With the new year just around the corner, I thought it might be a good idea to think of some resolutions bloggers should make. These following resolutions are great blogging tips that can take your blog to the next level in 2009.

1. Build more relationships.

Bloggers are often too focused on writing. They forget that blogging is a great social channel. How many other bloggers do you know?

Of course, you can start the process by leaving comments. But you can do much more. Send a blogger a guest post. Introduce yourself to another blogger. Ask for a link. Reply to an interesting message on Twitter. Basically, anything that allows you to interact directly with other bloggers will usually be more effective than simply leaving comments.

And why build relationships? Well, it’s fun. It makes blogging less lonely. And relationships can definitely lead to profitable partnerships.

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In my previous post, I wrote about the importance of blogging with confidence. In this post, we’ll look at 5 practical ways to increase your confidence as you blog.

1. Be prepared.

I listened to an mp3 about how Jerry Seinfeld prepared for his first appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. This was many years ago when Seinfeld was an upcoming comic and The Tonight Show was a very popular show. Seinfeld knew there was a chance he would be nervous during his performance. So, he practiced his short monologue over a hundred times because he knew that proper preparation leads to a confident performance.

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Imagine two different singers auditioning for American Idol. They both have good voices. One is super confident but the other is nervous.

Who do you think will advance to the next round? Who will incur the wrath of Simon Cowell?

In music, confidence is a big thing because a huge part of the performer’s task is to make the audience feel at ease. If you’re nervous, the audience will be nervous for you or worse yet, be hostile towards you.

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The problem with most blogs that want more search engine traffic seems to be their lack of linkworthy content, or linkbait.

You might be blogging consistently, publishing your 3-5 300 word posts week in and week out. However, that in itself will not get you a lot of search traffic.

To get a huge increase in search traffic, you will need links from authority sites. Authority sites include the popular sites in your niche, the well-branded sites, the about.com’s on the net, the blogs that get 10+ comments per post, and the sites with Alexa ratings under 100,000. Also, The EatonWeb Blog Directory lists blogs based on authority.

Google gives a lot of weight to these links because they are harder to build than the average link. These links can’t be bought (usually). Instead, they have to be earned with linkworthy content and diligent marketing.

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According to a recent Blog Herald post, frequent publishing is one of the most recognizable traits of a popular blog. And it’s a sensible tip–publish frequently so that your site stays fresh enough for both human readers and search engines to keep coming back to.

Is there such a thing as too-frequent posting, though? I would say that for blogs, there is only such a thing if you consider the front-page life-span of a post. While many users are already comfortable with reading content on their RSS feed readers, most are still accessing your site via the front page. This means they type in the URL on their browsers, hit enter, and land on your site’s main page.

So in that regard, it does pay to keep the important stuff at the front page, at least long enough for people to read it. If your front page displays five posts at a time, and you publish twenty posts in a span of one hour, then chances are those 15 other posts pushed to 2nd, 3rd and 4th page status don’t get as much exposure as the last five ones.

Some bloggers like to delineate between regular and important posts. So how do you keep important posts on the front page? One trick here is to re-design your site such that posts tagged as “features” become “sticky” ones, meaning they stay on the front page even when they’re already overridden by newer posts in terms of freshness.

Still, experienced bloggers would recommend a posting frequency of one to three times a day. That’s frequent enough to be considered fresh, but not too frequent that people are not overwhelmed by the postings. At least this goes for one-blogger blogs.