on-page seo for drupal
DESCRIPTION
The presentation is showing what type of SEO techniques you can apply to optimize your Drupal site and all this only with contributed modules.TRANSCRIPT
by Svilen Sabevver.1
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results as opposed to other forms of search engine marketing ("SEM") which may deal with paid inclusion
Off-page factors Social marketing Blogging Forum Postings Search Engine
Submission Directory Submission Social Bookmarking Link Exchange Link Baiting Cross-Linking Photo Sharing Video Promotions
Business Reviews Local Listings & Yellow
Pages Article Submission Press Release Promotion Classifieds Submission Social Shopping Network Answers Document Sharing Widget / Gadget
Development PPC Ad Campaign
On-page factors Unique Content !!! Pretty URLs Internal Linking Meta Data Crawl ability Sharing options Tracking tools Analyses and Reports
Drupal is robust publishing system with great possibilities to structure different content types
Drupal has a lot of contributed modules that will help your site catch the eye of search engines
Next
List of actions that benefits both the human and robot visitors to your site and which Drupal modules you can use to help you achieve that goal.
Create unique content and update it frequently
Content published and unpublished on specified dates Content managed in an arbitrarily ordered list Content workflow states: Draft, Review, and Published
Humans – loyalty, returning visitorsRobots – increase frequency of indexing
http://drupal.org/project/schedulerhttp://drupal.org/project/nodequeuehttp://drupal.org/project/workflow
Create valid HTML
Use appropriate tags - <head> <a> <h1><h2>..<h6> <strong>
No javascript in the primary menu Tables are for tabular data Add “skip to content link” to show robots where the main
content is Validate before launch
Humans – Improve the user experience. Browser needs to translate HTML correctly.
Robots – Easier to identify and extract content if they don’t get confused by invalid tags.
http://validator.w3.org/
What You See is What You Get
Don’t trust users content Prevent XSS exploits Use alternate and title text for images. Spam wars Moderate your Content
http://drupal.org/project/wysiwyg_filterhttp://drupal.org/project/HTMLPurifier http://drupal.org/project/imagefieldhttp://drupal.org/project/mollomhttp://drupal.org/project/captcha http://drupal.org/project/moderation
Custom Page Title
Define accurate Title Tags on every page. Token Integration Token Patterns per-content type Pagination Suffix
Humans – Ease of bookmarking and selecting relevant sites from SERP
Robots – Title is most important On-Page factor
http://drupal.org/project/page_titlehttp://drupal.org/project/token
Meta Data tags on every page.
Analyze content and define keywords Meta Description
Humans – Often used as description below listing in Search Engine results page. Tells people why they should visit your site.
Robots – Assists with topical relevance.
http://drupal.org/project/nodewordshttp://drupal.org/project/token
Create Intelligent URLs
Define Site Structure Identify hierarchy Consistency, ease of navigation
Humans – Easier for Sharing, Bookmarking, Remembering URLRobots – Keywords extracted from path may have keywords
http://drupal.org/project/pathautohttp://drupal.org/project/token http://drupal.org/project/menutrailshttp://drupal.org/project/custom_breadcrumbs
Internal Linking
Manage related or similar pages Wiki style links Automatic links
Humans – Ease of navigationRobots – Spiders indexing pages, increase PageRank
http://drupal.org/project/relatedcontenthttp://drupal.org/project/nodepicker http://drupal.org/project/glossifyhttp://drupal.org/project/freelinking
No-follow links Blacklist and Whitelist
Robots.txt Let spiders know what to index
Humans – Consistency, ease of navigation.Robots – Identify hierarchy
http://drupal.org/project/nofollowlist http://drupal.org/project/robotstxt
Prevent duplicate content
http://mysite.com/node/347http://mysite.com/node/347/http://www.mysite.com/node/347http://www.mysite.com/node/347/http://www.mysite.com/index.php?q=node/347http://www.mysite.com/index.php?q=node/347/http://mysite.com/index.php?q=node/347http://mysite.com/index.php?q=node/347/http://mysite.com/path/to/contenthttp://mysite.com/path/to/content/http://www.mysite.com/path/to/contenthttp://www.mysite.com/path/to/content/http://www.mysite.com/index.php?q=path/to/contenthttp://www.mysite.com/index.php?q=path/to/content/http://mysite.com/index.php?q=path/to/contenthttp://mysite.com/index.php?q=path/to/content/
Why? Different URLs representing the same content. This is
dangerous territory for duplicate pages which can get you sandboxed * by the search engines!
How? Checks the current URL for an alias and does a 301 redirect
to it if it is not being used. Checks the current URL for a trailing slash, removes it if
present and repeats check 1 with the new request.
http://drupal.org/project/globalredirect http://drupal.org/project/path_redirect * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox_Effect
WWW or No WWW, that is the SEO Question
http://www.mysite.com != http://mysite.com
Don't allow broken links
Selectively scan node types and comments Selectively scan blocks
Humans – Improve the user experience.Robots – Robots don’t find dead ends or spend time chasing
files that don’t exist.
http://drupal.org/project/linkchecker
Provide Site Maps (HTML/XML)
HTML: A directory. Ease of navigation. XML: Ease for indexing. Can give spiders a "hint" which
pages have most value and how often updated.
Be careful at the beginning Track when Google spiders index new content
http://drupal.org/project/sitemenu http://drupal.org/project/xmlsitemap
Share on Social media and Social bookmarking sites
Let visitors share your content Manage accounts on social networks Trackback links
http://drupal.org/project/sharehttp://drupal.org/project/sharethis http://drupal.org/project/trackbackhttp://drupal.org/project/pingbackhttp://drupal.org/project/twitterhttp://drupal.org/project/fblike
Provide a site Search
Never feel lost in the data
Humans – Give people an alternate way to get to content. Robots – N/A
http://drupal.org/project/sphinxhttp://drupal.org/project/apachesolr http://drupal.org/project/faceted_searchhttp://drupal.org/project/search404 http://drupal.org/project/search_by_page
Syndicate via RSS
Let people follow your feeds Validate XML files
Humans – keeps people coming backRobots – Ping, Fresh content
http://drupal.org/project/Views
Track , Optimize, Research, Analyze and Measure
Track and Optimize content Research and Analyze keywords Be mindful of Keyword Density Create Reports to measure results
http://drupal.org/project/google_analytics http://drupal.org/project/contentoptimizerhttp://drupal.org/project/contentanalysishttp://drupal.org/project/scribeseohttp://drupal.org/project/readabilityhttp://drupal.org/project/w3canalyzerhttp://drupal.org/project/kwresearchhttp://drupal.org/project/kwanalysis
Even More
SEO Compliance Checker SEO Checklist SEO Friend
http://drupal.org/project/seo_checkerhttp://drupal.org/project/seo_checklisthttp://drupal.org/project/seo_friend
Read articles on SEOMOZ Follow best practices
http://www.seomoz.org
Google Analytics Google Webmaster Tools Google Zeitgeist (trendspotting) Google AdWords keyword tool Google Search insights Google Trends for Websites Google Jazz Google Caffeine Google Mayday Update
Weekly/monthly follow-up Not to fast
Thank You
Any questions ?