Building SEO-Friendly Sites with Drupal

all right welcome my name is Dan thicker

and this is building SEO friendly sites

with Drupal and just get started here I

think well first I guess about me

sometimes we're shirts in the office I

guess but yeah I've been a computer geek

for like yes it is yes I the red light

means anyway let's see yeah no I mean

I've been a computer programmer for

thirteen some years and work at an

agency in the Twin Cities Minnesota when

you have to st. Paul called August - and

actually remember if anybody wants

afterwards I've got some Twin Cities

Drupal camp stickers here we can if

anybody wants them we can pass them out

or puts a Drupal campus this June but

the company I work at August ash we do

website design develop marketing and we

do have a kind of yeah okay we'll just

go with what is SEO and SEO stands for

search engine optimization you probably

didn't do that but in case you didn't

that's what we got

yeah the process of making it website

being a better understood by search

engines or optimized for search engines

search engines are kind of you know

basically some computers on the internet

that read your website and keep

information about it so that when

somebody want comes along say the most

well-known search engine engine is

Google of course there's also being and

probably I think DuckDuckGo is another

owners

there used to be a lot more of them do

but and what I what I think most people

are talking about when they say SEO or

internet marketing is really kind of a

team of people and this is what we have

in August - - it's two people who do a

lot of research on like best keywords to

kind of use on your website for various

you know I for various things and and

you know kind of setting kind of goals

Dwayne was talking but earlier today

like in his talk talking about goals

that you want you know to make your

website profitable or you know to meet

certain goals - with the functionality

your website and so our internet

marketing department definitely does a

lot of that but what I ended up doing as

a developer what did our marketing team

is really when they say hey we want if

we want to get to at doing X putting

these meta tags or changing the page

titles how can we do that and that's

what we're really going to talk about

today is how some tools that Drupal

provides as well as some Drupal modules

and other things that can help us make

those changes for the internet marketing

or SEO team another thing I see pretty

often is sometimes our clients you know

use a different company than us for

internet marketing or SEO and often the

first thing we'll get from them is our

SEO people say we want an FTP login to

the site and for the most part we say

we'd rather not if you don't have enough

you use the FTP login or you know FTP is

not even that secure so don't don't

probably don't do that but generally we

will try to give them some sort of tools

so that they can even just log into the

website and change some stuff they don't

have to muck about in learning how

Troopa works to some extent don't have

to worry about Drupal templates and that

type of thing

so that's kind of our goal today just

talking about various areas that we can

help internet marketing or SEO teams

with improving the content on your site

for search engines and these are this is

kind of the six different areas I'm

gonna talk about today so we'll just

jump right in domains

that's my vanity domain dan the man or

something like that

anyway the first thing I talk about is a

lot of websites have more than one

domain you can access the website on

maybe and what we really want to do so I

got a couple of them to go should go to

Daniel thicker calm or demand met for

some reason those those will all get you

to my website if depending on the server

configuration is set up you could

actually like the server could actually

respond to each of those in such a way

that each each of them looks like a

separate website that has the exact same

content and what we so would really

rather do is not have that situation and

so it would rather do is just configure

the search engines in search engines can

be confused and say this you know is

three different websites with the same

content and will decide that one of them

is important for next pages and one of

them is important for other pages it

just things can get confused so what we

recommend to probably do is redirect

domain one of the all of the domains

except for one to the main an exist the

example I've mentioned there too you

know my website go to Daniel thicker

calm it'll just lead your wreck too

daamn calm and it actually well it had

some problems right now because of HTTP

HTTPS and certificates but the way you

can do that is configuration on your

apache or nginx or whatever your web

server is serving husband hosting

providers will have different ways you

can do that

triple does have an HT Access file for a

that will kind of give me some just

actually there's some stuff already in

there that says just comment this out if

you are uncomment this and then and then

it will just do it for you

so that's one thing that's good a good

idea to do make sure you have all your

domains redirecting to one domain so

that surgeon does know this domain is

the main one the wwe.com or something

like that

and not it's one of the you get demands

for a lot of different reasons it's

either an old brand name of the company

or you know some sort of a marketing

campaign an alternate spelling of the

brand or something like that and so this

is one way to make sure the search

