Drupal and SEO: A comparison
I've recently been noticing a trend in how other websites are handling Clean URLs and it isn't good! Most websites don't appear to have the same luxury we have with Drupal (a concrete URL Alias system provided by the Path module). Although the URL Aliases can sometimes be a bit of a burden on larger sites, as the table can easily enter the tens or evey hundreds of thousands of entries, it provides (if used correctly) a very effective 1:1 relationship.
The Old Way
Most sites implement a cheat clean URL system where the path contains the ID or a 'source path' (in Drupal Lingo) very early on in the path. The rest of the path tends to simply be keyword stuffed. This is achieved using URL Rewrites which, put simply, will ignore everything after a certain pattern has been matched. There are many examples of this technique... Here are a few (with slight variants):
-
http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/s/13/1316/Wenlock_Arms/Hoxton
-
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Drupal-by-David-Mercer-2006_W0QQi.....l1247QQcmdZViewItem
-
http://www.seoseonews.com/articles/5582/1/-Gre........d-Information-and-Ideas.html
The above links share the same thing - the unique ID is towards the beginning of the URL and everything after a specific point is either ignored completely or is considered unnecessary.
The BeerInTheEvening site only requires the 'pub/s/13/1316' part - everything else is simply ignored.
Ebay do it slightly differently, they appear to have everything in one long path with no slashes - but they use 'QQ' to separate arguments and Z to separate key/value pairs - how sneaky! Therefore the pattern Ebay expects is (at minimum) '{some_title}QQitemZ{some_id}'. Some testing shows that the {some_title} appears unchangeable - however the rest of the URL is very changeable. Maybe the title is part of the ID?
The article at seoseonews.com is very similar to BeerInTheEvening. It appears to basically tag the keywords onto the end of the URL in the hope that Google will index that instead of the "true" URL which actually doesn't need anthing on the end at all!
The New Way
Recently I've noticed that some sites are trying to be slightly more cunning... Amazon for example...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Adobe-Flash-Pro-CS3-Mac/dp/B000O17CGU/ref=sr_1_3
I was looking for Adobe Flash CS3 for the Mac and I looked at the URL and decided to have a play with it to find out what was necessary to get the page to load. First thing that came off was what looked like the referring source - that was an easy one. I then started to work backwards from there and found that not many arguments could be removed at all! It was at that point I wondered if they'd been sneaky... Did they need the first part of the URL? Answer: No!
Since finding this out I have found a number of other sites which are actually doing exactly the same thing (eg, DeviantArt.com). Instead of keyword stuffing the end of the path - they are pre-stuffing the URL and putting the ID on the end.
Why do this? Well the keywords important to the page appear at the beginning of the URL rather than the end. As Tesco say; Every Little Helps! ©
Why is this bad?
Well one thing you learn in SEO-101 is that Google & Co. do NOT like it when sites represent the same content on multiple URL's, commonly known as Duplicate Content. Google has a tendancy when it finds these sites to take a "hammer to kill a fly" approach and blacklist the site without warning or explanation.
The Drupal Way
The way drupal handles the URL's is pretty neat - especially the clean ones. You simply define what path you'd like to map to the source path and drupal handles it all internally. If the alias path doesn't match anything in the database then you don't get a matching source path.
Of course, as soon as you enable the path module and create your first alias you have created Duplicate Content. Why? Well you can still access the node on its source path (eg, http://example.com/node/12) and on its nice new alias (eg, http://example.com/my-nice-alias.html). Currently Drupal does not handle this internally which is why I have developed the GlobalRedirect module. This module simply checks that the currently accessed path has no alias associated. If it does then it will do a permanent redirect (301) to the proper path.
What if you dont want to have to keep filling out the alias field every time? What if you dont want to hand site structure control over to the masses on your nice new & funky Web 2.0 site? Enter PathAuto (along with Tokens). When these two pair up - Drupal will automatically generate paths for you based on whatever template you configure for your node type (or taxonomy term... or user...)!
