What Spike Likes

[Spike Marshall]

New Blog can be found here

http://whatspikelikes.blogspot.com/

I've got film reviews, game reviews, general ramblings and other shit there. I'm kinda proud of my assassin's creed review, largely because I found aliteration for douchebag. Please visit, comment, whatever.

[Macaroni21]

I personally like having post previews on the main page with a "more" link to view the full post. Not a big deal now, but it would probably benefit you as you add more content.

How long do you plan to blog for? Considered your own domain? Why not use WordPress. Does BlogSpot allow you to view traffic?

[Spike Marshall]

I used to use Wordpress, but I had issues with their image editing and composition choices.

[Macaroni21]

Two of the 60 themes available on WordPress.com were created by me ;).

But why not host your own blog? Wouldn't cost you more than $35 a year.

[Spike Marshall]

Because my opinion ain't worth $35 a year and I don't how the expertise to use my own blog properly.

[Macaroni21]

As you keep blogging, you may want to expand. I can give you a crash course if you ever want to go that route. It's pretty straight forward.

Good luck to you!

[Spike Marshall]

http://whatspikelikes.wordpress.com/

Switched over to Wordpress because I can use it easier. Also updated,

[Macaroni21]

For search engine optimization (seo) i.e. more traffic;

Switch over to post previews on the front/category pages by using the <more> tag. This way you won't get dinged for duplicate content and your posts will receive better ranks in the search engine results pages.

Go back to Blog Spot and either delete your posts or simply link to your new posts saying "Redirect to here--Link" which will also help make sure you don't get dinged for duplicated content.

Does WordPress.com allow you to use Technorati (http://www.technorati.com) tags? Huge traffic and readership potential from Technorati.

[Spike Marshall]

Thanks for the advice, I tried to change the options so it only shows a summary but it just doesn't seem to be taking effect. Like I said, I'm not a technical man, so a lot of shit you're saying is flying well over my head. I did empty out my blogger account though, that seemed like a wise move. I'm actually getting way more traffic here than I was at blogspot, I've already had 60 hits (24 of which were from me linking in this and other forums) and the others from google searches.

[Macaroni21]

Oh cool you can track traffic?

WordPress has a Technorati-like feature:
http://wordpress.com/tag/pointless-lists/

That's probably where you are getting traffic from. So you may want to add more tags to the bottom (between 1-3) in order to hit more categories. See what I am saying? You could tag (it might be called 'filed under') a single post under multiple categories and receive more incoming traffic and readers.

Example, you have your "There Will Be Blood" post filed under "Ruminations" and that's cool but it really doesn't describe your post. Instead, tag it under "Movies" or "Movie Reviews" along with "Ruminations" (if you want) and other tags that apply to your post.

Then your post will show up under multiple WordPress categories and hopefully earn you more traffic. Technorati tags work the same way :)

Your "There Will Be Blood" post might file under
http://wordpress.com/tag/movie-reviews/
http://wordpress.com/tag/ruminations/
http://wordpress.com/tag/oil-upton-sinclair/

Making a little bit of sense? This page shows you popular tags (what people are blogging about) on WordPress: http://wordpress.com/tags/

[Spike Marshall]

Awesome, just changed all of my tags to something a little generic (so all my Movies stuff is under movies) and I've created new tags for stuff which might get googled/searched for (Annie Hall/Assassin's Creed)

[Spike Marshall]

Updated again with a BioShock review, hoping for two more updates this weekend.