engines do not get confused with domains

and the next big section we're gonna

talk about its URLs URLs are a major

part of a website they're kind of like

the file system of the website URLs can

kind of look like well almost anything I

mean probably remember some days or

websites where you've seen where you

know the URL is sometimes well first of

all in URLs we have a domain and then a

the path and the path is what we're

really talking about here when we're

talking about URLs is the path internal

to your website I'm just thinking about

like yet in the 80 to 90 is kind of

these enterprise CMS systems the URLs

were mostly just like a bunches of

hashes of random letters and numbers and

you're like what does that all mean and

apparently it's some sort of database ie

it's somewhere thankfully Drupal doesn't

want a better job of handling those URLs

than that but yeah it's the domain part

of the URL redirect you to the server

thereof directs you to that server and

the path is kind of says here's where a

file is Drupal doesn't actually have the

files stored in that spot on the server

but it translates itself into saying

I see with father looking for and you

know generating that file basically with

an HTML page this is the part where I'd

like to plead for URLs paths of pages

making some sense so we'll talk about a

second by default Drupal just you know

actually the path by default is usually

just a node slash something which is not

really that pretty of a title and that's

where your SEO teams may say hey we want

the URL to look prettier than that we

want to have certain keywords in it and

we'll let them do that but first of all

I just want to say yeah URLs should

should be organized in some intelligent

way if you have a hierarchy of content

if you have kind of sections to your

website like that should be reflected in

what the URLs look like convey a

hierarchy meaning I like to say they

should be hackable which would by which

I mean for example here if you have you

know I'm I or I'm a website blog / 27 /

you know it probably would make sense if

it's a blog post called sample posts

from October 2017 for some reason and I

also think if you're gonna have those

slashes - doesn't make like kind of

folder structure within your site that

if you go to blog slash 2017 or blog

slash 20 17/10 you should actually be

the page there that actually includes

information related to blog posts in

that can be a little extra work

sometimes but if you're gonna have the

kind of folder structure like somebody

will try to just see like is there

anything at this page and it would be

nice if there is a thing on there even

if there's not in your

Lync on your menu were those types of

things yeah another thing that has to do

with both domains and URLs is robots.txt

I believe there's one in yeah there it's

a robusta txt included within Drupal I

believe but a you know it basically

tells these search engines here's what

we do or do not want you to look at and

and you know by default there's a couple

like Drupal doesn't if if there was

anything in the mid section that was

public like Drupal or your search

engines don't need to know what is in

there they don't need to index it they

don't need to look through it so maybe

you know people something in there that

says don't look at it mint pages yeah

yeah it'll box the admin pages and some

other kind of you know things that are

just kind of internal to drupal's

backing system you know but you won't

obviously want all your content in there

sometimes I've seen some weird things

where maybe a view is not exactly set up

correctly and there's kind of like an

infinite possibilities of you know URL

arguments or something like that and

I've found like search engines kind of

eating up the traffic on our website you

know indexing hundreds of thousands of

variations on these pages generally

that's something we should also probably

fix in the view but you could also use

the robots.txt file will say just don't

even bother trying to index all these

pages because they're not going to be

helpful for you that's what the robot

that chief teeth thing is for also I

just mentioned on staging sites you

could use just disallow everything if

you have a test or staging site where

you don't want this copy of the website

to be indexed by searching into these

engines the one caveat to that is make

sure it never ever ever gets to your

live web site because if it does then

the search engines are gonna be like

okay we're done we're leaving so and

then your clients are going to be not

very happy when they say

is no one looking at her website first

yeah

with URLs here we'll keep going and by

default like I said Drupal drupal's

internal URL structure is just node

slash node ID as a number that's

assigned to the piece of content not

very pretty not very nice so what is

built into Drupal is the URL alias

module or yeah blue bit the module

anyway it's burned up there by default

you turned each installed Drupal and

right there you can put whatever you

want in for the URL and usually to just

pick something slash about - us or

whatever you want to call it and that

can work for some people but we're gonna

look at another couple options here

there's a module called path Auto which

basically gives you a lot more tools for

handling what those URL aliases are it

requires the token module because it

uses these kind of little pieces of

these little bracketed keywords to call

tokens and by default it basically says

for all pieces of content instead of not

giving the URL alias always give it a

