Drupal For SEO

Drupal Daze At The Science Museum of Minnesota

Michelle — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:42:22 +0000

Twin Cities Open Circuit is hosting Drupal Daze conference on July 19 and 20, 2008 at the Science Museum of Minnesota. There will be presentations and panel discussions. The topics of this two day conference will include:

Silo Structured Ecommerce Solution

Michelle — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:48:15 +0000

If you are looking for an affordable silo structured e-commerce solution for your website, the Ubercart module for Drupal may be the perfect option for you. Because it incorporates Drupal's taxonomy system, it is easy to set up your categories and products while taking advantage of the internal linking structure and LSI enhanced URLs.

Twin Cities Drupal Meetup

Michelle — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:03:26 +0000

During the last week of February, Dries Buytaert, the lead in the Drupal project, will be in Minneapolis with a handful of top developers to conduct usability testing at the University of Minnesota. The U is generously opening their Office for Information Technology’s usability lab to record eye tracking data and human-computer interaction. The results will be used to further develop ease of use for future Drupal versions.

Similar By Term

Michelle — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 21:34:02 +0000

Another straight forward method for creating a silo structured website in Drupal using any node type is by using the Similar By Term module combined with a custom node template. This will somewhat replicate the Book module's linking structure. It does not contain the hierarchy structure that comes with the Book module. However, it's a quick and dirty method that will get the job done.

Similar By Term

301 Redirect

Michelle — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 03:06:45 +0000

When you move a new site into Drupal or change your URL aliases for optimization purposes, it's a good idea to redirect your old page urls to the new ones in order to retain any backlinks and page rank while improving your linking structure. Performing a 301 redirect in your .htaccess file is how you would go about doing this. However, the standard code for this does not work in Drupal when running clean URLs.

Category Module

Michelle — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:17:24 +0000

Although the Book module is great for creating a basic silo structured website, it limits your options to one node type. So what if you are using other content types for your pages, like videos or custom nodes created using CCK. One option you have is to use the Category module which provides book-like navigation for other node types.

XML Sitemap

Michelle — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 01:39:59 +0000

Having an XML site map of your site submitted to Google is one of the fastest ways to get your site deeply indexed by Google. The more quality pages that are indexed, the better for your sites optimization health. Drupal ‘s XML Sitemap module, formally known as Google Sitemap, will automatically generate an xml sitemap that conforms to the proper specifications.

Basic Silo Structure in Drupal

Michelle — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 21:53:15 +0000

The book module, although it was not originally designed for this, essentially has a built in linking structure that is conducive to a silo structure. It is included in Drupal core and simply needs to be activated in your modules table.

Taxonomy

Michelle — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 21:49:46 +0000

Drupal’s taxonomy system is an extremely powerful tool for organizing the content on a website and, combined with the features of the Pathauto module, is the basis for creating the overall silo website architecture. Taxonomy, another name for categories, are defined in groups of vocabularies and can be assigned to any or all content types. When creating content, you have the options to enable hierarchical tagging, multiple keyword tagging, or free tagging.

Advanced Linking Structure

Michelle — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 21:47:58 +0000

Traditionally, search engine optimization is often approached as a post production task, taking the existing components of a website and improving them to increase rankings. Often times the work is outsourced or handled by companies that don’t have a working relationship with a site’s design or development team. However, savvy webmasters and successful SEOs understand that a websites architecture and overall linking structure will have a huge impact on your website and your business bottom line.