.

Sure, you might still get a little Google traffic, and if it was a really good post, hopefully some other bloggers linked to it and you’re still getting a few visitors clicking through. But wouldn’t it be nice to keep the post alive and kicking on your own blog?

Fortunately, it’s not that hard, especially if you’re using WordPress (I mention some plugins below that are for WordPress blogs, but you might be able to find equivalent ways of doing these things on other platforms, too). Read on to discover a few tricks you can use today.

Many good writers get stuck when they decide to start blogging, mostly because they aren’t sure what they’re shooting for in a blog post.

I’ll write another post about how to choose a post topic in the near future, but regardless of the specific topic, there are some common characteristics of good posts. You’ll come across plenty of exceptions, but it’s one of those “know the rules before you break them” things.

It’s a fact that writing for the web is entirely different from writing for print. When it comes to writing your blog articles, you need to keep in mind a number of rules that make it easier for your readers.

You’ll need to forget (or at least temporarily ignore) some of what you’ve learned about writing for print, because as you will soon discover, writing for the web is a totally different game altogether!

To prove my point, think for a moment about the material you read online. What do you find most attractive? What turns you off? Seriously, take a minute to think about it.

A great article from the latest PsychoTactics newsletter about sticking with a topic. Although it’s talking about making presentations, the point is equally applicable to blogging. As you read, think about your posts. Do they each focus as specifically as the article recommends? Here it is, …