No matter what your organization's focus is, being found by your target audiences when they search online must be a focus for every web team. This session will include an overview of how SEO works followed by tips and tools to help you leverage SEO — and make it easier for your audiences to find you. This session is tailored toward IT professionals, as well as content producers and content managers. Presented at: Capital Camp and Gov Days Presented by: David Minton and Stephen Pashby Date: July 30, 2014 Link: http://2014.capitalcampandgovdays.com/capital-camp-and-gov-days/sessions/stop-playing-hide-and-seek-google-search-engine-optimization

1. Stop Playing Hide &
Seek with Google
SEO with Drupal 6 & 7
David Minton
@DH_David
Stephen Pashby
@DH_Stephen
@DesignHammer

2. Overview
• Search Philosophy & Fundamentals
• Google Updates
• Off-page SEO
• On-site SEO
• On-page SEO
2

3. Search Fundamentals
and Philosophy
3

4. Search Fundamentals
Why worry about Search Engine Optimization?
4

5. Search Engine Optimization
“If you build it, they will come.”
TheVoice [from the cornfield]
Field of Dreams
5

6. comScore 05/14 US Share
6
68%
19%
10% 2%1%
Google Sites
Microsoft Sites
Yahoo! Sites
Ask Network
AOL, Inc.
https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Market-Rankings/comScore-Releases-May-2014-US-Search-Engine-Rankings

7. Search Engine Optimization
“In my experience, the traffic difference from
position #1 to position #11 is…something
closer to 1/100th of the visits.”
Rand Fishkin
CEO & Co-Founder of SEOmoz
7

8. Is SEO Science or Magic
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic.”
Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law of Prediction
8

9. Is SEO Science or Magic
“The technology behind Google’s search
algorithm is a closely held secret; no amount
of SEO work can guarantee top placement.
The only company that can guarantee you a
top spot in Google is Google.”
David Minton
DesignHammer
9

10. Is SEO Science or Magic
“Our most recent algorithm does contain
signals that can be gamed. If that one were
100 percent transparent, the bad guys would
know how to optimize their way back into
the rankings.”
Matt Cutts
Google
10

11. Is SEO Science or Magic
“Google works in mysterious ways.”
Stephen Pashby
DesignHammer
11

12. Types of SEO
• Pay-per-click (PPC)
• Organic Search
• Off-page optimization
• On-site optimization
• On-page optimization
12

13. Pay-Per-Click
• Largest: Google AdWords,Yahoo! Search
Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter
• PPC results not based on website content
• Outside scope of presentation
13

14. Off-page examples
• Incoming links from other websites
• Links from Tweets & other Social Media
14

15. On-site examples
• Keywords in domain name
• Keywords in file path
• XML site map
• Server availability and load times
15

16. On-page examples
• Keywords in page title
• Keywords in headlines
• Keywords in image and link attributes
16

17. Anatomy of SERP
17
Pay-per-click (PPC)
Organic Search Listing

18. Anatomy of SERP
18
Description
Page Title
URL

19. SEO Philosophy
SEO is more than just #1 rankings.
19

20. Usability
“Usability means making sure something works
well, and that a person of average ability or
experience can use it for it’s intended purpose
without getting hopelessly frustrated.”
Steve Krug,Author — Don't Make MeThink:
A Common Sense Approach toWeb Usability
20

21. 21
Optimized for
users’ search? No
Fail
No
Fail
No
Fail
Top search
position
On target copy on
landing page?
Yes
Profit
Yes
Enticing title and
description?
Yes
User Behavior
Maybe?

22. Google Updates
22

23. Google Updates
• Google regularly updates its algorithms to:
• Deliver the best search results
• Adapt to SEO techniques that (Google
feels) distort the search results
23

24. Google Safari
• Google doesn’t always publicize algorithm
updates. In 2013, Google began to roll out
more frequent, incremental updates.
• The SEO community has to “hunt” for
these updates “in the wild.”
24

25. Google Panda?
25

26. What is Panda?
• Released February 2011
• Affected about 12% of all search results
• Intended to penalize low quality websites
• Updated about once per month
• Named for key engineer on team
26

27. How to get bitten
• Duplicate content on website*
• Low-quality content on website
• Low content to ad ratio
• Content on your website on other sites
✴Solution discussed later
27

28. Google Penguin?
28

29. What is Penguin?
• Released April 2012
• Affected about 3% of English search results
• Intended to decrease search engine ranking
of websites that violate Google’s TOS
• Major update in May 2013
• Google’s hasn’t explained the name
29

30. How to get pecked
• Incoming links from low-quality websites:
• Participate in Link Exchange Schemes
• Purchase paid links
• Listing in low-quality, un-curated
directories
30

31. Google Hummingbird?
31

32. What is Hummingbird?
• Released August 2013
• Most major update to the core search
platform since 2001
• Allows Google new ways to process
recently developed types of signals
• Incorporates previous updates (Panda, etc.)
• Name comes from being “precise and fast”
32

33. Google Pigeon?
33

34. What is Pigeon?
• Released July 24, 2014
• Improves distance & location ranking
• Core change to local search algorithm
• Not a penalty update (e.g. Panda & Penguin)
• Named by Search Engine Land
34

