Book Image

Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization

By : Ben Finklea
Book Image

Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization

By: Ben Finklea

Overview of this book

The earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. Despite several advantages, many Drupal sites suffer with poor search engine standings. Perhaps you are aware of the importance of SEO for increasing traffic to your site, but do you know how to apply it to your Drupal site? Here comes the first book about search engine optimization for Drupal sites. This practical, step-by-step guide takes the mystery out of Drupal search engine optimization (SEO) by showing you the tricks of today's top marketing pros to achieve top ranking in the search engines. This isn't a book of Drupal SEO theory ñ it's a practical guide showing you which modules to install, which settings to use, and dozens of the most closely guarded "tricks of the trade" to get your web site optimized, higher in the search engines, and more profitable. With this book and basic Drupal 6 knowledge ñ how to log in, create content, and install modules ñ you can build a perfectly search engine optimized web site. Each chapter uses easy, step-by-step instructions to walk you through the Drupal SEO modules, configurations, and content you will need to increase traffic on your web site. You start by reviewing the modules and tools that you should use to optimize your site, how to set up your analytics, and so on. Each subsequent chapter gives detailed instructions on implementing these features in Drupal. Later chapters cover topics like site organization, A/B testing, and automatic content tagging to maximize SEO and increase the conversion rate of your web site. When you have completed the book, you will have implemented the changes to your site required to rank well in the search engines. If you want to maximize the return on investment of your Drupal 6 web site and gain a significant advantage over competitors who are not using Drupal, then this book is for you. Imagine how great you'll feel when your site is optimized to increase the number of visitors and convert them into paying customers.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
Preface
Drupal SEO Case Study for Acquia Product Launch

Optimizing the robots.txt file


The robots.txt file is a file that sits at the root level of your web site and asks spiders and bots to behave themselves when they're on your site. You can take a look at it by pointing your browser to http://www.yourDrupalsite.com/robots.txt. Think of it like an electronic No Trespassing sign that can easily tell the search engines not to crawl a certain directory or page of your site. Using wildcards, you can even tell the engines not to crawl certain file types like .jpg or .pdf. This means none of your JPEG images or PDF files will show up in the search engines. (I'm not recommending that you do that…but you could.)

Note

The robots.txt file is required by Google

On December 1, 2008, John Mueller, a Google analyst, said that if the Googlebot can't access the robots.txt file (say the server is unreachable or returns a 5xx error result code) then it won't crawl the web site at all. In other words, the robots.txt file must be there if you want the web site...