seo for drupal
DESCRIPTION
A presentation on how you can easily alter your Drupal site to be SEO friendly.TRANSCRIPT
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Neil Cameron
SEO for Drupal
29 October 2009
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The optimisation of your site for search engines, with the goal of achieving a high page rank in search results
What is SEO?
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• SEO ≠ magic• SEO ≠ expensive• SEO ≠ difficult• SEO = contested
What isn’t SEO?
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1. The Single, Most Important Thing.2. URLs3. Meta Data4. Duplicate Content5. Crawlability6. Further Info7. Questions
SEO for Drupal
1. The Single, Most Important Thing.2. URLs3. Meta Data4. Duplicate Content5. Crawlability6. Further Info7. Questions
SEO for Drupal
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Step 1/2:Create original, engaging and useful content.
The Single, Most Important Thing
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Step 2/2:Get it out there. Get it linked.
The Single, Most Important Thing
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Unfortunately, Drupal can’t help you.
The Single, Most Important Thing
1. The Single, Most Important Thing.2. URLs3. Meta Data4. Duplicate Content5. Crawlability6. Further Info7. Questions
SEO for Drupal
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Bad:
Good :
• URLs should be clean and descriptive.
URLs
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Modules:• Path auto– Allows for automatic
generation of URLs– Following a set pattern
URLs
e.g. [content-type]/[author name]/[content title]
1. The Single Most Important Thing.2. URLs3. Meta Data4. Duplicate Content5. Crawlability6. Further Info7. Questions
SEO for Drupal
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What is Meta Data?
Meta Data
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Title:• Not a true meta tag but important none-the-less.• Consider using different title for content and Meta
Data• e.g.: David Beckham -> Top English Footballers: David BeckhamOctober Meetup -> London, October Drupal Meetup (seminar)
Meta Data
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Description:- Make sure the main pages (front, ‘landing
pages’ or ‘channel pages’) have an accurate description.
- Make sure the description is automated for other content pages.
Meta Data
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Meta Data
Modules• Nodewords– Automatically or
manually configure title, description and keyword meta information
1. The Single Most Important Thing.2. URLs3. Meta Data4. Duplicate Content5. Crawlability6. Further Info7. Questions
SEO for Drupal
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• Duplicate content can cause Sandboxing*• But where is the duplicate content?
Duplicate Content
* See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox_Effect
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Duplicate Content
http://example.com/node/347 http://example.com/path/to/content
http://example.com/node/347/ http://example.com/path/to/content/
http://www.example.com/node/347 http://www.example.com/path/to/content
http://www.example.com/node/347/ http://www.example.com/path/to/content/
http://www.example.com/index.php?q=node/347 http://www.example.com/index.php?q=path/to/content
http://www.example.com/index.php?q=node/347/ http://www.example.com/index.php?q=path/to/content/
http://example.com/index.php?q=node/347 http://example.com/index.php?q=path/to/content
http://example.com/index.php?q=node/347/ http://example.com/index.php?q=path/to/content/
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Modules: • Global Redirect– Automatic redirection for “index.php?q=”, trailing
“/” and “node/NID”. • Path Redirect– Manual redirection, e.g. from legacy sites
Duplicate Content
1. The Single Most Important Thing.2. URLs3. Meta Data4. Duplicate Content5. Crawlability6. Further Info7. Questions
SEO for Drupal
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Make it easy for robots to crawl the sitePart i (sitemap):• Create a sitemap• Submit it to Google and Bing• Module: XML sitemap (warning: buggy)
Crawlability
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Part ii (content)• Use clean HTML code in theme, validate as
much as possible (validator.w3.org)• Ensure user entered content is clean.• If using a WYSIWIG editor, consider ‘HTML
purifier’, ‘paste from word button’ or education.
Crawlability
1. The Single Most Important Thing.2. URLs3. Meta Data4. Duplicate Content5. Crawlability6. Further Info7. Questions
SEO for Drupal
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• SEO == Scam: (http://powazek.com/posts/2090 )
• Drupal + SEO: – http://pagerankandalexa.com/content/seo-drupal-page-optimiz
ation
– http://tips.webdesign10.com/basic-drupal-seo-on-site-optimization
– http://devbee.com/drupal_seo – http://groups.drupal.org/search-engine-optimization
• Drupal Modules:– SEO Checklist (http://drupal.org/project/seo_checklist)
– Pathauto (http://drupal.org/project/pathauto)
– Page Title (http://drupal.org/project/page_title)
– Nodewords (meta info) http://drupal.org/project/nodewords)
– Global redirect (http://drupal.org/project/globalredirect)
– Path redirect (http://drupal.org/project/path_redirect)
– XML Sitemap (http://drupal.org/project/xmlsitemap)
– HTML purifier (http://drupal.org/project/htmlpurifier)
• Sandboxing: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox_Effect) • Google Webmaster tools: (
http://google.com/webmasters/tools/)
• Google Analytics: (http://google.com/analytics/)
• HTML Validator: (http://validator.w3.org/)
• Photo credit: (http://www.flickr.com/photos/timcaynes/2734530841/)
• About Neil: (http://ndev.co.uk)
Further Info
1. The Single Most Important Thing.2. URLs3. Meta Data4. Duplicate Content5. Crawlability6. Further Info7. Questions
SEO for Drupal
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?Questions?