Presented by David Minton and Stephen Pashby at Drupalcamp Atlanta (10/27/2012) This session covered the basics of SEO, including search philosophy & fundamentals, recent changes to the Google algorithm (Google Penguin and Google Panda), and how to effectively use common modules to improve search results for Drupal 6 and Drupal 7 websites..

1. Search Engine
Optimization
with Drupal 6 and Drupal 7
Saturday, October 27th
David Minton @DH_David
Stephen Pashby @DH_Stephen
@DesignHammer
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2. Overview
• Search Philosophy & Fundamentals
• Google Updates
• Off-page SEO
• On-site SEO
• On-page SEO
2

3. Search Fundamentals
and Philosophy
3

4. Search Fundamentals
Why worry about Search Engine Optimization?
4

5. Search Engine Optimization
“If you build it, they will come.”
TheVoice [from the cornfield]
Field of Dreams
5

6. Search EngineWatch (02/2012)
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7. Search Engine Optimization
“In my experience, the traffic difference from
position #1 to position #11 is…something
closer to 1/100th of the visits.”
Rand Fishkin
CEO & Co-Founder of SEOmoz
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8. Is SEO Science or Magic
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic.”
Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law of Prediction
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9. Is SEO Science or Magic
“The technology behind Google’s search
algorithm is a closely held secret; no amount
of SEO work can guarantee top placement.
The only company that can guarantee you a
top spot in Google is Google.”
David Minton
DesignHammer
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10. Is SEO Science or Magic
“Our most recent algorithm does contain
signals that can be gamed. If that one were
100 percent transparent, the bad guys would
know how to optimize their way back into
the rankings.”
Matt Cutts
Google
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11. Is SEO Science or Magic
“Google works in mysterious ways.”
Stephen Pashby
DesignHammer
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12. Types of SEO
• Pay-per-click (PPC)
• Organic Search
• Off-page optimization
• On-site optimization
• On-page optimization
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13. Pay-Per-Click
• Largest: Google AdWords,Yahoo! Search
Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter
• PPC results not based on website content
• Outside scope of presentation
13

14. Off-page examples
• Incoming links from other websites
• Links from Tweets & other Social Media
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15. On-site examples
• Keywords in domain name
• Keywords in file path
• XML site map
• Server availability and load times
15

16. On-page examples
• Keywords in page title
• Keywords in headlines
• Keywords in image and link attributes
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17. Anatomy of SERP
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Pay-per-click (PPC)
Organic Search Listing

18. Anatomy of SERP
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Description
Page Title
URL

19. SEO Philosophy
SEO is more than just #1 rankings.
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20. Usability
“Usability means making sure something works
well, and that a person of average ability or
experience can use it for it’s intended purpose
without getting hopelessly frustrated.”
Steve Krug,Author
Don't Make MeThink:
A Common Sense Approach toWeb Usability
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21. 21
Optimized for
users’ search? No
Fail
No
Fail
No
Fail
Top search
position
On target copy on
landing page?
Yes
Profit
Yes
Enticing title and
description?
Yes
User Behavior

22. Google Updates
22

23. Google Updates
• Google regularly updates their algorithms
to:
• Deliver the best search results
• Adapt to SEO techniques that (Google
feels) distort the search results
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24. Google Panda?
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25. What is Panda?
• Released February 2011
• Affected about 12% of all search results
• Intended to penalize low quality websites
• Updated about once per month
• Named for key engineer on team
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26. How to get bitten
• Duplicate content on website*
• Low-quality content on website
• Low content to ad ratio
• Content on your website on other sites
✴Solution discussed later
26

27. Google Penguin?
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28. What is Penguin?
• Released April 2012
• Affected about 3% of English search results
• Intended to decrease search engine ranking
of websites that violate Google’s TOS
• Updated May 2012 and October 2012
• No explanation provided for code-name
28

29. How to get bitten
• Incoming links from low-quality websites:
• Participate in Link Exchange Schemes
• Purchase paid links
• Listing in low-quality, un-curated
directories
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30. Off-page Optimization
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31. Back links
With great power comes great responsibility!
31

32. Know your Links
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33. Linking in Action
33

34. More than the Beatles
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35. …and major sports
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786,000,000 Football
415,000,000 Basketball
216,000,000 Baseball
131,000,000 Hockey
68,500,000 The Beatles
1,616,500,000

36. On top: Adobe Reader
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37. On top: Adobe Reader
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38. Why is this top result?
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39. Incoming links
Over 10 million incoming links, like this:
“You will need Acrobat Reader to read or
print this document.To download Acrobat
Reader click here.”
39

40. Real life searches
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41. Penguin watch: Off-page
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• Look for high-quality, relevant links with a
diverse selection of keywords
• Do not use link exchanges, paid links, low
quality sites, or request links from “bad
neighborhoods”
• Offer content to other quality sites in
exchange for links (guest blog posts,
articles, etc.)

