Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization Table Of Contents

Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization

Preface
Chapter 1: The Tools You'll Need
Chapter 2: Keyword Research
Chapter 3: On-Page Optimization
Chapter 4: More On-Page Optimization
Chapter 5: Sitemaps
Chapter 6: robots.txt, .htaccess, and W3C Validation
Chapter 7: RSS Feeds, Site Speed, and SEO Testing
Chapter 8: Content is King
Chapter 9: Taking Control of Your Content
Chapter 10: Increasing the Conversion Rate of Your Drupal Web site
Appendix A: 10 SEO Mistakes to Avoid
Appendix B: A Drupal SEO Checklist
Appendix C: Drupal SEO Case Study for Acquia Product Launch
Index

Preface

Chapter 1: The Tools You'll Need
- Drupal 6
- Modules
  - Installing 99% of Drupal modules:
  - Installing the remaining 1% Drupal modules
  - Essential SEO modules
  - Optional SEO modules
  - Non-SEO modules
- Drupal SEO Checklist module
- Google Account
  - Setting up a Google Account
- Analytics
  - Google Analytics
    - Creating a Google Analytics account and installing it on your Drupal site
  - Yahoo! Analytics
- Google Webmaster Tools
  - Verify your site with Google
  - Google Webmaster Tools settings
    - Preferred domain
    - Crawl rate
- Understanding search engine crawlers
- Paid tools
  - CrazyEgg
  - Mint
- Other Great Tools
  - Installing two browsers
  - Google Toolbar
    - PageRank
  - SEO for Firefox plugin
  - Yahoo! site explorer
- Summary

Chapter 2: Keyword Research
- What a keyword is
  - Keywords aggregate searchers into organized groups
  - A keyword defines a market
- Why keyword research is important
- What your keyword goal is
  - Goal 1: Brand awareness
    - Company brand awareness
    - Product brand awareness
    - Credibility
  - Goal 2: Conversions
    - Transactional
    - Lead Generation
    - Page impression (or ad impression)
- Keyword research tools
  - Your own web site
    - How to set up the Top Searches module
  - Your competition
    - How to scrape your competitors' web site for keywords
  - Google Adwords Keyword Tool
  - Google Zeitgeist
  - Google Trends
  - SEOmoz
  - Keyword Discovery
  - WordTracker
- How to pick the best keywords
  - The scenario
  - How to gather a keywords list
  - Picking the right terms
  - Getting rid of the wrong terms
- Summary

Chapter 3: On-Page Optimization
- Page titles
  - The page title module
    - The token module
    - Installing and configuring the page title module
    - Rewriting page titles for individual nodes
  - Writing page titles that Google and your visitors will love
  - Setting up your web site's name
  - Link titles
    - How to edit the title element of your navigation links
- Make Drupal URLs clean and search engine optimized
  - A brief history of static and dynamic URLs
  - How Drupal handles dynamic URLs
  - Turning on clean URLs in Drupal
  - Optimizing URLs with the Path module
    - How to turn on the Path module
    - How to change a content path
    - Writing optimized URLs
  - Automating paths with Pathauto and Path Redirect
    - Installing Pathauto and Path Redirect
    - Configuring Pathauto
- Redirects
  - 301 Redirects—the right way to move content around
    - Installing and configuring Path Redirect
    - How to set up a 301 redirect
  - Global Redirect module—fixing Drupal's duplicate content problems
    - How to install and configure the Global Redirect module
- Summary

Chapter 4: More On-Page Optimization
- Headings
  - HTML Header tags
  - How Drupal handles headings
- Drupal menus and navigation
  - How to change your navigation
    - Other links in your site
- Optimize images, video, and other media
  - File name
  - The alt and title attributes
    - Uses of alt and title
  - Text near the media file
- Meta tags
  - Installing the Meta tags module
  - Configuring the Meta tags module
  - Specifying meta tags for your content
    - Taxonomy meta tags
    - Node meta tags
    - Views meta tags
- Summary

Chapter 5: Sitemaps
- XML sitemaps
  - Setting up the XML Sitemap module
  - Specifying the XML sitemap priority for nodes
  - Submitting your XML sitemap to Google
- Google News XML Sitemap
  - Setting up the Google News sitemap generator module
  - Submitting your Google News sitemap to Google News
- URL list
  - Setting up a URL list sitemap
- Visitor-facing sitemaps
  - Setting up a visitor-facing sitemap
- Summary

