I am pleased to announce the release of the Drupal "SEO" Checklist Module.
The "SEO" Checklist Module provides a list of good Search Engine Optimization actions that you should take to maximize the presence of your website in the major search engines. It provides little functionality itself but rather it helps you keep track of what needs to be done.
**Benefits:
Search Engines Drive 90% of the traffic on the web. The more "findable" you are, the easier it is for you to get customers. This module helps you with on-page SEO - a necessary component of a good online marketing campaign.
Listen to the announcement Podcast.
Help tell the world about Drupal: Digg it!
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Ben Finklea, CEO
SpryDev Search Engine Marketing home of the Drupal SEO Podcast
We guarantee web profits.
512-989-2945 x204
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ben@sprydev.com
Comments
Excellent
That was an EXCELLENT idea. I'm forever trying to remember if I did all the SEO setup for any given site. Always find myself wasting time checking. And a notebook never helps either cause I can't find it.
This is cool
Phil
Word...
Thanks to Ben and SpryDev for giving back to the community! I'll definitely be checking this out!
Great idea
I agree, wonderful idea.
Chris Charlton, Author & Drupal Community Leader, Enterprise Level Consultant
I teach you how to build Drupal Themes http://tinyurl.com/theme-drupal and provide add-on software at http://xtnd.us
I like the idea, and it will
I like the idea, and it will be better if its a way to build a link exchange system
Thanks!!!
Thanks for the kind comments, gents! I'd love to know how you used the module and what results you were able to achieve. That would take a few weeks or months, of course.
Sorry, toma, link building isn't something that we're planning to add in the future. That would probably be better suited as a completely separate module.
If you know of any modules or things that we should add, please let me know.
Best regards,
Ben Finklea, CEO
SpryDev Search Engine Marketing home of the Drupal SEO Podcast
Try our Drupal SEO Checklist Module
We guarantee web profits.
512-989-2945 x204
mobile: 512-632-4222
f: 512-857-0212
ben@sprydev.com
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
A group for links exchange
A group for links exchange engine, but nothing release yet http://groups.drupal.org/seo-links-exchange-engine
As you know a module like that will be good for seo
podcast
Thanks, I didn't know about the "Find URL Alias" module. I was just wishing for something like this the other day! :)
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John Forsythe
Blamcast - Custom Drupal themes and more...
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Fantastic SEO module! Lots of folks will benefit by installing.
Hey Ben,
I DIGG it!
Just wanted to say congrats on the SEO module! I installed it on my test web site and, after reviewing it, will most definitely be installing it on my production web site.
Thank you very much and I strongly believe most folks that use Drupal should download your module and review/follow its well-thought-out steps. Following the recommendations in your SEO module is well-advised and, IMO, will definitely lead to better placement for my web site among the major search engines.
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
Thanks Ben
Great thanks to Ben and Sprydev, I love this modules. The SEO Checklist Module is one of the first drupal module installed on my site.
Anjar Priandoyo
securityprocedure.com | bicararumah.com
beyond the checklist?
Ok, I think this checklist is great, but I'm wondering if anyone can offer suggestions for what to do configuration-wise with the steps in the checklist.
For example the page_title module, the single most important thing I can do is enable this module?
Or use this module to modify my tags ... how?
The Practical Application of Drupal's page_title Module
The title tag is arguably the single most important on-page element you've got. In the page_title module, you can configure a separate string for both the
<title>Keyword rich title that appears at the top of the browser bar</title>, AND the<h2>title of the document</h2>, which appears in the URL and at the top of the body text.Within the configuration of the page_title module, I would suggest that you have a look at the page title tokens in Administer > Content Management > Page Titles (click on the "more help" link just above the fields where you make your choices. See what's available and make up your own mind.
As an example, I use [site-name] | [site-slogan] on my front page.
but for all other pages, I use [page-title], by [author-name-raw]
...because people are tuned in to WIIFM (What's In It For Me), they are looking for content that is an answer to the question in their mind. If you've gotta put your site name on there, stick it at the end. After all, it's probably up on the top left side of every page on your site isn't it? So they already know where they are.
This works well for my family website, and for my 'solopreneur' company where I want to rank for both keywords and my own name (yes, it's an ego thing), but it may not be right for someone else.
Your mileage may vary, blah, blah...etc.
Much Luck,
Ron Jones
Ron Jones
Ok, this is helpful. The
Ok, this is helpful. The idea is to have unique content everywhere we can and to not have search engines finding duplicates of everything everywhere, including/especially in page titles.
Don't get too wrapped around the axle on
the whole duplicate content thing. It has been hyped way past suspension of disbelief.
Searchers like to get back relevant, diverse results to their queries. Google will do what is in the best interests of their customers, because it provides them with the highest probability of increasing profits. All big "G" does when it finds several copies of one piece of content in several locations is to filter out the duplicates.
Some SEO conference blogger probably still hung over from the night before heard "duplicate content filter" in some round table discussion, repeated it on his blog, and at the bar as "duplicate content penalty." And a myth was born.
The folks who suffer with the duplicate content filter are those who get their content off article sites and cheap "content is king, get rich with our avalanche of fresh content" membership sites. They're too lazy to write their own content, or too cheap to hire out for exclusive content.