42. Linking post Penguin
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43. Linking post Penguin
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44. How to taunt penguin
• Actively: request links from low quality sites
• Passively: links submitted to low quality
sites by competitors*
✴Monitor your back links!
44

45. On-Site Optimization
45

46. robots.txt
The gatekeeper of your content.
46

47. robots.txt
• Instruct crawlers on what not to crawl
•Most important thing to get right!
47

48. robots.txt (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
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49. robots.txt (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
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50. robots.txt (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
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51. robots.txt (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
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User-agent: *
Disallow: /

52. XML Sitemaps
Make it easy for the web crawlers to do their thing.
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53. XML Sitemaps
• Identify URLs to be crawled along with:
• Last updated
• Frequency of updates
• Relative importance
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54. xml sitemap (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
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55. xml sitemap (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
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56. Clean URLs,
Path, & Pathauto
“You cannot travel the path until you have become
the path itself” — Buddha
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57. Drupal Path Options
• Core with Clean URLs disabled
http://example.com/?q=node/2/
• Core with Clean URLs enabled
http://example.com/node/2
• Path module (automated by Pathauto)
http://example.com/drupal-seo
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58. Clean URLs (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
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59. Path & Pathauto (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
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60. Redirects, & Canonical
One path to rule them all.
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61. Redirects
• Redirect from one path to another (alias)
• Redirect an external URL (301 redirect)
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62. Path Redirect (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
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63. Path Redirect (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
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64. Canonical
• For websites with nodes of duplicate or
very similar content, or multiple aliases
• Prevents dilution of incoming links
• Reduces chance of penalty by search
engines for duplicate content
64

65. Meta tags (Drupal 7.x)
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Scroll down

66. Load Times & Caching
Google factors page load speed.
66

67. Page Load
• Optimize images, CSS, and javascript
• Test site for speedbumps
• Google PageSpeed
• YSlow!
• Firebug/Web Inspector
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68. Google PageSpeed (Chrome)
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69. Caching
• Google crawls as anonymous user
• Cache pages for anonymous users
• Consider Caching Server (Memcached)
• Consider Reverse Proxy (Varnish)
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70. Performance (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
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71. More on performance
• If you missed today’s session on
“Performance for Site Builders” by Erik
Webb of Aquia, look out for the video!
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72. Panda watch: On-site
• Use canonical tag for any duplicate content
• Don’t make stub pages
• Monitor ad to content ratio
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73. On-Page Optimization
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74. Page Title
Your most important tag for SEO.
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75. Page Title
• Top item in SERP listing
• Default in Drupal is :node title: | :site:
• Modules allow separate optimization
between the page title and the node title
• Individually created for each page
• Procedurally created via tokens
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76. Page Title (Drupal 6.x)
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77. Meta tags (Drupal 7.x)
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78. Meta Description
Entice searchers with carefully crafted content.
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79. Meta Description
• If relevant, may be displayed as the SERP
listing description
• Not counted for placement
• Allows content creators to craft a targeted
description of the page
• Individually created for each page
• Procedurally created via tokens
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80. Nodewords (Drupal 6.x)
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81. Meta tags (Drupal 7.x)
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82. Structure vs.
Presentation
Appearances may be deceiving
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83. Structure tags
HTML tags used to identify the significance of
content, such as:
• <title> — document title
• <h1> — level one headline
• <p> — paragraph
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84. Presentation
The style applied to content that affects the
way it looks. An example of a CSS style:
h1 {
! font: bold 24px arial;
! margin: 10px 0 10px 0;
}
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85. Good Structure
85

86. Underlying Structure
86

87. Poor Structure
87

88. Underlying Structure
88

89. Panda watch: On-page
• Content should be main focus of page
• Avoid machine generated content
• Avoid over optimization of content
• Create content for USERS, not ROBOTS
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90. Penguin watch: On-page
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• Black-hat techniques such as
• Keyword stuffing
• Cloaking

91. It Doesn’t End Here
The battle for SEO dominance never ends.
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92. Other Hurdles
• SEO is a contest, there can only be one #1
• You must beat others to move up SERP
• Without keyword research all efforts are a
shot in the dark
• Content creators must buy in to succeed
• Off-site factors can trump any on-site work
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93. Conclusion
• Drupal best practices will provide a solid
framework for SEO efforts
• SEO is fun!
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94. Special thanks
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95. 95

96. David Minton
Stephen Pashby
Follow us!
@DesignHammer
facebook.com/DesignHammer
www.designhammer.com
drupal.org/node/1128082
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