"What about other SEO stuff like Page Titles and Meta Data? " I hear you cry! All taken care of by another module I maintain (along with John Albin) is called PageTitle. Version 1.x only allows basic control of the page title template, however PageTitle 2 is currently in beta testing and has some VERY funky features! This new release is another Token-powered module which works in a similar way to PathAuto. You provide a token template on a per node-type basis along with (optionally) specifying a separate page title for the node (ie, you get a NODE TITLE (for links, H1's, etc) and a HEAD TITLE for the Search Engines). The module takes care of the rest.
MetaTags? Easy - checkout the fantastic NodeWords module. Unfortunately this isn't token powered (yet - hint hint!) so you cant setup token template descriptions, however it will automatically take the node teaser as the description and take the node's taxonomy as keywords for you! You can also setup some site-wide defaults too.
Summary
All in all - I think Drupal is pretty damn SEO friendly - especially compared to some other CMS's (and ESPECIALLY when you look at how easy it is to turn your website into and SEO dream!). What else does the community use for SEO for Drupal?
References
I've mentioned a few modules above - here are their links:
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14 Comments
Ah - Tesco
Tesco seems to be all over the place, and properly taking over the world soon ;)
P.S. Thanks for the great write-up on the topic. I'd really like to know more about PageTitle and NodeWords. I'm using PathAuto, but that in some circumstances and with some bad settings creates sometimes an awful long URL, need to explore this a little bit further.
Great article! We covered
Great article! We covered the same topic - in video. If someone is interested, you can check out.
It is also useful if you edit the default .htaccess file in Drupal. Because by default your site is accessible in two ways:
http://example.com
and
http://www.example.com
You should choose one, because these are also different pages in a search engine's view!
The Wenlock Arms
Nice choice of pub :)
I certainly agree ;)
Well, I certainly agree with this. If I can plug a fairly similar set of tutorial videos...
I put together approximately an hour worth of videos - split into ~10 minute sessions - at http://www.masteringdrupal.com/screencast/seo-course
It's basically this same advice (plus a little extra) spread out into hands-on tutorials.
nice website and good info
Nice post.
Im a firm believer in 'Content is King'
Its irellevent your traffic from these sources if your website is poor. yours is great.
Sarah
Great post. thank you for the
Great post. thank you for the valuble info,
WOuld love to read more soon!
Salehoo
E-commerce is a cut throat
E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest. Each day, more and more sites are clambering to optimize their rankings in websites and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines would be the most widely used internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.
Most people that use search engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in search engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.
But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I aforementioned, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make them selves rank higher using search engine optimization. It is imperative to make your site better and better everyday.
So just what is search engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need search engine optimization to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating.
With search engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Let’s just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turn out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.
So once again, what is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in the results of search engines. Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your site’s existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to potential income and business.
Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add as well to get search engine optimization. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme.
You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your site’s content applicable and conducive to search engine optimization.
You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components search engines uses to rank sites.
Try to search the internet for many useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are plenty to be found. Read many articles that can help you optimize your site in search engine results. The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort in your part but the benefits will be astounding.
If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.
Act now and see the benefits garner with search engine optimization. All of these will result to better traffic and more business for your site and company.
SEO Cunsulting Services
Linkbuilding seo tools
Nice post! Thumbs up.
CommentKahuna is a free linkbuilding tool using blog comments.
It searches related blogs relevant to your keyword. With your profile prepared you can easily post comments and do your linkbuilding. Since most blog comments are moderated, you want to make sure that you comment is usefull. This way you can make nice relavant one-way-links. You can also exclude from your selection all no-follow blogs. This one is highly recommended.
Check out my blog for more free seo tools.
Interesting idea
I wonder if you used your tool on my site? ;-)
The one concern I would have for that tool is that most blog's without no-follow tend to get spammed. This in turn will lower the value google puts in that link, possibly even giving it a negative value.
But nevertheless - it sounds like a very handy tool, thanks!
Fyi, it can be downloaded from www.commentkahuna.com, however I am not affiliated with this website!.
Edit: Fyi2, this app is Windows only - not for OS X.
Drupal is.,
It is realy sounds nice, thank god for creating drupal
does is realy helps for SEO?
if it does, how?
RE:
Your blog is full of cool info. Keep up the good work.
Awesome Post
This is EXACTLY what I was looking for.
Thanks so much!
Thanks for the post, nice
Thanks for the post, nice choice of pub
I would have to agree with
I would have to agree with you
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