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You're reading from Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization

Product typeBook

Published inSep 2009

Reading LevelBeginner

PublisherPackt

ISBN-139781847198228

Edition1st Edition

Languages

PHP

Tools

Drupal

Concepts

SEO

Author (1)

Ben Finklea

Chapter 4. More On-Page Optimization

So, by now, you're making great progress on your site. You've done your page titles and renamed your site, your navigation has great titles, your URLs are clean and SEO-optimized, and those paths are keyword rich and built to stay that way. On top of that, you've redirected all your old content using 301s and installed the Global Redirect module to address duplicate content issues. Whew! You're doing great but there's a bit more to do. This chapter will continue with the on-page optimization that your site needs:

Headings
Drupal Menus and Navigation
Optimizing images, video, and other media
Meta Tags with the Meta Tags module

Ready? Let's do it!

Headings

HTML, and its follow-ons, allow for a special kind of text called Headings. Headings are different than page titles in that they are visible while page titles are not. Headings normally show up large and bold at the top of a web site. These are terrific indicators of what the page is about and should be integral...

Headings

HTML, and its follow-ons, allow for a special kind of text called Headings. Headings are different than page titles in that they are visible while page titles are not. Headings normally show up large and bold at the top of a web site. These are terrific indicators of what the page is about and should be integral to the site structure. Unfortunately, they're easy to abuse. Generally speaking, you should only have one H1 tag on each page of your web site. However, many site owners put H1 tags around anything that they want bolded, bigger, or search engine-optimized. This is a mistake and it's confusing to readers and to Google.

What if you were standing in a bookstore and opened a book called My Life in Kenya. You flip over to Chapter 1 and see the title, Chapter 1: I like Kenya, but later down the page you see big, bold font that says 'How to Succeed in Business' and a page or two later you see 'How to Play Baseball'. You would have no idea what that book is really about and, chances...

Drupal menus and navigation

The menu—or even just a list of links to take visitors around in your site—can make a big difference to your site's indexability and standing in the search engines. In Chapter 3, On-Page Optimization, we discussed how to make title attributes for your navigation links. Now, let's take it to the next level and make sure that the keywords in your site's internal navigation give insight into the subject of the site. The anchor text of your own navigation is one of the places that Google looks to determine what your site is about.

How to change your navigation

First, think about your navigation. Where are you sending people when they click? What does it mean when you have a Home link in your navigation? If you're not selling real estate, chances are that Home is not a good choice to bring people back to the front page of your site. Figure out what your customers call your products or services—not what your industry calls them—and then make your navigation accordingly...

Optimize images, video, and other media

Images are everywhere on the web. Video, Flash, and other media are not far behind. Great graphics, animations, or videos add a lot of value to an otherwise boring web site. The drawback is that search engine spiders cannot read the content of these files. Nothing kills your site's searchability faster than embedding all your best keywords into graphic or Flash files. Users see them just fine but search engines see nothing. It is extremely important to communicate as much information as you can to the search engines about each graphic or media piece that you use on your site.

Google Image Search uses the file name and the alt tag to determine what the image is all about. Other services, like YouTube, Viddler, and video search engines, need help to determine what your video is about so that they can show it to people that are interested in watching your masterpiece. Make sure that you can take advantage of these powerful streams of traffic by adhering...

Meta tags

Meta tags are pieces of text in the header of your web site that tell search engine spiders about your site. They are not visible to your site visitors, which make them handy places to communicate details about your site that visitors just don't care about. The problem is that in the stone age of search engines (1997) many people abused the meta tags by stuffing them full of keywords. This was invisible to their visitors but the search engines gave a lot of credence to the meta tags, so it was a viable way to get to the top of the search engines. Nowadays, most search engines ignore meta tags as a ranking mechanism but do take them into account for other things, so they're important to maintain on your sites.

There are about a dozen different meta tags that you can use but here are the main ones that you should care about.

Summary

In this chapter, we have covered more of the all-important aspects of on-page SEO for your Drupal site. We covered the following points:

Headings—what they are, how to use them for SEO, and how to set them up in Drupal
Drupal menus and navigation—leveraging them for SEO purposes
Optimizing images, video, and other media

Meta tags with the Meta tags module

Now that you've got your site all nice and Search Engine Optimized, it's time to tell the world! In the next chapter, we're going to explore the fastest way to get the entire content of your web site uploaded to Google and the other search engines—sitemaps.

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Published in: Sep 2009Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781847198228

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Author (1)

Ben Finklea

Ben Finklea is the founder and CEO of Drupal SEO firm Volacci Search Marketing. He is the creator of the Drupal SEO Checklist module and he contributes to other SEO-related modules in the Drupal community. Ben is an internationally-known consultant, speaker, and trainer on topics related to SEO, Drupal, and building successful high-tech businesses. He lives with his wife and sons near Austin, Texas
Read more about Ben Finklea

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