Drupalcamp Ghent 2009

SEO & Drupal by Bart Haedens

Bart Haedens

www.desk02.be

bart.haedens@desk02.be

@digitalism

What is SEO?

Key elements SEO

Controllable

Non Controllable

Statistics/reports

SEO: do’s

SEO: dont’s

SEO & Drupal

SEO

‘Search Engine Optimization’

“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.”

SEO + SEA = SEM

SEO vs SEASEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

Organic (free)

Requires time (patience) & knowledge

(Lasting effect)

Long term strategy

SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING

Artificial (paying)

Needs money

Budget dictates length effect

Short term strategy

Commonly used terms

Pagerank

Backlinks

Linkbuilding

Link love

Rankings

Key elements SEO

Controllable

Content

Technique

Links

NON Controllable

Age of the website

Competition

Links

CONTENT IS KING

Content is King

As many as possible…

Relevant

Interesting stuff

‘Keyword Density’

Per page optimization

Synonyms

Long Tail

CONTROLABLE

>> Content <<

Technique

Links

Content is King

Unique!

Duplicate Content Penalty (even onsite)

Global Redirect module

Copyright

CONTROLABLE

>> Content <<

Technique

Links

Content is King Scannable

Correct use HTML-tags (h1, li, strong, ....)

Keywords in: <title> (used as title in

SERPs)

Headings

Meta-data (description)

First paragraph

Web copywriting = scannable, above the fold

CONTROLABLE

>> Content <<

Technique

Links

Content is King

Easy browsable

Clear structure (IA)

Crosslinking in content

Sitemap!

Breadcrumbs

CONTROLABLE

>> Content <<

Technique

Links

Content is King

Frequent

New content = reason to revisit (visitors as well as crawlers)

Ping!

Multiping module

CONTROLABLE

>> Content <<

Technique

Links

Content is King

As many as possible

Unique!

Scannable

Easy browsable

Frequent

CONTROLABLE

>> Content <<

Technique

Links

TECHNIQUE

Technique URL

Relevant domain name (keywords) URL canonicalization:

http://www.test.com != http://test.com -> redirect (.htaccess)

Crawler friendly, human readable BAD: http://test.com/?pageid=16 GOOD: http://test.com/contact/ Path and Pathauto modules

301 – permanent redirect Moved pages/domain Path Redirect module

404 – page not found Clear message within siteframe Search 404 module (possible matches)

CONTROLABLE

Content

>>Technique<<

Links

Technique HTML level

<title>-tag (per page) short, descriptive, keywords Page title module

Meta tags (per page) (Keywords), description!, noodp Nodewords module

Navigation No Javascript!

Slicing (psd-to-html) frameless! tables are for tabular data

CONTROLABLE

Content

>>Technique<<

Links

Technique HTML level

Images Alt/title-tags

No text on images

Sitemap Auto generate

Plain text & Sitemap.xml

Site map & XML Site map modules

Flash If necessary

CONTROLABLE

Content

>>Technique<<

Links

Technique

IP/location Clean IP

Location IP Regional/National

IP forwarding

Inbound links/link love Other IP

Preferably different range (class)

CONTROLABLE

Content

>>Technique<<

Links

Technique

Robots.txt Deny access to crawlers

avoid duplicate content...

Point crawlers to the sitemap.xml

RobotsTxt module (multisite)

CONTROLABLE

Content

>>Technique<<

Links

Techniue

URL

HTML level

IP/location

Robots.txt CONTROLABLE

Content

>>Technique<<

Links

LINKS

Links

Outbound links Tag rel=“nofollow”

(for comments)

Discussion (PR leaking) CONTROLABLE

Content

Technique

>>Links<<

Links

Inbound links/linkbuilding 2 main targets

Important and relevant SE

Backlinks, backlinks, backlinks CONTROLABLE

Content

Technique

>>Links<<

Links

Backlinks: how? Be interesting

Ask (Digg this, ….)

Link exchange

Blogs (comments)/forums

Microsites (other ip)

Watch out for link farms or sort like easy solutions

CONTROLABLE

Content

Technique

>>Links<<

Links

Backlinks: watch out for Relevant/related

PageRank!!!!

Anchortekst (keywords)

Nofollow, redirects

Location backlink (geographically, on site)

CONTROLABLE

Content

Technique

>>Links<<

Links

Outbound links

Inbound links/linkbuilding Targets

Important, relevant SE

Backlinks, backlinks backlinks

CONTROLABLE

Content

Technique

>>Links<<

Key elements SEO

Controllable

Content

Technique

Links

NON Controllable

Age of the website

Competition

Links

Non Controllable

Age domain, website

Competition sector, keywords

Links inbound links (good/bad)

STATISTICS/REPORTS

Statistics/reports

Google Analytics

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Zeitgeist (trendspotting)

Weekly/monthly follow-up Not to fast

SEO: do’s standard based xhtml/css

clean urls

page level optimization

focus on keywords/synonyms

(many) content/longtail (keep it scannable)

update ccontent regularly

follow-up analytics/reports

check your competition

SEO: dont’s

tables

iframes

sitewide title/metadata

irrelevant linkbuilding

splash pages

text in images

flash

fink farms

hiding keywords

cloaking

keyword stuffing

autogenerate content

all blackhat technieken

SEO & Drupal

Global Redirect module http://drupal.org/project/

globalredirect

Multiping module http://drupal.org/

project/multiping

Path and Pathauto modules http://drupal.org/project/

pathauto

Path Redirect module http://drupal.org/

project/path_redirect

Search 404 module http://drupal.org/

project/search404

Page title module http://drupal.org/

project/page_title

SEO & Drupal

Meta tags module http://drupal.org/project/

nodewords

Site map & XML Site map modules http://drupal.org/project/

site_map

http://drupal.org/project/xmlsitemap

RobotsTxt module http://drupal.org/

project/robotstxt

SEO checklist module http://drupal.org/

project/seo_checklist

Bart Haedens

www.desk02.be

bart.haedens@desk02.be

TEL +32.496.55.12.18

@digitalism