Search Engine Optimization

SEO Fluff, Marketing & Other Nonsense

Submitted by mgifford on

I'm the first to admit that search engine optimization is important. I know that there is a lot to be learned about how to drive people to your site and ensure that they keep coming back to it. Two years ago it was estimated that there were 63 billion pages indexed by search engines. How will your site show up in the first pages of Google results if you don't get an edge over everyone else?

I know that there really are 'SEO Experts' out there, that know the web well and have seriously researched search engine behavior. But there are an equal number of people who have taken a course or two, bought some software to help them and whose real strength is selling their service.

A lot of 'SEO Experts' like to put content in static HTML pages in which they have complete control. Unfortunately, this makes the content harder for anyone in the organization to update and also makes it impossible for tools like Path Track to be able to monitor folks through your site. We recommend leveraging Drupal rather than building a hybrid site.

Sitemaps for Public Sector Organizations

Submitted by mgifford on

Government in Google Font thanks to http://googlefont.com/Earlier today I stumbled across Google's Tools for Public Sector Organizations and was reminded of yet another benefit of adapting a forward thinking CMS like Drupal for many government agencies. 

Google claims that "four of five Internet users reach government and other public sector websites by using Google and other search engines", and they probably have the best stats of anyone on this subject.  Their site provides some case studies for the use of XML Sitemaps, which can be quite useful for those in the government trying to grapple with how this applies to them.

Upgrading Websites The Right Way

Submitted by mgifford on

I've come across two websites of interest that have been upgraded to Drupal recently and made the same fundamental mistake. So I thought it was worth while blogging about it in the hopes that it might prevent some other good site making the same mistake.

The problem seems to be in not understanding that it is considerably easier to modify the old links on your own site than it is in the browsers, links & caches of users and search engines. Recognizing the legacy that your site has had is a critical mistake in upgrading a website.

Jumping to Drupal Will Help Your Search Engine Results

Submitted by mgifford on

I was contacted by a company earlier this week that wanted to enhance their search engine results and wanted to incorporate some dynamic aspects to their website to help them do this. After looking at their site and thinking about our experience with SEO I thought that there would be some huge advantages to migrating their site over to this Content Management System.

Our Experience with Drupal's Search Engine Optimization

Submitted by mgifford on

Earlier this week I was pleasantly surprise to see how high OpenConcept was ranking on a number of interesting search terms related to our work. I was simply reviewing our logs an the search phrases which were coming up in the recent past. We are presently using thee search keywords module for Drupal so we can easily browse through search terms that are being used by our visitors.

Subscribe to Search Engine Optimization