Some quick definitions of “Subdomain” and “Subdirectory”:

A subdomain is a completely different website (from the ‘main-domain’) and it looks like this, “http://subdomain.main-domain.com”.

*Note–For ease of clarification, I’ve used ‘main-domain’ instead of ’site-domain’ as the Top Level Domain (TLD): e.g. main-domain.com or Top-Level-Domain.com

The URL of a subdirectory looks like this: “http://main-domain.com/subdirectory.”

Search engines see subdirectory just that–subdirectory of the website’s domain. Basically, what that means is that the subdirectory belong to the site’s main domain or subdomain, which again is a different website from the ‘main-domain’.

So, if the main-domain has high page rank (PR), the page rank gets distribute throughout the subdirectories within the main-domain; but the subdomain does NOT, however, feel the PR love from the main-domain . This is, again, because the subdomain is a different website from the main-domain.

O.K. Now that we’ve gotten the subdomain/subdirectory definitions down, let’s go back to the question of whether a subdomain name or a subdirectory name is best fitted for your SEO blog.

To simply put, if you have have a main-domain site about cat, “www.cat-domain.com,” and you want to create a blog on “cat food,” then you should choose “cat-food” as a subdirectory for your SEO blog, “www.cat-domain.com/cat-food.” This is because “cat-food” is related to your ‘main’ website topic, so your subdirectory SEO blog will feel ‘more’ PR love from your ‘main-domain’.

On the other hand, if you want to create another site for “dog-food,” you should choose “dog-food” as a subdomain of the “cat-domain.com,” since “dog-food” has little relevance to your main-domain site, www.cat-domain.com.

And because a subdomain is a different website, you can actually have a subdirectory-blog in the subdomain (e.g. subdomain.main-domain.com/subdirectory-blog).

So, if you want an SEO blog out of the subdomain, you can have “luxury-dog-food” as a subdirectory name: “http://dog-food.cat-domain.com/luxury-dog-food”. And yes, if you have high PR for the subdomain “dog-food,” your SEO blog on “luxury-dog-food” also feels the PR love from your SUBDOMAIN, but not from your main “cat-domain.com”.

And that’s concluded my rambling on subdomain vs. subdirectory for an optimized SEO blog .

Anyway, to recap, if you have a blog topic (“cat-food”) that’s related to your main-domain website (“http://cat-domain.com”), for SEO purpose, you should choose the subdirectory route: cat-domain.com/cat-food. But if your blog is of different topic than your main-domain website (“dog-food”), you should choose “dog-food” as a subdomain name for your SEO blog: dog-food-blog.cat-domain.com.

O.K. Now, I really am finished rambling about the subdomain and subdirectory dilemma .

*Of course, you still need links (and other factors) to be able to rank in the SERP .

• 5 Essential Techniques in Building a SEO Website
• Why Yahoo New Robots-Nocontent Tag Will Have Little Use
• Using Mod-rewrite to Redirect Non-www URL to www URL
• First SEO Report for My SEO Blog
• What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Update 1: It’s definitely the WP-Cache…Arg…Warning: it will change your WordPress core files!!!

Here are some helpful comments I got from a few of my fellow forumers’ posts:

“Beware of wp-cache. Many strange things have happened to blogs with that plugin installed. It might be better now since it’s been some time since I looked at it”
–Fellow Forumer 1

“The ‘headers already sent’ means there is some errant white space or typo somewhere in your code; best place to look is on line 86 in the seth godin plug-in. It’s likely not the MySQL table you installed.”
–Fellow Forumer 2

This is the error message that appear at the top of the header:

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/seoblogger/public_html/wp-config.php:2) in /home/seoblogger/public_html/xxxxxx/xxxx/what_would_seth_godin_do.php on line 86

Update 2: I took the liberty to UPGRADE it to newest version of WordPress, WordPress 2.2 =P. Took about 10 minutes but it works out–o.k. for now .

Update 3: Everything is back to normal =P. Now, I’ll just have to upgrade the other sites …And I too know what’s wrong with the older version of WordPress. With the new version you have an ‘integrated’ widget file, so you don’t have to use the Widget Sidebar plugin, plus the ‘Preview’ at the bottom of the ‘Write’ area is taken out and replaced with a ‘Preview’ link on the upper right hand corner of the screen (but why took it out when I can use the Clutter Free Plugin to remove it + other ‘cluttering’?).

