Drupal Search Engine Optimization (A Second Look)
I've decided to post an update to my previous blog... Drupal Search Engine Optimization (a first attempt).
I've actually been doing quite well with Search Engine Optimization. Drupal seems to do a lot of the hard work for you... not all... but a lot.
As well as looking at various websites I've been reading a great magazine called The Net Effect. Its been very helpful and has provided a lot of practical tips as well as longer term strategy.
Some of the tips I have picked up and would like to pass along (in no particular order) are...
- Know your keywords - Know what you want to come up in the search engines for!
- Linking
- Useful Internal Links - Include your keywords as the anchor text for links in side your site.
- Get linked to and link to other sites.
- (Obvious) Have search-able content - Bodies of text should be text (not images).
- Friendly URL's - The URL for each page should contain useful information
- e.g. www.jackread.co.uk/blogs/jack/windows-deployment-services rather than...
- www.jackread.co.uk/node/17
- Make sure that your site does a permanent (301) redirect in either of the following two ways:
- No duplicate content!! - Use htaccess files and robots.txt to hide duplicate content
- e.g. dont have www.jackread.co.uk/node/21 and www.jackread.co.uk/content/recent-accomplishments pointing to the same content (we only want search engines to see the friendly URL).
- Good spelling/grammar
- Regularly update content and information
- Have a Site map - it wont necessarily help improve page rank but it will make sure all your content gets indexed.
- Dont be "spammy"... search engines are cleverer than you think... you will be penalized for "spammy" content.
- MOST IMPORTANT - Have good content that people will want to find!
It's actually not very hard to get into the search engines... the hard part is getting them to stick on your site and get them to see what you want them to see. It takes work and you need to stick at it. Email me or post a comment if you have questions or need help starting out.
And finally... proof that it all works... my very first number one spot on Google...
