SEO for Drupal

SEO for Drupal
Neil Cameron
29 October 2009

The optimisation of your site for search engines, with the goal of achieving a high page rank in search results
What is SEO?
2/27
http://ndev.co.uk
Neil Cameron

SEO ≠ magic
SEO ≠ expensive
SEO ≠ difficult
SEO = contested
What isn’t SEO?

The Single, Most Important Thing.
URLs
Meta Data
Duplicate Content
Crawlability
Further Info
Questions
SEO for Drupal

Step 1/2:
Create original, engaging and useful content.
The Single, Most Important Thing

Step 2/2:
Get it out there. Get it linked.

Unfortunately, Drupal can’t help you.

The Single, Most Important Thing.
URLs
Meta Data
Duplicate Content
Crawlability
Further Info
Questions
SEO for Drupal

Bad:
Good :
URLs should be clean and descriptive.
URLs

Modules:
Path auto
Allows for automatic generation of URLs
Following a set pattern
URLs
e.g. [content-type]/[author name]/[content title]

The Single Most Important Thing.
URLs
Meta Data
Duplicate Content
Crawlability
Further Info
Questions
SEO for Drupal

What is Meta Data?
Meta Data

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 Beckham
October Meetup -> London, October DrupalMeetup (seminar)
Meta Data

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

Meta Data
Modules
Nodewords
Automatically or manually configure title, description and keyword meta information

URLs
Meta Data
Duplicate Content
Crawlability
Further Info
Questions
SEO for Drupal

Duplicate content can cause Sandboxing*
But where is the duplicate content?
Duplicate Content
* See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox_Effect

Duplicate Content

Modules:
Global Redirect
Automatic redirection for “index.php?q=”, trailing “/” and “node/NID”.
Path Redirect
Manual redirection, e.g. from legacy sites
Duplicate Content

URLs
Meta Data
Duplicate Content
Crawlability
Further Info
Questions
SEO for Drupal

Make it easy for robots to crawl the site
Part i (sitemap):
Create a sitemap
Submit it to Google and Bing
Module: XML sitemap (warning: buggy)
Crawlability

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

URLs
Meta Data
Duplicate Content
Crawlability
Further Info
Questions
SEO for Drupal

SEO == Scam: (http://powazek.com/posts/2090 )
Drupal + SEO:
http://pagerankandalexa.com/content/seo-drupal-page-optimization
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

URLs
Meta Data
Duplicate Content
Crawlability
Further Info
Questions
SEO for Drupal

?
Questions?

http://theigc	134
http://theigc.cwoss.eu	65
http://cwlive7	25
http://cwlive7	25
http://cameronandwilding.com	24
http://www.theigc.org	13
http://drupal.altate.ch	9
http://www.slideshare.net	3
http://cw7.cwoss.eu	1

SEO for Drupal

by Cameron & Wilding on Oct 29, 2009

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SEO for Drupal — Presentation Transcript