Here’s How I Trouble-Shoot This Problem:

I fixed this problem by upgrading to the newest version of WordPress (WordPress 2.2), since I think the WP-Cache change some ‘core’ files of the WordPress (don’t know which).

And yes, the pain of following the not-so-detail installation instruction at the WP-Cache website was unnecessarily ‘painful’!

I know the Related Post Plugin isn’t a problem because I have used it on my other sites.

After this experience and other near d(r)ead experiences from WordPress and third party plugins and WYSIW you don’t get editor, I humbly suggest fellow bloggers who use WordPress to BACKUP ALL YOUR DATA before activating a plugin!

And also, try to set up your blog with all the plugins as soon as possible, because you don’t want your blog to look ‘discombobulated’ when you have 1000+ visitor a day. Then, again, you might want to test ‘new thing’ on another site once you have that many reader .

*Note to yourself: when attempting to use/activate ‘just’ a plugin, BE SURE TO BACK-UP ALL THE DATA!

By the way, here’s a database managing plugin I use: WP-DBManager

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BUT–luckily, there’s a WordPress plugin to fix this problem. And without further ado, here it is:

Permalinks Migration Plugin for WordPress: “With this plugin, you can safely change your permalink structure without breaking the old links to your website,and even doesn’t hurt your google pagerank.”

You can find details on how to change your old permalink structure of your blog to a new one there. And, yes, the author of that plugin also recommend /%category%/postname%/ as the permalink structure for your SEO blog–just like what I had posted on WordPress SEO Tutorial: The Best SEO Permalink Structure.

Also, there is a plugin called Permalink Redirect WordPress Plugin. It’s a “WordPress plugin that replies a 301 permanent redirect, if requested URI is different from entry’s (or archive’s) permalink. It is used to ensure that there is only one URL associated with each blog entry.”Yet, another one is called Angsuman’s Permanent Redirect. This plugin works “[w]hen a post or static page (in WP context) is fetched (using its permalink) for viewing the plugin checks if the post has a “redirect” custom field set. If it is set then a permanent redirect status is sent to the client/browser indicating that the post has permanently moved to the location (URL) specified in the value of “redirect”. So the viewer is automatically moved to the new location.”

*I personally recommend Permalinks Migration Plugin for WordPress if you are going to ‘permanently’ change your old permalink structure to a new one (to /%category%/postname%/ I hope .

And there you have it, the “3 WordPress Plugins to Safely Change Your Permalink Structure”
w/out losing any link love . Best of luck to your permalink transition . O.K. then adieu.

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‘Headspace2 – The Ultimate Meta-Tags Plugin!’

Why’s Headspace2 the Ultimate WordPress meta-tag plugin?

Simple, it’s because Headspace2 can do most of the functions that other WordPress plugins COMBINED!

Anyway, you can read my last post on “Top WordPress Meta-Tag Plugins List+Descriptions” for more reasons and update on the “ULTIMATE META-TAGS PLUGIN.”

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*Note: some of these WordPress plugins have more than one functions (e.g. can insert keyword, description, and/or title tags), and they are marked by the asterisk (*).

WORDPRESS PLUGINS FOR TITLE TAG

SEO Title Tag: by default WordPress uses your post title as the < title> tag for your post/web page. This WordPress plugin allows you to customize not only individual title of your post page but also EVERY page’s title on your blog. This is a quote from the plugin site: “Not just your posts, not just your home page, but any and every title tag on your site!”

Best Feature: the nice thing about this WordPress plugin is that it allows you to MASS edit/customize all the titles of your pages =P. You can also use SEO Title Tag with the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin.

Optimal Title: this plugin “mirrors the function of wp_title() [the title of your post] exactly, but moves the position of the ’separator’ to after the title rather than before. This allows you to have your blog name tacked on to the end of the page title instead of having it appear first.”

Best Feature: this plugin is simply to use & apply, because all you have to do is to ‘find & replace’ wp_title() with optimal_title() in your “header.php” file to make your blog post title appears before your blog name.

WORDPRESS PLUGINS FOR DESCRIPTION META-TAG

Head-Meta-Description: “provides an automatic meta description tag for your blog, inserting a dynamic description depending on the query-type (i.e. page you’re on).”

Best Feature: this plugin ‘automatically’ takes the first 150 or a specified number of characters in the beginning of each post/page and outputs them as a description in the meta-tag. It can also automatically outputs the meta data description based on the excerpt of a post/page. This plugin is great if you’re too LAZY to input the meta-tag description in every post and page =P.

