Drupal SEO advice for a novice

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scaysboom's picture

Hello all, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I fear the main problem I have is that our business outsourced the building of our website so gaining access to the code is limited to main content regions but I digress, here's my situation.

Our new website is currently on www.lewiscollege.eu and is running alongside our original website www.lewiscollege.co.uk during this transition period.

Our old site did ok on page rank in relation to our main products, I'm really keen to keep this performance when we move fully to the new site.

I got Google to crawl the new site 10 days ago but the page rank for .eu is virtually non-existent. So here are my questions;
1.Have I not given enough time for Google to implement crawl stats?
2.Is the original website (domain name, links, etc) preventing the new website from performing/appearing well on Google?
3.Are the principles of SEO very different on a Drupal site as opposed to a basic html page? I guess it's worth noting that the site designer is accessible and willing to make changes for me but obviously I would prefer to be in a situation where I can make changes when and where I see fit rather than having to wait for him all the time, is there anything I can suggest to him to include within site that would make this attainable?

Many thanks

Simon

Comments

Drupal SEO Advice for Novice

webbroidrupal's picture
  1. You need patience in site crawls. Setup Google Webmaster tools. Under Crawl then fetch as google, submit your home page and one other page with lots of internal links. After you request a Crawl you click the box that says. SUMBIT URL. Then * URL and all linked pages
  2. Sorta. You could get penalized for duplicate content. You can tell google that the site has been moved in Google webmaster tools. Also I suggest setting up 301 Redirects from the old site to the new site.
  3. There are Several SEO modules that can help with this. https://drupal.org/project/seotools

Clarification on Point #2

webbroidrupal's picture

There are several options here:

  1. Use a NoIndex Tags on old site
  2. Use Robots.txt file to Block or Remove from index

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156449?hl=en

  1. Depending on how long this transition will last you could possibly use rel="canonical"

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en

  1. You can also request removal of the old site in webmaster tools https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/164734?hl=en

the first step i told you is

eule's picture

the first step i told you is wrong ..you use drupal. for a ppl thats not much knows about code drupal is wrong..forget it! use Wordpress instant or GETsimple as your CMS. Drupal has no features for SEO! I rumble since 4years and give now up. from the old domain use something like base href = new site or rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

Greets from Germany
Prepaid Tarifvergleich

Completely wrong

DamienMcKenna's picture

@eule: On what grounds do you base your claim of "Drupal has no features for SEO"? First off, define SEO, and define what features you believe you need for "SEO".

From my perspective of someone who maintains several of the Drupal SEO modules, and who has worked with several SEO experts over he years, I hate to break it to you but you're completely wrong. Drupal has extremely powerful SEO functionality, more-so than many other CMSes - automatic clean & pattern-driven URLs, meta tags, taxonomy, responsive layouts, RDF, RDFa, Schema.org, etc, etc, etc. Sure, you need some modules to add on the functionality on top of the base, but if you're not able to install a module perhaps some training videos from Youtube might help?

@DamienMcKenna i define: SEO

eule's picture

@DamienMcKenna i define: SEO is for me to get with and in Time, things are changing...
i know you develop metatag and thanks for your work! shema.org is not in core, responsive layout comes with d8.
example: if you want to setup a domain with d7 and want to get schema.org working is just horrible! i like lin clark and his wonderful work on microdata! first problem fivestar´s works only with a hack. other things like fences doesn´t work.
Semantic_views nice module..but if you need other design -not possible to run it. the code is also very bad on a view for every search engine - and not only on a view ..oh semantic_fields - not working
the time thats we need keywords is over. i put down a request on metatag to add pragma no cache

Posted by eule on December 4, 2012 at 9:58pm

you pull the patch because another inquired

Posted by DamienMcKenna on September 4, 2013 at 4:16pm

ca. 1year later see https://drupal.org/node/1858540
drupal is behind if you not work with a profi team. sorry thats the truth

and please http://lin-clark.com/blog/drupal-8-now-has-schemaorg-rdf-mappings-dont-p...

Greets from Germany
Prepaid Tarifvergleich

You are correct, schema.org

DamienMcKenna's picture

You are correct, schema.org is not in D7 core, but neither is Views, Panels, Pathauto, or any one of the dozens of essential modules that most sites use - it's a contrib module, again something you shouldn't be afraid to use. And all of the common D7 base themes include some support for responsive layouts, so unless you're sticking to core's extremely limited themes this won't be a problem. Likewise with other CMSes inc Wordpress you're not going to limit yourself to what's bundled with the base system, you'll install plugins to get more meta tags, add new themes, etc, no different than with Drupal.

As for pragma-no-cache – you are correct, in the ten months since you submitted that feature request it hasn't been added to the module. But I fail to see how relevant that meta tag is when it's for controlling web browsers, not search engines, and even then it's for telling HTTP clients to not cache content, when for improving SEO you'd want the pages cached.

hello

eule's picture

hello @DamienMcKenna
again...i know all the modules and for a novice the stuff is to hard! You need a Professional Team to work with Drupal. SEO is Link-Building and making a Brand. All the other Stuff is related to it. On Wordpress one Module is needed to get the stuff running. It maybe Cost but not the World. And everyone can pay it..its cheap. Go to Acquia and ask for Help you need a Pocket with 5000€ pro Year min. better your Pocket is nicely filled! In Germany i see no Drupal Site Ranking on every Query who is related to me. Take a look @my http://prepaid-tarife-vergleichen.de/prepaid-simkarten.html Source-Code is Views3 this SourceCode is crazy! And Please take a look @this Query https://www.google.de/search?q=prepaid+tarife+vergleichen 6 of 10 Sites using Wordpress and look at this sourcecode. clean and simple! Thats why he rank.
Its not thats to add the meta tag cache for seo purpose. this was just a req which was not observed.
The same today: I test here D8 a lot and found bugs. I submit the bugs to speed up the release date of D8. I do this for the Community and Drupal. And what is the thanks? Look: https://drupal.org/node/2087043 no i´m not crazy!! And Thanks to @longwave who figure it out and help with spreading a Fix! I´m not a Coder you know? Not every one is a Coder! But you guys can frustrating ppl´s who want to help Drupal - not only You!
And for SEO this was my first Code https://drupal.org/sandbox/ekn33/1892672 and i´m not able to get it to a full project. Because its frustrating! but the Module works for me :-)
and here a other bug who i found https://drupal.org/node/2046097 just to inform you.
My pocket is still empty because i work now 4 years with Drupal. We have no Tracking Systems to make Money with Affiliates or something (or i don´t found it)
..its all simply frustrating. Tracking is the Key! and we need subid Tracking Stuff | Webservice Stuff who is Connected to Affiliates - this all for one Person is to Huge.
and the last is a wish and has to do with seo https://drupal.org/node/2086919 ;-)

Greets from Germany
Prepaid Tarifvergleich

So @eule you suggest that

Greggg's picture

So @eule you suggest that wordpress is better for seo then drupal? Drupal also has many modules but wordpress is much easier to work so maybe this is the reason that top pages are using wordpress.