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Well, I’m back from my week long week off.  I hated to come back, but all good things must come to an end I suppose.

While I was gone, I did manage to make a few post, but the last few days, there was none to post. This was partly by design and partly because I didn’t save enough articles before I left.

When leaving for an extended period of time, I believe it’s never a good idea to let your blog sit idol.

Here are a few tips for the Vacationing blogger:

Use a Guest Blogger

- If there are a few bloggers who you trust and who’s work you like, send them a message and ask them to be a Guest blogger while you’re gone. Not only will this keep your blog’s momentum going, it will give your readers some different perspectives.

Save Your Articles for Publishing Later

 - This is my preferred method. I’ll write several articles and then Save them in my WordPress Dashboard. Then on the day I want them published, I click on them, give them a final proof and add my tags and hit ‘Publish’. I then have a new post up on my blog in less than 5 minutes and I can rejoin the refugees at Magaritaville.

Use the WordPress Time Stamp Feature

- I don’t really recommend this method simply because all your post will be pinged when ever you hit ‘Publish’.

The Time Stamp feature is located at the lower right side of your WordPress Dashboard. You can set the date and time you want your post to be posted. At the pre determined time, WordPress will publish your post. The problem is at the time you set the date and time in TimeStamp and hit ‘Publish’, WordPress pings all your services. Then, when the Crawlers come racing to your blog looking for the Post that WordPress just told them was published, they don’t find the article. To some services, they may believe you’re spamming them with pings.

Don’t Do Anything

- Some bloggers leave a short message that they will be gone for a week or so and do not bother to post while gone. I don’t like this method either as your blog can lose its momentum. You also run the risk of Googlebot not visiting your site as much as it once did. Once this happens, it’s very difficult to get Googlebot back on a regular basis.

I have one blog I let sit for 3 months. This blog was visited several times a week when I was posting. I decided I wanted to go in a different direction with the blog and let it sit while I worked on other projects. Now, I’m lucky if I can get Googlebot to visit that blog once a month.

As a Final Though, You Can Keep Posting While On Vacation

- I know a few bloggers who take a few hours out of every day or so while on vacation to post blogs. If you don’t mind missing some action while on vacation, then go for it.  However, I find that I’m usually too “busy” on Vacation to sit down and focus on my writing. I’d much prefer to have the Post saved on my Dashboard and ready to go at a click of a button.

Just because you’re going on vacation, doesn’t mean your blog has to! With a little planning ahead of time, you can keep your readers entertained and your customers clicking on adds and products, which makes for an even better vacation when you get back!