*Tags-in-the-Head: “a WordPress plugin that attempts to make your website both more machine and human readable by using the ‘Tags’ you specify as META keywords in a page’s header. It also allows you to customize the meta description’s for various parts of your site.”

Best Feature: this plugin can automatically “harvest tags for use as keywords from both Ultimate Tag Warrior and Jerome’s Keywords, internal error and logic checking, ability to customize the meta descriptions for your homepage, archives, 404 pages, and every post, and everything validates XHTML 1.0 Transitional.”

*Another-WordPress-Meta-Plugin: this plugin allows you to customize your meta data keywords and descriptions for all your posts and pages (in the “Write” area). You can also “Generate Technorati Style Tags at the End of Posts,” plus have additional meta keywords derived from your blog categories.

Best Feature: you can have up to two CUSTOMIZE meta-tags (e.g. robots meta-tag) in any posts and pages you specify (in the “Write” area).

WORDPRESS PLUGINS FOR KEYWORD META-TAG

Jeromes Keyword: a plugin for WordPress 1.5.x and 2.0 that adds the keyword meta-tag to your web page header: it “[a]dds a field to the post & page editing screens for entering or editing keywords. Separate all keywords with commas — spaces are okay, so you can enter multi-word “key phrases” too…”

Best Feature: you can use it in conjunction with Ultimate Tag Warrior to “implement a local keyword/tag system [so] readers can click on a post’s keyword/tag link to see other posts with the same tag.” The other nice feature of this plugin is that it can “[i]ndex your tags with Technorati. Normally if you’re listed on Technorati they’ll only pick up your categories as tags. With this plugin, your keywords show up in their tag pages too.”

*Another-WordPress-Meta-Plugin: see WordPress Plugins for Description Meta-Tag above.
*Tags-in-the-Head: see WordPress Plugins for Description Meta-Tag above.

WORDPRESS PLUGINS FOR CUSTOM META-TAGS

*Another-WordPress-Meta-Plugin: see WordPress Plugins for Description Meta-Tag above.

**Ultimate Meta Tags Plugin: can do most of everything other WordPress plugins combined–”HTML ‘head’ meta-data manager, allowing complete control over meta-data such as keywords, title, description, stylesheets, and other goodies. The data inserted can be static text, or pulled dynamically from the details of the post.”

*Note: custom meta-tags are meta data other than the 3 keyword, description and title tags above. These include: robots, author, copyright, distribution, language, rating, etc. meta-tags.

**Update: I think I have found the Ultimate WordPress Meta Tags Plugin (that’s my dubbed name for the plugin, not its real name . But really, it has most (not all) of the functions of the plugins I’ve described above. However, rather than just briefly describing the many features of this plugin here, (which would increase this post length dramatically!), I felt that this plugin needs a whole page of my post–just so I can ‘comprehensively’ praise it for all it’s worth =P.

***Update 2: After going back to the download page of Headspace2, a.k.a. the Ultimate WordPress Meta-Tag Plugin, I can see that the information and instruction on that page is EXTREMELY DETAILED. So, instead of me rambling and praising what it can do for your blog, feel free to visit Headspace2 and grab your ULTIMATE WORDPRESS META-TAGS PLUGIN!

Anyway, let me take a short moment and say thanks to John Godley, the man behind Headspace2.

P.S. I hope he would change the name of the plugin to a ‘more’ descriptive term like “ULTIMATE META-TAGS PLUGIN,” instead of Headspace2 . Also, it would also be nice to have the MASS editing function like the SEO Title Tag plugin.

That would make it the “ULTRA ULTIMATE META-TAGS PLUGIN” . But…again…I’m rambling again. Anyway, hope you all like this ‘reference’ list of the top WordPress meta-tag plugins I have found–and the ULTIMATE META-TAGS PLUGIN.

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This is the 2nd of the WordPress SEO Tutorials series.

If you don’t know it yet, your web page’s TITLE is one of the MOST important SEO factor in ranking high in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Check it out: go to a major search engine and type in search engine optimization (with/without quotations). What do you see in the 1st page of the SERPs? Most of the top results have search engine optimization near the very beginning of their titles, and these titles have the keyword phrase search engine optimization BOLD-TYPED!

*Notice the bold-types of the descriptions too? I’ll talk about this later but for now let’s get back to how to configure your WordPress blog’s title tag.

