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..
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
7
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
9
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
10
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
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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
20
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
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
23
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
25
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
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
29
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
41. Penguin watch: Off-page
41
• 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.)
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
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
69. Caching
• Google crawls as anonymous user
• Cache pages for anonymous users
• Consider Caching Server (Memcached)
• Consider Reverse Proxy (Varnish)
69
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
75
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
79
83. Structure tags
HTML tags used to identify the significance of
content, such as:
• <title> — document title
• <h1> — level one headline
• <p> — paragraph
83
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;
}
84
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
89
91. It Doesn’t End Here
The battle for SEO dominance never ends.
91
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
92
93. Conclusion
• Drupal best practices will provide a solid
framework for SEO efforts
• SEO is fun!
93