Chapter 7. RSS Feeds, Site Speed, and SEO Testing

If you've followed along chapter by chapter through this book, then you have a very well optimized Drupal web site at this point. There are only a couple of things left to do and you'll be finished with the on-page optimization. You've come this far, so let's finish it strong. We're going to talk about RSS feeds, optimizing your site's PageRank, tweaking your site speed, and testing your site's quality and optimization score with some third party services. While it could be said that these things are optional, I've found that the difference between the top 10 and number 1 in Google is how well you take care of all of the little details. It merits saying again, the great thing about Drupal is that you set these things up one time and they're (almost) done forever.

In this chapter, we're going to cover:

• RSS feeds

• The Syndication module

• Speeding up your site

• The SEOmoz's free Page Grading Service

Setting up RSS feeds

Ever seen an icon, similar to the...

Setting up RSS feeds

Ever seen an icon, similar to the following screenshot, on the web, before?

These icons are indicators that the site's owner wants to share his content with you. If you ever subscribe to a podcast, or read a blog in a newsreader, then you've used an RSS feed. RSS is a standard way of sharing your Drupal web site without visitors needing to come back to your site each day (or hour, or minute) to check if you have new content.

Note

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, depending on who you ask. It was created by Ramanathan V. Guha, Dan Libby, and Dave Winer in the late 1990s, and has become a standard for sites that have frequently updated content.

Users subscribe to your RSS feed in their own newsreader. Periodically, the newsreader automatically checks the RSS feed to see if there is any new content there. If there is new content, the newsreader downloads a summary of the article and alerts the user that there is new content. If that person is interested...

Feel the need—the need for speed

Waiting around for a web site to load is like watching paint dry. It's boring and it makes me nauseous. I can only put up with it if I really, really want the information the site has to offer. Everyone who visits your web site feels the same way. Give them what they're looking for quickly and you stand a better chance of meeting their needs and closing the deal. Like slow service in a restaurant, people may stick around, but they're probably not going to be back anytime soon.

Google likes fast web sites, too. Think about it from their perspective: all things being equal, a quick and peppy web site will make a user happier than a slow web site. There are other considerations for Google as well. For example, when they send around their spider, how quickly can your server give over the data they're looking for?

Fortunately, Drupal has some cool, built-in ways to speed up your site without having to invest in expensive server hardware and hosting.

Turning on...

Bringing it all together with a free page grading service from SEOmoz

There are some free online tools that will help you evaluate how well you've built your site. The best one I've found, so far, is the SEOmoz Term Target. Carry out the following steps to use the free page grading service from SEOmoz:

1. 1. Go to http://www.seomoz.org/tools (you may need to register for a free account first). Click on the Term Target link. You should see something like this:

1. 2. Put in your page's URL and a keyword (one keyword) and click on Grade My Term Targeting. You will need to wait for about 30 seconds and then see your grade, (as seen in the following sample) screenshot:

2. 3. Anything less than an A needs more attention. Go through each of the recommendations listed and fix any issues with your site.

Summary

So, you've finally got all that pesky on-page optimization finished. Great job! You're done working on your site, right? Well, maintaining your on-page SEO is an ongoing task that is never quite done. Every new piece of content—be it a node, user, or comment—needs your attention. After you've worked through the recommendations so far in this book, your site will do a lot of the work for you, saving you a lot of time.

In this chapter, we have covered:

• RSS Feeds

• PageRank

• Drupal's built-in caching

• Checking your site with SEOmoz

Now that your site is search engine optimized, it's time to populate it with some great content.