By default, most WordPress themes have your blog’s name BEFORE your post/categories/etc. title:

Your Blog Name » Blog Archives » Blog-Post-Title

This, of course, is NOT favorable if you want to have the extra edge over your competition in the SEO war. Anyway, here’s a step-by-step tutorial on how you can configure the title of your post/category/etc. to this (without any plugin):

Blog-Post-Title » Your Blog Name

*Note: The phrase “Blog Archives” has been deleted.

How to Move Your “Blog-Post-Title” before the “Blog Name”

In order to do this, you need to open up the “header.php” file in your WordPress theme folder. You need a ‘php’ file editor to do this; if not, DON’T WORRY–just do the following:

-First, change the “header.php” file extension to “header.txt“.
-Next, open the “header.txt” file and ‘find’ for the following code that begins with the < title> tag:

< title>< ?php bloginfo('name'); ?>< ?php wp_title(); ?>< /title>

*Note: < ?php bloginfo('name'); ?> is your Blog Name, and < ?php wp_title(); ?> is your Blog-Post-Title. Also, you only need these two “< ?php>” codes: just delete the rest of the other codes or texts (e.g. “Blog Archives”).

Now, all you have to do is moved the < ?php wp_title(); ?> before the < ?php bloginfo('name'); ?>:

BEFORE:
< title>< ?php bloginfo('name'); ?>< ?php wp_title(); ?>< /title>

AFTER:
< title>< ?php wp_title(); ?>< ?php bloginfo('name'); ?>< /title>

That’s it you’re DONE! The last step is to save the file as a “php” extension, “header.php” (without the quotations), and upload it to your site’s theme folder and watch the transformation of your Wordpress Blog-Post-Title goes before your Blog Name:

Blog-Post-Title » Your Blog Name

O.K. That’s it for my tutorial on the configuring your blog name and title WITHOUT using any plugin. My next post will list a SERIES of SEO-related WordPress plugins, plus some optional ‘tweak’ for the best SEO results for the title tag .

O.K. Then, until the next WordPress SEO tutorial…

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This is the first of the WordPress SEO Tutorials series.

By default, WordPress gives you this dynamic URL for your post: “http://yourdomain.com/?p=SOME-ID-NUMBER”. The best SEO permalink structure is to have your post appears with ‘category’ and the ‘post title’ in the URL.

This looks something like this: “http://yourdomain.com/category/post-title”

Why is this the best SEO permalink structure compares to the other structures?

To simply put, this permalink structure allows you to have ‘more’ keyword loaded into the URL of your post. Since the category that you’ve placed your post under usually related to the post title (which hopefully is keyword-loaded itself), you will have the extra SEO benefit if other people use that permalink structure to link your post.

How to Change the Default Permalinks to ‘Category/Post-Title’ Permalinks

In order to change the default permalink structure, you need to go to “OPTIONS -> Permalinks” in your admin panel and paste this code into the BOX after “Custom Structure:”

/%category%/%postname%/

Next, click the “Update Permalink Structure >>” button; if WordPress does NOT automatically update the permalink structure to for you–don’t worry–just do the following:

-If you don’t have a .htaccess file in your root directory (public_html/.htaccess) already, just ‘create a new file’ and name it .htaccess and place it in “public_html” directory or whatever directory you have your WordPress blog installed (e.g. public_html/blog/.htaccess, which is equivalent to yourdomain.com/blog/.htaccess).

-Then, copy and paste the code WordPress gives you after clicking on the “Update Permalink Structure >>” button into your .htaccess file. *Note: You need to click on the some option (e.g. ‘Edit’) of your .htaccess file to open up a window to paste your permalink code in the file.

The code is same as following if you are using WordPress 2.0 or higher:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

Just copy and paste that ‘mod-rewrite’ code into your .htaccess file, save it, and you are DONE!

Now, your old AND new post will automatically carry the category the post is assigned to, plus the title name of that post:

http://yourdomain.com/blog/category/post-title

*Note: That’s the default ‘Post-Slug’ structure after the updated permalink, but if you want to change the name of the ‘post-title’ in the post’s URL, just go to ‘Post-Slug’ (located on the right-hand side of the “Write” page) and input/change to what name you want.

Also, be sure to check out my post on “3 WordPress Plugins to Safely Change Your Permalink Structure” if you’re going to change to your blog’s old permalinks to a new permalink structure.

O.K. Now, that concludes my first WordPress SEO tutorial on permalink structure. If you have any question, just post a comment below…

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