35. Off-page Optimization
35

36. Back links
With great power comes great responsibility!
36

37. Know your Links
37

38. Linking in Action
38

39. More than the Beatles
39

40. …and major sports
40
786,000,000 Football
415,000,000 Basketball
216,000,000 Baseball
131,000,000 Hockey
68,500,000 The Beatles
1,616,500,000

41. On top: Adobe Reader
41

42. On top: Adobe Reader
42

43. Why is this top result?
43

44. Incoming links
Tens of thousands of incoming links, like this:
“You will need Acrobat Reader to read or
print this document.To download Acrobat
Reader click here.”
44

45. Real life searches
45

46. Penguin watch: Off-page
46
• Look for high-quality, relevant links with a
diverse selection of keywords
• Do not use link exchanges, paid links, low
quality sites, or request links from “bad
neighborhoods”
• Offer content to other quality sites in
exchange for links(guest blog posts,
articles, etc.)

47. Getting pecked by
Penguin
• Active: requesting links from low quality
sites
• Evil: links submitted to bad sites by
competitors*
✴Monitor your back links!
47

48. On-Site Optimization
48

49. robots.txt
The gatekeeper of your content.
49

50. robots.txt
• Instruct crawlers on what not to crawl
•Most important thing to get right!
50

51. robots.txt (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
51

52. robots.txt (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
52

53. robots.txt (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
53

54. robots.txt (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
54
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

55. XML Sitemaps
Make it easy for the web crawlers to do their thing.
55

56. XML Sitemaps
• Identify URLs to be crawled along with:
• Last updated
• Frequency of updates
• Relative importance
56

57. xml sitemap (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
57

58. xml sitemap (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
58

59. Clean URLs,
Path, & Pathauto
“You cannot travel the path until you have become
the path itself” — Buddha
59

60. Drupal Path Options
• Core with Clean URLs disabled
http://example.com/?q=node/2/
• Core with Clean URLs enabled
http://example.com/node/2
• Path module (automated by Pathauto)
http://example.com/drupal-seo
60

61. Clean URLs (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
61

62. Path & Pathauto (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
62

63. Redirects, & Canonical
One path to rule them all.
63

64. Redirects
• Redirect from one path to another (alias)
• Redirect an external URL (301 redirect)
64

65. Path Redirect (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
65

66. Path Redirect (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
66

67. Canonical
• For websites with nodes (not paths) of
duplicate or very similar content
• Prevents dilution of incoming links
• Reduces chance of penalty by search
engines for duplicate content
67

68. Meta tags (Drupal 7.x)
68
Scroll down

69. Load Times & Caching
Google factors page load speed.
69

70. Page Load
• Optimize images, CSS, and javascript
• Test site for speedbumps
• Google PageSpeed
• YSlow!
• Firebug/Web Inspector
70

71. Google PageSpeed (Chrome)
71

72. Caching
• Google crawls as anonymous user
• Cache pages for anonymous users
• Consider Caching Server (Memcached)
• Consider Reverse Proxy (Varnish)
72

73. Performance (Drupal 7.x, 6.x)
73

74. Panda watch: On-site
• Use canonical tag for any duplicate content
• Don’t make stub pages
• Monitor ad to content ratio
74

75. On-Page Optimization
75

76. Page Title
Your most important tag for SEO.
76

77. Page Title
• Top item in SERP listing
• Default in Drupal is :node title: | :site:
• Modules allow separate optimization
between the page title and the node title
• Individually created for each page
• Procedurally created via tokens
77

78. Page Title (Drupal 6.x)
78

79. Meta tags (Drupal 7.x)
79

80. Meta Description
Entice searchers with carefully crafted content.
80

81. Meta Description
• If relevant, may be displayed as the SERP
listing description
• Not counted for placement
• Allows content creators to craft a targeted
description of the page
• Individually created for each page
• Procedurally created via tokens
81

82. Nodewords (Drupal 6.x)
82

83. Meta tags (Drupal 7.x)
83

84. Structure vs.
Presentation
Appearances may be deceiving
84

85. Structure tags
HTML tags used to identify the significance of
content, such as:
• <title> — document title
• <h1> — level one headline
• <p> — paragraph
85

86. Presentation
The style applied to content that affects the
way it looks. An example of a CSS style:
h1 {
! font: bold 24px arial;
! margin: 10px 0 10px 0;
}
86

87. Good Structure
87

88. Underlying Structure
88

89. Poor Structure
89

90. Underlying Structure
90

91. Panda watch: On-page
• Content should be main focus of page
• Avoid machine generated content
• Avoid over optimization of content
• Create content for USERS, not ROBOTS
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92. It Doesn’t End Here
The battle for SEO dominance never ends.
92

93. Other Hurdles
• SEO is a contest, there can only be one #1
• You must beat others to move up SERP
• Without keyword research all efforts are a
shot in the dark
• Content creators must buy in to succeed
• Off-site factors can trump any on-site work
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94. Conclusion
• Drupal best practices will provide a solid
framework for SEO efforts
• SEO is fun!
94

95. Special thanks
95

96. David Minton
Stephen Pashby
Follow us!
@DesignHammer
facebook.com/DesignHammer
www.designhammer.com
drupal.org/node/1128082
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