URL alias that starts with content slash

and then the an alien URL version of the

title it kind of filters out the spaces

and some funky characters and replace

the spaces with dashes and things so

that it's kind of a URL safe version of

your page title and that's by default

for all content types and it does

something similar for users and nodes if

you turn it every users and taxonomy

terms and that type of thing

but it also can be configured to - a lot

of different options now under the URL

aliases section of the admin there's a

whole section called patterns I believe

yes call patterns and basically you can

say for each content type I'd rather you

know for blog post let's have it start

with slash blog and then slash 20 tens

lat or you know like the years of the

blog posts the day of the blog post

slash then the title of the blog post

you could even do some things where you

know like make if you are pretty sure

that everything in this content type is

going to have a menu item you can

actually say you know the parent menu

items current path and then the title

and so then you kind of actually do get

this kind of menu based hierarchy built

into the site that can break down if

you're for some reason those posts don't

actually have a menu item then it

probably doesn't make much sense but so

there's there's some things to keep in

mind there but it is a lot of

configuration within pathauto and it was

just kind of you set up these little

patterns that say for this content type

make the URL look like this and for this

other content type make it look like

that

and then just by default when anyone

creates content you get a pretty nice

clean URL that will work for most cases

and in the admin under URL illnesses

there's an option if you by default it

just checks to you know use this use the

automatically generated one and if you

keep that on it uses therefore that page

if you check it uncheck the box you can

then set you know a specific one that

you can override the default

another great what module we recommend

to use with Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 sites

to both please apply for mostly ever

both sites is a redirect module the

redirect module basically allows you to

kind of well so we talked about you know

the internal Drupal path node slash node

ID and then there's also the URL alias

the redirect is is something that just

points to the alias of the of the page

so if you have let's see there's a

couple things maybe you want you know a

nice customized short URL for this page

you have an event coming up and it's

called splash or something then play

about summer already or something um but

then you can basically say hey I want

anybody who types in my domain calm

slash slash splash to get redirected to

this page which might be a little bit

longer URL like splash event

of the page and that's completely rel

and you might use that because then you

don't have to write out on a poster or

something like go to my domain comm / /

- event - 2018 this comité event that

comes to the splash and that's that's

kind of one one use of the redirect but

we'll talk about a couple more here -

when yeah the other thing was right here

actually so when a page title changes it

actually does update well I mean any a

part of that pattern that we're talking

about in the path auto module effect

part changes then it makes a new URL

without the redirect module anybody who

tries to go to the old URL will get a

page not found error and nobody likes a

page not found error so the redirect

module basically as soon as you install

it and turn it on it says oh I know

where this this is supposed to go it it

there's no page here anymore but if you

go

or to this new URL that's where it'll go

that automatically redirects all your

visitors to that from the old URL to the

new URL and then yeah in the admin of

that you like I said you could set your

own you redirects on the page it does a

couple more things to ya like I said it

went x1 it's change yet you can add your

own custom redirects for any reason you

want and then it also tries to if it

notices sometimes you change the title

of a page when you change it back and so

in the past there's been some issues

where it doesn't realize like it's

looping infinitely in redirect land and

then you're visiting never get to your

page in it now to try to detect those

and make sure that make sure that you

know it dynamically kind of shuts off

any redirects that are causing looping

issues there are some cases where if

you're living between two URLs still you

know two redirects then you can still

have an issue but hopefully that doesn't

happen automatically very often this is

another Drupal 7 module called global

redirect and this is also kind of like

we were talking about with domains

really about standardizing URLs Drupal

is pretty forgiving about URLs there's a

lot there's actually a couple of

different URLs paths you could put into

a website to get the same piece of

content and yeah in Drupal 8 most of

these features are included in the

redirect module itself so you don't need

to install an extra module but in Drupal

include on your website um let's see

yeah so here's my little example you

know the main page URL is just about a

schmee or something like that but it

also actually could be accessible at any

one of these other URLs like notes slash

one about - maybe with a slash on the

end or question mark Q equals about me

or index dot PHP Q equals node slash one

the last couple especially are some

weird if you see mostly those URLs at

