1. Optimizing Drupal
Search Engines
2011 Sandcamp Jonathan Dietz
JonathanMD@gmail.com

2. Session Goals
1 To familiarize you with current best practices for SEO
2 Show you what needs to be done in Drupal in order to
comply with best practices
3 By the end of this session you will be able to identify and
configure the modules to optimize your content for search
engines modal dialogue
0

3. Agenda
1 Why SEO? 5 Drupal Theme Checklist
2 Best Practices 6 Questions
3 Drupal 6 SEO
4 Drupal 7 SEO

4. 01 Why SEO?

5. 02 Best Practices

6. Best Practices
Content is King!
Rich content:
 Engages the reader
 Is well written, relevant text
 Video
 Images
Increases search engine rankings and traffic
Promotes the likelihood of quality links from other sites

7. Best Practices
Create a sitemap and submit to search engines
Content Order
 The order content is rendered in is used to determine its
importance, and thus its relevance to a particular keyword
Good Bad (left col above main content)

8. Best Practices
Descriptive content meta data
 In addition to content that is displayed, you should make
proper use of descriptive meta content that search
engines know about.
Title tag
 60 characters or less
 Google: 70 characters
 Yahoo: 64 characters

9. Best Practices
Meta Tags
Generally carry a very low weight (or not used at all) in
determining search rank
 http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/anse
ring-more-popular-picks-meta-tags.html
 http://mattcutts.com/blog/keywords-meta-tag-in-web-
search/
Highly useful in converting search results into click throughs to
your site.

10. Best Practices

11. Best Practices
Heading Tags <h1> - <h2>
Links <a>
Image tag <img>
use a descriptive file name
use the alt attribute

12. Best Practices
Search engine friendly (SEF) URLs

13. Best Practices
Improve Your Site Speed
 Reduce the number of HTTP requests
 Combine JavaScript into one file if possible)
 Combine CSS into one file (if possible)
 Make us of CSS sprites
 Compress (gzip) content
 Drupal/Server caching
 Content delivery network (CDN) such as Amazon s3
 Upgrade your server
 Upgrade your bandwidth

14. Best Practices
Remove Your Duplicate Content
 Locate Duplicate Content
 Site:mydomain.com inurl:productID
 Site:mydomain.com intitle:”my product name”
 Use Canonical URL links
 http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com?2009/02/specity-your-
canonical.html
 http://yoast.com/canonical-url-links/
 Use 301 Redirects
Improve your “Link Juice”
 Use rel=“nofollow” on specific anchor tags
<a href=“#” rel=“nofollor”>
 http://thekeywordacademy.com/link-juice-explained

15. 03 Drupal 6 SEO

16. SEO Modules
1 5
1. Pathauto 6. Menu_attributes
2. Nodewords 7. XMLsitemap
2
3. Page_title 8. Search404
3
4. GlobalRedirect 9. HTMLpurifier
5. Path_redirect 10. SimpleMeta
4
5

17. Pathauto
The Pathauto module automatically generates path
aliases for various kinds of content (nodes, categories,
users) without requiring the user to manually specify the
path alias.
URL: http:drupal.org/project/pathauto
Version: 6.x-1.5
Menu: Site Building => URLAliases => Automated alias settings
SEO Benefits:
Search Engine Friendly URLs

18. Nodewords (meta Tags)
This project allows you to add meta tags to Drupal pages
both manually and automatically based on various
settings.
URL: http:drupal.org/project/nodewords
Version: 6.x-1.11
Menu: Content Management => Meta tags
SEO Benefits:
Meta Tags
Canonical URLs

19. Page_Title
This module gives you granular control over the page
title. You can specify patterns for how the title should be
structured and, on content creation pages, specify the
page title separately to the content’s title.
URL: http:drupal.org/project/nodewords_bypath
Version: 6.x-1.0
Menu: Content Management => Meta tags => By path
SEO Benefits:
Meta tags (per path/URL)

20. Global Redirect
Ensures that your content is only visible at the one, best
URL possible (i.e. requests for node/2 are forwarded to
“alias-for-node-2”)
URL: http:drupal.org/project/globalredirect
Version: 6.x-1.x-dev
Menu: Site Configuration => Global Redirect
SEO Benefits:
Reduce Duplicate Content
301 Redirects (automatically generated)
Canonical Tags

21. Path Redirect
This module allows you to specify a redirect from one
path to another path or an external URL, using any HTTP
redirect status.
URL: http:drupal.org/project/path_redirect
Version: 6.x-1.0-rc2
Menu: Site Building => URL Redirects
SEO Benefits:
301 Redirects (manually added)