Chapter 6: robots.txt, .htaccess, and W3C Validation
- Optimizing the robots.txt file
  - robots.txt directives
  - Pattern matching
  - Editing your robots.txt file
  - Problems with the default Drupal robots.txt file
    - Fixing the Drupal robots.txt file
  - Additional changes to the robots.txt file
  - Adding your XML Sitemap to the robots.txt file
  - Using Google's Webmaster Tools to evaluate your robots.txt file
- Mastering the .htaccess file
- W3C markup validation
  - Scanning your site with the W3C HTML Validator
- Summary

Chapter 7: RSS Feeds, Site Speed, and SEO Testing
- Setting up RSS feeds
  - Setting up the Syndication module
  - Adding RSS links to your blog
- Feel the need—the need for speed
  - Turning on Drupal's built-in caching
  - More speed options
- Bringing it all together with a free page grading service from SEOmoz
- Summary

Chapter 8: Content is King
- What good content is
- Write right
  - Short, catchy headlines
    - Grab their attention
    - Get the keywords right
    - Be useful, create urgency, be unique
  - Good body content
    - The base site pages
    - Supplemental pages
- Search engine optimizing content
  - Keywords
    - Don't stuff keywords
    - Keyword density
  - Freshness
  - Optimizing category pages
  - Bold, strong, and emphasized text
- What to write about
  - Write for your audience, not the search engines
  - Be timely
    - Google News Alerts
    - Newsreaders are your friends
  - Be yourself
    - Write like you, y' know, talk
    - Write what you know
  - Build relationships
    - Talk about what other people are doing
    - Interact early and often
    - Link to others
  - Don't stop
    - Find inspiration
    - Do a week at a time
- Using Drupal to organize your content
  - Structure your site hierarchically
    - It keeps things organized
    - Google likes it better
    - It's easier to build keywords into your categories
  - Using taxonomy to organize around the main topics
  - Creating structured URL paths
- Removing content
- Summary

Chapter 9: Taking Control of Your Content
- Using OpenCalais to tag and organize your content
  - Installing OpenCalais on your Drupal site
  - Using OpenCalais' bulk processing to tag existing content
  - Using OpenCalais to offer 'More Like This' blocks
- Keeping content compliant with the HTML Purifier module
- Preventing spam
  - Installing Mollom
  - Monitoring comments
    - Using the Notify module
    - Giving Mollom feedback
- Summary

Chapter 10: Increasing the Conversion Rate of Your Drupal Web site
- What do you want them to do
- Path to conversion
- Strong calls to action
  - Phone number
  - Add to cart
  - Contact Us
  - Get a free white paper, watch a demonstration, or download a trial copy
- Analytics to watch
  - Critical metrics common to all sites
  - Critical e-commerce metrics
  - Critical lead generation metrics
  - Critical ad-driven metrics
  - Secondary metrics worth tracking
  - Using analytics data to make SEO decisions
- Finding conversion problems with usability testing
  - The design process with usability testing
  - The process for each user
    - On-site testing
    - Remote testing
  - Reporting the results
- A/B testing with Google Website Optimizer
  - Setting up a Google Website Optimizer account
  - Integrating Google Website Optimizer with Drupal
- Summary

Appendix A: 10 SEO Mistakes to Avoid
- 1. Not tracking or not tracking the right statistics
  - Occurs when
  - Fix by
- 2. Picking keywords that don't produce enough traffic
  - Occurs when
  - Fix by
- 3. Duplicating content
  - Occurs when
  - Fix by
- 4. Changing the node path without creating a redirect
  - Occurs when
  - Fix by
- 5. Spending time on meta tags that don't matter
  - Occurs when
  - Fix by
- 6. A slow Drupal site
  - Occurs when
  - Fix by
- 7. Flash, frames, graphics, and other things are obscuring your site from Google
  - Occurs when
  - Fix by
- 8. Optimizing for your company name
  - Occurs when
  - Fix by
- 9. Not putting contact information on the site
  - Occurs when
  - Fix by
- 10. Not enough links
  - Occurs when
  - Fix by

Appendix B: A Drupal SEO Checklist
- Setup
- Step 1: Keyword Research
- Step 2: On Page SEO
- Step 3: Technical SEO
- Step 4: Content
- Step 5: Conversions