the end it's probably either because

you're trying to trick people into doing

something silly or your web server is

configured incorrectly because the -

that question mark you thing actually

does something but it is kind of

Drupal's internal language but it

shouldn't actually be showing up for

users but what the globe will redirect

module basically does this takes all of

those last four and just automatically

redirects them up to the main path most

likely search engines are pretty good at

deciding this you know these URLs are

showing them pretty much the same

content they're probably the same thing

but it's nice to have you know a

redirect that said that enforces that as

well

and that's all we have about URLs but we

have a couple more tools we're going to

talk about and the first one is XML

sitemaps this is kind of XML sitemap of

my site which is just a bunch of blog

posts really it doesn't look this pretty

actually this is a style sheet on top of

the XML XML of course it's just kind of

like HTML code it's just a lot of you

know braces and brackets and things and

and URLs it but I include some

interesting information basically about

the URL when I was last updated and this

is another tool that search engines like

to have or it can be helpful to give to

search engines but the I think the

reason I recommend that sitemap is

because it's not it's not something that

visitors look at really but it's

basically the XML sitemap module

basically there's a couple other modules

- money that's an XML sitemap basically

just creates and keeps a running list of

all the content on your website and then

it's search engines if they come with

cross new content and I think it's

interesting will index it but you first

instead you give them a whole list and

say here's all the stuff I'm interested

in you've indexing and so then they can

probably see it faster and get it

included in their index faster so yeah

it's just a list of all the pages it

includes some information about when

they're updated and how often they may

be updated you can include with the XML

sitemap module a little bit of you know

content items menu items user pages if

there's something interesting on them

taxonomy term pages and there's an

opportunity going with with the module

to submit automatically the information

to Bing or

well Google and Bing generally you have

you know I you are l that you can say

hey I've got an exciting map here's the

five so there are a couple other ways to

do that and we'll talk about those I I

guess what I would say to with XML

sitemap the Drupal 8 it's still kind of

an early alpha beta version of the

module and it the administration

interface definitely is not working

perfectly yet it can be a little

confusing to configure it as well as I

find you have to kind of use there's a

link in there to rebuild the sitemap at

least once

after you configure what you have to do

is go into each content type and say yes

I want to include this in my sitemap and

then after that generally a rebuild the

list because otherwise it kind of just

includes the homepage in the list is

what I found so hopefully that's helpful

in getting it working but the other

thing we can do with sitemaps is

especially for google google is by far

the biggest search engine but the google

search console is it it's actually

they're doing a new design which looks

even more exciting this but it looks

kind of more like the new version of

Google Analytics in the Google search

console is that google.com slash

webmasters and all you need to do is

kind of verify that you are the owner or

manager of that site there's a couple

ways you can do that and they walk you

through it pretty quickly if you have

Google Analytics order consent DNS

records or set a file on the server you

can verify this site and through there

you can actually manually submit your

google site maps where your XML sitemaps

and if you want to it

well when after you submit that you get

actually information like Google could

tell you some information like hey it

says I should include this page but this

page is actually blocked by the

robots.txt file or

I can't access that page because

actually it gives me a 500 error or a

at that occasionally Google well once

you created you have to log in with a

Google account once you yes

log in with webmaster search console and

once you have that to that Google can

actually contact you email you and say

hey we noticed your website has malware

on it or something's really weird errors

are happening any website so it could be

nice to get that information as well

Google once you verify your site with

search console Google actually knows hey

this is somebody I can actually reach

out to to say hey I'm noticing weird

things on your website so that can

occasionally happen - there's even a way

in there - if you if they do detect

malware or something and start you know

and they detect something's wrong with

your site and they start penalizing you

and down indexing you can reach out to

them through that - and say hey I fixed

everything could you please let me back

in now and that can be helpful as well

let's see a couple more things to go

here I'm running through this pretty

quick okay

meta tags are another important part of

your website and most of this stuff is

just data that the search engines can

look at first of all we have the page

title the page title is pretty

self-explanatory but within each piece

of content here or a piece of content

you have a title but the title is not

necessarily the page title the page

title is actually the title tag that is