22. Menu Attributes
This simple module allows you to specify some additional
attributes for menu items such as id, name, cass, style,
and rel.
URL: http:drupal.org/project/menu_attributes
Version: 6.x-1.4
Menu: Site Configuration => Menu Attributes Settings
SEO Benefits:
Rel attribute on Link tags (rel=“nofollow” to improve “Link juice”)

23. HTML Purifier
HTML Purifier will not only remove all malicious code
(better know as XSS) with a thoroughly audited, secure
yet permissive whitelist, it will also make sure your
documents are standards complaint
URL: http:drupal.org/project/purifier
Version: 6.x-2.4
Menu: Site Configuration => Search 404 settings
SEO Benefits:
Reduces “DOM clutter”
May improve site load times (slimmer DOM)

24. Simple Meta
The Simple Meta module provides a flexible method to
set meta tags, such as page title, keywords and
description for current website page. (Nodewords
alternative)
URL: http:drupal.org/project/simplemeta
Version: 6.x-1.3
Menu: Site Building => URLAliases => Automated alias settings
SEO Benefits:
Meta Tags (Not as many options as nodewords)

25. SEO Helper Modules
Google_analytics
SEO_friend
ContentOptimizer
SEO Compliance Checker (seo_checker)
LinkChecker
SEO_checklist

26. Google_analytics
Adds the Google Analytics web statistics tracking system
to your website.
URL: http:drupal.org/project/googe_analytics
Version: 6.x-3.0
Menu: Site Building => URL Aliases => Automated alias settings
SEO Benefits:
Get more accurate results by only tracking certain users or restricting code
from displaying on admin pages us pasting code in page.tpl.php

27. SEO_friend
The Drupal SEO Friend module is meant to be used
alongside exsisting Drupal SEO modules to make them
more effective.
URL: http:drupal.org/project/seo_friend
Version: 6.x-1.0
Menu: Site Management => SEO Friend Reports => SEO Reports
SEO Benefits:
Content helps enforce good SEO policies
Reduces duplicate content
Content analysis (reports)

28. ContentOptimizer
The Content Optimizer enables a quick SEO analyzer
that provides instant analysis of any site content as a
quick and easy guide to assure SEO best practices are
consistently followed.
URL: http:drupal.org/project/contentoptimizer
Version: 6.x-2.2
Menu: Site Configuration => Content analysis (or any content edit page)
SEO Benefits:
Content analysis (reports)
Screencast http://www.leveltendesign.com/tools/contentanalysis/seo/drupal/screencast

29. SEO Compliance Checker
The SEO Compliance Checker checks node content for
search engine optimization upon its creation or
modification.
URL: http:drupal.org/project/seo_checker
Version: 6.x-2.2
Menu: Site Configuration => SEO Checker
SEO Benefits:
Content helps enforce good SEO policies
Content analysis (reports)

30. Linkchecker
Extracts links from your content when saved and
periodically tries to detect broken links by checking the
remote sites and evaluating HTTP response codes. It
shows all broken links in the reports/logs section and on
the content edit page if a link check has been failed.
URL: http:drupal.org/project/linkchecker
Version: 6.x-2.x-dev
Menu: Site Management => Link Checker Reports => Broken Links
SEO Benefits:
Content analysis (reports)
Reduces 404 Errors

31. SEO_checklist
This module provides a checklist of good Drupal SEO
(Search Engine Optimization) best practices.
URL: http:drupal.org/project/seo_checklist
Version: 6.x-3.0
Menu: Site Building => URL Aliases => Automated alias settings
SEO Benefits:
Helps you remember to do the initial SEO steps

32. Performance (indirect benefit)
Pressflow
Drupal performance/cache
Sprites module
Uninstall unused modules
Attend Brandon Lyon’s session!
 Performance & Scalability, Where to Begin
 Sunday, 11:15 am

33. 04 Drupal 7 SEO

34. SEO Modules
Redirect (path redirect)
Page_Title
Nodewords
GlobalRedirect
Menu_attributes
XMLsitemap

35. Define the UI
Many modules still don’t have Drupal 7 versions
Duplicate content on every URL, insert the canonical into every:
URL http://drupal.org/node/989032

36. 05 Drupal Themes

37. Theme SEO Checklist
Does not use tables for main site layout
Clean, valid HTML output
 Does not overuse <div> tags to wrap content
 Makes use of template overrides to control html output
Proper header tag use
 Site title on the front page
 Page title on the inside pages
Primary content higher up in the code
 Content section appears before sidebars in the code

38. Summary
Drupal 7 has to play catch-up to D6’s SEO
Make content a primary focus
Run reports to see what areas you can improve in
Must have modules
 Pathauto
 Nodewords
 Page_title
 GlobalRedirect
 Path_redirect
 Menu_attributes
 XMLsitemap
 Search404
 Goodgle_analytics

39. 06 Questions?