tutorials

“Subdomain or Subdirectory Name for a SEO Blog?–It depends!“

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. » Continue reading: Subdomain or Subdirectory Name for a SEO Blog?

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Update: I would like to update that my site main ’stable’ traffic is from Google and StumbleUpon (very little to none from Digg . However, this blog is now averaging 60 or more views a day =P.

Wow. I’ve been extremely busy perfecting my other sites + preparing for the US citizenship test, and whatnot (yeah, I’m kinda ‘unmotivate’ to be going through the long-winded application process–until now that is . But I’m here and happily reporting on my SEO blog performance so far =P.

So far, there are only 17-20 entries for this blog, but it is getting an average of 30+ 50+ visitors per day (most of it is from Google Digg and StumbleUpon, since Yahoo and MSN have just recently decided to index my blog .

O.K. Here’s a little more details for the report:

Google Index: 219 Pages? (probably from past articles that I’ve removed
Yahoo Index: 41 Pages
MSN: 67 Pages

Alexa Rank: 536,621
Link: don’t know Yahoo is doing something with this.
LinkDomains: don’t know either Yahoo is doing something with this.
*(Sure I can check it from other tools, but my blog is kinda small right now, so I’m not worry about checking these stats).

Anyway, that’s it for this SEO report. Until the next time…

Oh, by the way, I’ll be continued doing this series of SEO report for this blog in the future. So, if you don’t want to know my random reports on these stats, please let me know; else I’ll going full blast with this–because I’ve always liked stats–especially SEO stats–and you should too .

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“The Digbacle of LiveJournal“

I’m sure many of you (presumably bloggers) out there have heard about the Digg Revolt from the hacked DVD encryption keys, but can you believe it: now LiveJournal decides to taunt its user by mass deleting not just discussion posts but also *their users accounts and community groups!

*(You’ve gotten to read the news source closely when they said LJ action “lead” to the deletion of the accounts, which is explained below).

This massacre of the user-generated contents and ‘the users’ apparently includes the “removal of literary critiques and fan-written fiction about Harry Potter.”

You can check out CNN news for the complete coverage of this digbacle (debacle .

In the meanwhile, I’ll wait and see how Six Apart, owner of LiveJournal, TypePad, MovableType, and a host of other things responses. (I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be the undo route, cuz I don’t think you can ‘un-deleted’ the accounts or mend the ego/id of their thousands customers.

But come on LJ, I understand that they’re (ab)users of your site – but still, aren’t they still your “users”? Where is the warning LJ?). Maybe I should go back and re-read all those Harry Potter books that were ‘locked’ in my lit sister closet to see if there’s really a sex theme in there .

Update. Here’s the official apology from Barak Berkowitz, the chairman of Six Apart (which owns live journal):

“Well we really screwed this one up…”

His words not mine . Here’s is his post on LiveJournal’s DigBacle. (Also, it turns out that they ‘only delete the community groups + discussions’ and only ’suspended’ the accounts: the users delete them in protests .

Hmn. I’m left wondering–when will they learn to ‘announce/sample’ their action before going at it with full blast? Anyway, enjoy the public humiliation . (Wow! Still unbelievable – 2 social upheavals/cracks in a very short period of time: I guess Six Apart needs more time to learn about the Diggbacle .

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“Why is Spamming is Not a Good Black-Hat SEO Technique?“

LOL. You shouldn’t even ask that question =P. For one thing, it’s BLACK HAT! For other, well, let me first ‘introduce’ to you why people spam .

Perhaps very few things can illustrate ‘fierce’ competition as vividly as the “Web” and SEO. After all, how can one website compete with thousands of other websites ‘just like itself’–without any search engine optimization?

If the attention span of an average Internet user is as expansive as a search engine’s listing, then there’s nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, though, that is not the case. Very likely, a person conducting a search on the Internet will probably just browse through the top 3 to 5 SERPs (search engine results pages) and stop there. Website that get buried in the 10th page and onwards will probably not get too much attention if certain measures are not undertaken.

Those measures, of course, are search engine optimization (SEO). Experts in this field perform certain procedures which may be seen a “website boot camp” to get your website into fighting form that will compete in the top rankings of a search engine.

However, as it is with almost everything else, some shortcuts exist that are able to “cheat” search engines into placing a particular website at a high ranking, despite the fact that it offers no real information. These sets of shortcuts are called “spamming”.

SEO spam (spamming the search engine index or spamdexing) is a set of ‘black-hat’ SEO techniques that manipulate a website for the purpose of creating an unrealistic boost in its rankings on SERPs. Here are just some examples of black-hat SEO techniques used to spam the living heck out of the search engines. (Warning: Do not do this on your web-estate or any where!) » Continue reading: Spamming is Not a Good Black-Hat SEO Technique

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Here’s a video (from Oprah) that clearly illustrates why Google is the best place to work and why it has 13,000 employment applications PER day =P.

You get free lunch, free pool, free games, free everything at Google – sounds like a vacation to me rather than work . And, yes, probably the ‘best’ thing about it is: it’s FREE! (Employees only though =)

*Things to take note: treat your employees right and they will return the favor (and make you billions richer ).

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Original Problem:
WOW! After I had gone through the trouble of create a SQL table for the Related Post Plugin and had it working. Somehow, my comments system is all mess-up. Wait, I had also tried WP-Cache, which doesn’t work too well. So, I think one of these two mess up my blog’s commenting system =(.

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: » Continue reading: Tips on Trouble-Shooting WordPress, Plugins & WordPress New Version

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“Here’s 7 Reasons Why You Should Switch to Firefox – Internet ExplorerS!“

And no, I did ‘NOT’ mean the title to rhyme with ‘Firefox’ =P. But come on, I’m still wondering why so many Internet Explorer (I.E.) users don’t switch to Firefox ? (Please let me know if you have such reasons).

For one thing, if you’re browsing with the virus-prone Internet Explorer, you will ‘probably’ get tons of discombobulated pictures of gazillions of websites due to ‘browser incompatibility’ (mine included .

O.K. I may sound biased, since my sites aren’t looking too pretty in I.E.–but it’s true.

So, below I’ll give you–my fellow visitors who are still using the so-named I.E.–a list of 7 reasons why you should change to Firefox ASAP: » Continue reading: Internet ExplorerS: Why Did You Not Change to Firefox Browser?

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In my previous post on “WordPress SEO Tutorial: The Best SEO Permalink Structure,” I realize that I had left out a major point to be taken: if you’re changing your old permalink structure to a new one, your site will LOSE the links love from other sites that have linked to you. Your site will NOT get credits for all the inbound links linking to your OLD permalink blog (instead of the new one).

BUT–luckily, there’s a WordPress plugin to fix this problem. And without further ado, here it is: » Continue reading: 3 WordPress Plugins to Safely Change Your Permalink Structure

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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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Below is a list and descriptions of many WordPress meta-tag plugins that insert keyword, description, and title tags between the < head> and < /head> tags in your WordPress blog:

*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 (*). » Continue reading: Top WordPress Meta-Tag Plugins List+Descriptions

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