shown at the top of the page it usually

shows up as the name of the tab with a

window in your browser and by default in

Drupal when you eligible there's a site

name you set up words you could change

its website information page in the

admin but by default every pages page

title is the content title the title of

the node or whatever you're looking at

the view or something and then and then

the title of the site and that's the

default Drupal 7 Drupal 8 configuration

and this is a pretty pretty useful

default because it kind of reinforces

the you know h1 content of your page and

your page title or not have the same

title the same keywords and if you have

the name of your site in there too and

the page title and that's those are

usually some of the most important key

words on the page anyway but again we

can use some tools to make that even

better and the might wonder to talk

about is called meta tag and the meta

tag module will do even more for setting

page titles as well as some other

information again it uses the token

module to kind of use those code

bracketed keywords that have to do with

it

your website and like the like the path

Auto module that we talked about earlier

in the token system and uses you can

basically for each content type taxonomy

turn page user profile page you can set

kind of a default like let's see that

yeah for the page title should be this

there's other meta tag tags called like

descriptions or keywords and it sets

basically pretty sensible defaults most

pieces of content will have like a body

field and so it actually uses the

summary of the body field as the

description of the content so what and

there's also a link another tag of the

canonical URL which actually will always

put in the URL alias for that page as a

meditative by default too so that kind

of also reinforces that we say this is

the URL that you're supposed to use for

this page and but yeah there's a lot of

different things the meta tag module can

do it's a lot of little HTML code that

goes in the top of your page but you can

also customize the page title

description the keywords any of these

really through a little I mean screen

we'll talk about here and you can set

per content type again like use this

kind of patterning for this content use

different hide for like it's the content

and there's even some meta tags that

have to do with search engines don't

Index this page there's even a couple

more meta tag sub modules for what they

call Open Graph which is the use for

like Twitter and Facebook card things

like when you share a link just pops up

a little card with an image and and a

title I'll get the page a little

description maybe so there are some

options in there too that you can say

hey I just want you know when somebody

shares a link of Twitter and Facebook

that looks up looks a little fancier and

that just adds those meta tags you can

customize it

yeah and then here's the example of just

kind of when you talk to all the meta

tag module like I said you can on the

content type page say here's the

defaults for that kind of pin type right

I'm at a given page but when you're

editing a page you'll actually see -

like here's the pattern we're going to

use by default if you don't modify it

but on any page you can in this little

vertical tab here at the bottom you can

say actually I don't want to use the

default body field for the description

I'd rather write my own description or

I'd rather write my own page title and

if you know your internet marketing

department or whoever is that into the

content it's really interested that much

and setting not they're not using the

default end setting it whatever they

like they can actually do that way to

the administration interface or the way

of the website so there's a lot of

options there another one that I found

just recently that I think is pretty

interesting is called real-time SEO and

it actually uses a plugin that is pretty

popular in them in the WordPress world

it's like Yoast SEO plug-in and it

actually uses any host API and gives it

a bunch of information about here's what

you know the page meta tags and

descriptions and things looks like and

it actually it actually then gives you

something what a little picture of like

what it probably will look like in

Google or Bing and also some information

things like um and also some information

about like you can make actually bit

better

can you put it you can even put it as a

keyword that you want to rank pretty

well on but it would also say you know

hey your page title could be longer and

you could put more keywords in there so

give me some some tech tips and secrets

I don't know what secrets these tips but

give you some ideas how to improve the

content of your page for search engines

if you're trying to get into it two

words are taking keywords for Medicare

well yeah I think it's looking at kind

of a lot of the same things that the

search engines do look at it's kind of

the meta tags and stuff Google's looking

at America what's going to key word

Medicare yeah I mean well I think the

top you can say you can say a focus

keyword is kind of you know I'm looking

at you know how old was this keyword

ranked but it does look through you know

the content of the page what's on the

h1s and h2s and I believe some of that

other stuff to try to see it at least

give you some tips that might be helpful

and I haven't used it too much on most

of our sites I'd say but I think for

someone who is interested in writing

more SEO friendly content it could be

could be helpful you know it's like a