As long as your content resides on only your own servers, don't worry about duplicate content from a "penalty" perspective. Use the global redirect module, tweak your robots.txt and make sure that what gets indexed is your descriptive URL paths so that searchers have a better feel for what the piece is about.
In other words, we want yoursite.com/fishing/bass/how-to-make-a-bass-lure instead of yoursite.com/node96 to be the URL in the SERPs.
Ron Jones
Ron Jones
duplicate content
Whether it's called a "filter" or "penalty" -- it has the effect of removing your content from Google :)
I've worked on some large ecommerce sites where duplicate content was killing their rankings. Once you get to a certain amount of duplicate content, I think it lowers the "quality" of the site in the eyes of the search engines. Robots are easily confused. It happens to legitimate sites too.
Clean up duplicate content as part of a larger SEO campaign and rankings will definitely go up...
How exactly do you tweak the robots.txt
How do you go about tweaking the robots.txt file to make sure google indexes the path instead of the node number?
Web design, Drupal theming, and logo design:
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robots.txt
Install the Global Redirect module and it will redirect the URLs.
To block it in robots.txt you can do:
Disallow: /nodebut I think it's better to use the Global Redirect module instead...
Set up an account at Google Webmaster Central
First, start out with a very restrictive robots.txt file.
Go to Google Webmaster Central and set up your account. Enter your site, verify it, wait for a couple of weeks so that it gets thoroughly crawled. Then keep an eye on it within your account interface.
On the Diagnostics > Web Crawl section, they'll have the following items you can check:
All errors for URLs in Sitemaps (1) | HTTP errors (2) | Not found (7) | URLs not followed (0) | URLs restricted by robots.txt (122) | URLs timed out (0) | Unreachable URLs (0)
this is a cut-and-paste from my interface, so your numbers will be different.
What you should do is keep an eye on the section labeled "URL's restricted by robots.txt" If you start to see anything show up there that you DO want indexed, just open up robots.txt and remove the offending line.
It just takes a little time...time for google to get your site crawled, and pages indexed...and time for your subsequent actions to be reflected within the system.
Ron Jones
Ron Jones
okay, then - the purpose of
okay, then - the purpose of enabling the page title module, is simply to enable the page title module? i'm a little skeptical that "the single most important thing i should do" is as simple as enabling a module.
the page title module gives us control over page titles, but how do we use that control for SEO? moving the important stuff to the left? is there something else I'm missing?
...
and I'm thinking, I can add a different title to the than just the node title, and that's useful. are there other examples of what to do with this module for SEO? sure, SEO is a moving target, but which direction is it moving?
page title module
The page title element (
<title>) tells search engines what the main topic of your page is. If you tastefully put your main keywords in the title element, it helps with SEO.The Page Title Module lets you customize the
<title>element.You can use the title element to expand keywords in the
<title>that might not look good on the page.Node title:
<h1>1999 Ford Escort for Sale</h1>HTML title element:
<title>Used Car for Sale, San Diego: Green Ford Escort 1999</title>(maybe too much text for the regular node title)Something like that...
But, this is not enough
Hi Ben Finklea,
Thanks for your checklist.
But, the list is useful for a beginner. The expert, needs latest techniques, new updates and modifications in the Search engines algorithm's.
If you publish those, it will be helpful to everybody that read your posts and subscribers.
Karunakar,
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Motivation....
Karuankar,
A very valid point but please take a look at the signature of the person who created this thread and module. It's from "SpryDev Search Engine Marketing" thus I assume this module is about raising awareness not providing information for "the expert". I'm guessing this is where you're suppose to go to them for consulting.
We all have our reasons for doing things, in this case I'd say it's savvy marketing on SpryDev part. This is not to say that the "SEO" Checklist Module is not a useful tool that points us in the right direction. It's up to the developer to then seek out the solutions or turn to SpryDev for the valuable answers.
Of course, this is just my observation which maybe completely wrong.
What, me? Market my own stuff? Never!
DeeZone,
I'm shocked, shocked that you would accuse a marketing dude of *gasp* marketing! ;-)
Yes, ok. We did put some awareness pieces into the module. I was not 100% altruistic in my endeavor to give back to the community. However, I absolutely wanted to give back. I put every single module that I felt was necessary for SEO. There are only 1 or 2 modules that I didn't list but only because they are optional or confusing to use.
I'll tell you one thing, though. We have not gotten one client because of the release of this module. And maybe only a handful of inquiries over the last 15 months directly from the module. So, it's not been huge for us or anything. If we do get some recognition and a few links then that's all the reward I need. Actually, the coolest thing is how many people are using it and commenting or writing about it. Over 800 people have it installed right now. That's pretty sweet!
Once again, thanks everyone for the great comments! I just posted the Drupal 6 version of the module today so try it out on your new sites. There are a lot of changes to the modules list so even if you used the Drupal 5 version, be sure to check out the new list.
Regards,
Ben Finklea, CEO
Volacci (formerly SpryDev)
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
Your Idea is really
Your Idea is really appreciable! SEO Checklist Module can help me to plan my SEO strategies. SEO Checklist Module can be helpful for new SEO persons but for experienced persons, they need more creativity to advertise a business plan. I am searching new features in this module.