When I decided to trash the old magnetic-rose.net and start again from scratch in February of 2009, I never realized that by the end of the year it would turn out to be such a success.

I’d like to thank all the people who helped make this possible: Kyam for the back-end help, Melo, Nina and Kaoko for the SEO tips, and all friends, affiliates, regular commenters, and readers.

To give a little something back, I’m sharing some practical tips that I learned firsthand when putting together and maintaining the blog. I know that most of these things aren’t really new, but I cannot stress enough how helpful they’ve been in building up the site.

Find your own voice.

It’s easy to just copy-pasta press releases to your posts, but by taking a shortcut you are sabotaging your blog. Google punishes your page rank for publishing duplicate content, pushing you further down the listing for their search results. It also turns off possible readers from your site because all you did was parrot the same information they can find on an official website.

It’s okay — nobody gets it right all the time.

If you’ve published information that you later find out is false or erroneous, you owe it to your readers to keep them updated on any corrections. If it’s just you who made the mistake then there’s no problem there; but because other people depend on you for information, it is your responsibility to keep your facts as accurate and as up-to-date as possible.

jUSt bC0z eVeRYb0DY ElsE tYpEs LYK DIS d0Esn’T mEAn U HaVe 2.

If you want to be considered a legitimate source of information and opinions, you need to have a degree of professionalism with the way you work. Your grammar and spelling should be spot on, and you need to be a ruthless editor of your own work. Unless you are being deliberate (or sarcastic), sticky caps and txt-speak should rarely be used. Your blog is not MySpace — full-stop.

Your layout is your friend.

It’s tempting to install numerous widgets, badges and AdSense links to make your blog look like hot stuff, but a messy layout just makes people want to hit the X button at the corner of their browsers. I made the same mistake during the first few weeks I had the site, but eventually I got rid of all of the clutter to highlight the most important thing about the blog: good content.

Linking is love.

If you found something interesting or informative on another site, don’t forget to link back when you create your post. There’s nothing worse than a blogger who does not acknowledge his sources. Not only will you get the reputation for being an asshole, it could also be grounds for a formal complaint by your sources that may result in your site being taken down by your host.

That’s pretty much it for me. If you have other tips I’d be delighted to hear from you via the comments box. Thanks again for all your support and have a happy and prosperous 2010!