lot of these ins I don't know I I think

there is a certain amount of like within

Drupal like I'm giving a lot of ideas up

here's money modules you should involve

and I think most of these you should

install this one is maybe more like it

could be helpful for you it might not be

helpful and there's a certain point

within Drupal to that kind of every

every module you add makes you a mess

it-- milliseconds slower or maybe even

more than that and so you know you don't

want to have 500 modules on your website

you know if this is important to you to

have a really good SEO and that your

content editors are really looking at

what they can do to improve SEO this

might be the type of tool that helpful

um another up-and-coming area is called

RDF or schema.org and this is kind of

like hidden metadata in the page like

meta tags that can that it a little bit

more contextual Drupal Drupal core does

have an RDF module I'm actually not even

sure if it's actually turned on

automatically but I believe it is but

RDF is an open standard and it with the

w3c and basically it's um it's it's some

extra little attribute tags within the

pages div spans and other things that

say you know this is a certain kind of

data I know like when you turn the

already have module the like author

information and be posted by information

will have a version of it that's kind of

a fairy the posted by it usually just

says like you know date posted and it is

a date format that's whatever you set

and this will actually include like a

very standard date format within the

like metadata of the page that you can't

actually see but search engines and

other robots that search on the internet

could use this data find some more

information I know but if you actually

use the address field module it will

also you know include the whole address

information it will say this section

here you know it is a this section here

is the address part the section of the

city and this is the state this

zip code or country name that kind of

thing so that's where RDF can become

pretty helpful

I don't think let's the Drupal seventh

rdf does not do come that really helps

in my opinion your blade i think has a

lot more built into it we'll talk about

that here too schema.org is kind of an

extension of rdf it's also you could you

do a couple different standards like

json-ld or some other different types of

like including by the data in your page

but for drupal seven the schema word

module basically extends the RDF type

system by adding in the content admin

area you could say this is this piece of

content is you know it's a job listing

or it's a location of a place or you

know it's the location of the store or

something like that and then even for

the subfields you can actually say like

this this field is you know like if you

did do a job listing or something you

could say like this field is like what

kind of pay if it's gonna be full-time

or part-time weren't that type of thing

and this is a new one actually their

clients have been asking about a bunch

because like google recently said hey if

you love this human other information on

job listings then you know once people

search for drive listings will actually

not even go to your website but just

show like here's a bunch of down

listings on a google page or something

like that and it's one way to kind of

you know not just say here's a page that

has some interesting content like here's

a piece of a page that has even more

specific content that you can do kind of

whatever you want with and it can be

nice maybe I don't know it people may

not be going to your website as much to

view this information but maybe they're

more easily finding the information that

they're looking for if if they are not

looking for your information

um let's see yeah I think yeah much of

the schema.org information is included

in Drupal 8 we can want to configure it

a little bit more intraplate looks like

there's this RDF UI module that will

allow you to kind of in the UI again I

think that's some more of those type of

information and field information this

is not an area that I've looked at a ton

but it's I think it's a very interesting

place to look in the future and I think

more and more internet marketing groups

and SEO people may be looking at it so

let's necklace a bow back but the last

section I'm going to look at here it's

really talking about tracking scrapes so

that's actually just a boring graph from

my Google Analytics page but but what

I'm really talking about here is

internet marketing folks especially if

they're working with an advertising

company or you if you're sometimes even

though I know some of our clients are

even doing like paid at area like radio

ads or TV ads and the ad companies bill

even says or ads in the paper or

something and the tea and they act like

we want you to stick this piece of

JavaScript on all your pages or one of

the pages in order for us to track some

more information I don't even know how

it works exactly but this is maybe some

ways you can help them do that first I

mentioned Google Analytics is a free

analytics tool provided by Google and

basically you install this little piece

of code on your page and basically

Google just gets a lot of information

about who's visiting your web page and

put some nice graphs to it you can kind

of you could do a lot within it I don't

even know all the details but you can

you know set up like goals you can if

you have ecommerce include some more

information after an order saying this

is what they

this is how much they ordered and you

