Drupal SEO

Kornél Lugosi

March 26, 2010

Search Engine Optimization

“Search engine optimization (SEO) is theprocess of improving the volume or quality oftraffic to a web site from search engines via"natural" or un-paid ("organic" or"algorithmic") search results as opposed tosearch engine marketing (SEM) which dealswith paid inclusion. Typically, the earlier (orhigher) a site appears in the search resultslist, the more visitors it will receive from thesearch engine. “

Wikipedia

Goal of SEO

Goal of SEO

$

Keywords

I Pereferably before the site buildingI Use 2-3+ word keywords as target

Content is king

Nothing’s going to save you if your content is crap

Drupal modules that may increase SEO

I TaxonomyI PathautoI Global redirectI SitemapI XML sitemapI Google website optimizerI Search 404I NodewordsI Google analyticsI Page titleI ...

Problems

and Solutions

Users can’t find shi...anything!

Users can’t find shi...anything!

Taxonomy

“...helps classify content on Drupalwebsites.”

Can’t tell the content from the url

-What was that article you sent me?-Ah, it’swww.mysitewithunicorns/index.php?q=node/12633

Can’t tell the content from the url

Pathauto

-So it’smysitewithunicorns/Unicorns-do-exists

Content is available multiple times

All the same content:I yoursite.com/node/1I yoursite.com/?q=node/1I www.yoursite.com/node/1I yoursite.com/index.php?q=node/1I yoursite.com/node/1/I yoursite.com/dont-duplicate-me

Content is available multiple timesI think even one is too much from you...

Content is available multiple times

Global redirectAlways redirects you to the clean-url content.

Global redirect

I yoursite.com/node/1I yoursite.com/?q=node/1I www.yoursite.com/node/1I yoursite.com/index.php?q=node/1I yoursite.com/node/1/

⇓

yoursite.com/dont-duplicate-me

Do you have a map?

Do you have a map?

Sitemap:I For humansI For machines

Sitemap for humans

Sitemap module„...provides a site map that gives visitors an

overview of your site.”

Sitemap for robots

XML sitemap module„...creates a sitemap that conforms to the

sitemaps.org specification. This helps searchengines to more intelligently crawl a website

and keep their results up to date.”

XML sitemap

I Generates an XML with the newest contentI Can ask search engines to crawl them:

I AskI BingI Yahoo!

(Requires a webmaster account to be set up)

People are bored with your content

Find the best content

Find the best content

Google WebsiteOptimizer

„...allows you to rotate different segments ofcontent on your key sales pages to work outwhich sections and combinations convertthe best.”

404: Not found

Help your users find what they want

Search 404„Instead of showing a standard "404 Pagenot found", this module performs a search onthe keywords in the URL”

Key, Word, Words, Keywords, Wordkeys

Use the meta tags

Met tag keywords manipulation:

I NodewordsI Integrated Metatags

„Giving more attention to the importantmetadata such as keywords and descriptionon some of your nodes allows you to getbetter search engine positioning...”

Measure

Measure

Google Analytics„Adds the Google Analytics web statisticstracking system to your website.”

So you mean... what?

Take care about your title

Page Title„...gives you granular control over the pagetitle. „

Check everything

SEO checklist„Worst module I’ve ever seen.”

Kornél

Markup is in the theme layer

Markup is in the theme layer

Use good themes with nice markup:I ZenI StarkI Zen nineSixty

Sign up to Webmaster tools

All search engine have one, but Google’s is the onlyone worth using.It will tell you exactly what are the problems.

Spam

Captcha!

Completely Automatic Public Turing Test to TellComputers and Humans Apart

Captcha modules

A CAPTCHA is a challenge-response test most oftenplaced within web forms to determine whether theuser is human.

I Captcha moduleI Mollom

The site is slow

The site is slow

Google does order sites by page loading speed (notjust pure response time, javascript load times,number of images, number of dns to resolve, etc...)

Speed up your site

I Tons of tutorialsI Last semesters presentationI http://pronovix.com/blog/

optimize-web-pages-bandwidthI http://pronovix.com/blog/

my-favorite-drupal-performance-hacks

I have tons of money, make somethingquick!

Pay

I joined all the webrings and linkexchange networks, but still nothing

Webrings, link exchange

Just don’t.

The future

RDFa in Drupal 7I Part of Resource Description FrameworkI XHTML markup

Questions?