Howdy everyone, I’ve had this website for a while, but have decided to revamp it, WordPress-afy it, SEO it, and move stuff from a bunch of expiring domains here. I’m realizing that in this day and age when times are tough, smart independent artists don’t need to have 20 or 30 domain names registered, so I just kept this one, let a bunch of other ones expire and moved it all here. This site has links to almost everything I’ve ever done, in music, movies, books and more. It’s also advantageous to have fewer sites to try to drive traffic to than many sites to drive traffic to. Makes it easier to be a media star on the Internet, something I’ve always teetered on the edge of, but never quite gone all the way with.
I also wanted to do something a little different, and that is show my creative process. Below are some notes of mine for a future Freedom Feens podcast episode and blog post here and at Libertarian Punk that will be on the subject of SEO (Search Engine Optimization, the process of doing things to get more traffic to your website). If you’re really diligent, you can probably even discern from these notes what will be in the podcast and get started on your own. But if you don’t feel like being that proactive, you can simply peruse it, then later hear and read the final end result. That will give you an inkling into the process of Mr. Michael W. Dean. Rock on kitties!
– MWD
NOTES FOR SEO PODCAST AND BLOG POST:
My time to get a full blog up and configured, about three hours, but I’ve had practice.
Carrington blog, and widgets.
Plugins, delete all but akismit and podpress (if you’re doing a podcast.)
Favicon
Descriptive categories for blog, and user tags on each post.
ADDED MORE PING URLS from http://wordpresspinglist.com/wordpress_pinglist.txt
ADDED TWO YEARS OF HOSTING. (explain)
Site loading fast. Set media for thumbnails and video previews to be smallish.
ADDED AND CONFIGURED THESE PLUGINS:
Akismet
PodPress
Add Meta Tags
BWP Google XML Sitemaps (submit sitemap to http://www.ongsono.com/submit_sitemap.htm but only after you get it all done and up and running and you’ve done a post or two)
Google Analytics for WordPress
W3 Total Cache (do not activate until you’re all done.)
Admin Flush W3TC (to flush after each post so the cache on the server will be fresh.)
WordPress Mobile Pack. Pick blue theme, less boring than default gray. (submit only after you’re all done.)
42functions Social Media Tracking, set up to be on · Front page of the blog ” Individual blog posts ” Individual WordPress “Pages” Test once you’re all done. Will help submit to search engines.
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Other ways to increase SEO: inbound links from social media, and from more-popular sites. One mention in NY Times is probably worth more than 10,000 people linking you on Facebook. That’s in an article, not in a comment you post yourself. Comments on blogs aren’t worth much. If a lot of them come organically from a lot of people they can be, but not worth it to just go spamming yourself. Except what I do on Facebook, explain difference. I engage and actually make fans who will talk about and re-post stuff, not just me putting a link. The central scrutinzer computer banks at Google and elsewhere can tell.
Link bait, writing an article or having an episode that brings a lot of people in. Like this episode on SEO. Webistes that tell you how to get lots of traffic, and actually deliver, tend to have lots of incoming traffic as a result. Fancy that.
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Permalink settings, month/name.
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Quick edit trick for disallowing comments on pages.
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Export and backup regularly. If things crash or you are hacked, you can add an importing plugin and get back and running.