can actually tie that back to ads saying

people if you bought ads on Google you

can say you know how much did my ads

actually get me or how many times have

they actually filled x1 or buy X things

after they bought imagine so that's what

that's where you can really get kind of

that information on return on investment

on the Google Analytics module for

Drupal it's a it's a pretty good one I

mean if you want to you could just

include in your page template for your

whole site the little piece of Google

code and that might be just all the

information you want it for Google

Analytics the Google Analytics module

does a couple extra pieces of JavaScript

in there for example you could tell it

to actually send Google an event thing

when you click on a file download or

when you click on an external link so

you can kind of keep track of like where

we're going a little bit further than

the default Google Analytics code gives

you it's also pretty easy you don't

actually even have to copy of this huge

block of code you just have to copy out

your little ID number and paste it into

the admin of Google or of Drupal and it

will automatically put the Google X code

light in your page there's a couple

other things so like I said some of

these websites have a lot of these

little JavaScript pieces of tracking

codes or JavaScript sometimes clients

will use something with two of like

crazy egg there's another type of

analytics tool of like where people are

moving their Mouse around on their

website or clicking on different parts

of the page and those can be helpful

what I found is these this Drupal 7

module for tracking code really you can

it gives you kind of a really easy way

in the admin to say hey this little

piece of JavaScript I want it at the top

of the in the meta data area live page

before the body tag

the page where I want at the very very

bottom of my page and that kind of

sticks it in those places that

JavaScript usually goes and you can also

like you can with blocks say I want to

show it on only these pieces of content

these types of content were only only on

these paths or either not on all pages

but not these paths that kind of thing

so this this is just one of those tools

where you could say you know hey on this

you know thank you page for the contact

form instead of actually editing the

template of that page or the content of

that page just go install the tracking

code module and say hey just on this

page include this piece of JavaScript

that was tracking code module we've used

it a lot through the seven sites I

believe I'm not looked at it too much

but there is a module on for Drupal 8

called asset injector that actually you

can inject both JavaScript and CSS and I

think you can do those even a little

more complicated things with it the

other tool you could use is something

like Google tag manager is becoming more

and more popular and that is basically

like Google Analytics just a piece of

Google code you put on every page and

then in Google's web site you can

actually do a lot of these same types of

things so on Google's website you could

say in the tag manager interface you can

say hey only on this page add this piece

of JavaScript or you know on every page

but this paint but this page or that

other page just include the JavaScript

here so then it's pretty impressive what

they got in there actually like you can

kind of like put stuff in there and kind

of keep it unpublished for a while and

publish it when you're ready

and that type of thing so we've started

using that a lot more on sites instead

of actually putting it right into the

website template or you've been

installing this tracking code module

the last thing I'll mention here is a

drupal module called site verify when

you use like stuff like Google search

console where you want to get the search

reduced or any quality a lot of things

you can even a lot of things you know

companies want to verify hey do you

actually own this website and then we

usually give you a couple different ways

to do that like add a little extra

minute egg in there in the website that

identifies what they can actually read

them at a tag and say oh yeah you are

you control the website because you put

it meta tagging now or you control the

website because you put it DNS record in

there and we talked about using that for

the search console to get access but

there are sometimes other reasons you

might do that and so this this module

site verify is just a really simple

admin to to help you do that if you

don't want to actually like for the most

part if if the client says hey we want

this little like a file it uploaded to

the website I will just maybe put the

file and get and it it's and you know

upload it to the website and that should

work fine but it's like if the client

really wanted to do that themselves this

will give you an admin interface where

you can turn on this module and then

they can upload files or add little meta

tags on whatever pages they want and

just do it through the admin so

yeah I mean that's another thing I

mentioned too is just I'm kind of a

little bit against adding little

verification codes and meta tags just

because this one search engine is

looking for it but on the other hand

every single visitor your website has to

download this little snippet of stuff

that doesn't mean anything to them it

just means to me like you're just

wasting kilobytes of download speeds or

something so wait wait going sorry when

doing Google Google search console

verification I usually like to pick one

either like you know hey this account is

already associated with a Google

Analytics account and then I'll just

kind of let you through or include

actually a file that's specific to

Google and that Google can look for that

not everyone else has to know I have to

download that content but you know it

it's you know it's like less than a

kilobyte of data I suppose on every page

so it's not like you know it's the most

downloaded thing ever if it is there but

um yeah site verification module also

site verify is only really now for

Drupal 7 as far as I've seen but there's

other ways to get around that to you

know adding meta tags in different

places and

fighting files so I think that's all I

have for today

hopefully I was and if anybody has any

questions I'd feel free to take them rap

anymore

yes I just wanted to mention one thing

about tips are great to LMOs direct

modules there's one other that I like

Matt redirect naturally and I match

redirect does and so if you haven't

website where you've done a lot of

rearranging or something and you want to

just say take everything that was in

this section and redirect because

there's not a direct one-to-one

correlation with new pages right right

everybody who's going to what used to be

called this now to be caught this you

can you can set it up with a wild card

in your master yeah that's so just with

recording it and the module called match

redirect I couldn't do more about kind

of matching kind of a wild card

searching kind of system that's

interesting I did not use that myself

but any more questions comments anything

I missed

yeah sorry

well um I think you know that's a good

question

I I guess I haven't used it on a site

that has like 100,000 pages or something

like that because it is kind of stored

in its own database table but I don't

think that should be a really big

performance issue yeah I don't know of

one but I you might have may have had

some issues that I have experienced

myself either but yeah I think it's you

know it's pretty well used by you know a

lot of websites I haven't looked at on

drupal.org at the meta tag page you can

say like this many you could see like

this one I think it's probably hundreds

of thousands of websites are probably

using them edit a blog you want so I

think yeah very early on when you were

talking about URLs you're talking about

them being having a higher RPM yeah well

I thank you but I have one website where

we have so many so much in the hierarchy

that I now have some URLs that are like

they're truncated because it's too long

do you have any success

maximum length for useful URLs or

another way to approach that yeah that's

that's a good question I yeah there is

kind of a max I think by default these

URL systems really don't allow like up

to two hundred and fifty or fifty-five

characters or something like that and I

would say I mean most likely at some

point too far in their the search

engines are not really going to look at

those four keywords anyway so maybe

there's a reason not to do it that way

either but yeah I don't know I bet

there's probably something in the that

you could add into the token module that

would say like you know just cut cut off

this you know if your taxonomy term name

or your page name is Lilly long in a

cut-off a little orderly or something

flatter

you know rounded up to write it down to

so maybe there's something like that but

I'm not exactly sure I have seen that

once or twice before and usually tried

to maybe make the category page names a

little short or something and the

particular site I'm thinking of if I had

it to do over

they wouldn't have bothered so for

example there's like there's three

different kinds of blogs on this site

rather than having you know this whole

path to get to that particular why I

probably just could have you know used a

descriptive name of the blog yeah that

can happen to then you might get yeah I

mean what I have come to is if you do

use the path auto module and you change

what it is

change what the alias is there's ways to

kind of clear all those out and it

should add so I mean I would maybe try

it on dev or test copy or local copy

first before you and verify that at

least you know a couple of various pages

work but you know try it out and see if

you can actually reorganize the URLs you

have the redirects and the aliases those

things working pretty well it should

kind of all redirecting and yeah if I

was in hand anybody wanted to uh yeah

schema metatag papa

yeah yeah okay so that actually will

include json-ld parts in the meta tag

area or page or something like that okay

nice then you have Jason LD is one of

the format's that schema that earlier

accepts and it's usually like the rdf

usually kind of includes all the

metadata in different tags throughout

the page the jason LD kind of usually

just put it in one little block of jason

code that's to some extent kind of

duplicates you know the content you know

it sometimes is a little easier to use

that kind of get it in the right format

that schema or wants then of that higher

page is organized so yeah that's that's

helpful thank you yeah matter is with a

lot of sites builders designers

watch it put into a lot of our these SEO

well the next time I'll cite Mac a lot

of the stuff you mentioned already but

one of the things is trying to get our

clients so I actually do things like

incorporate keywords and page titles

and that's not I mean it's not like we

can go back in this or we would get paid

to go back in and rewrite their page

styles to help us ego rush all right do

you have any resources to direct clients

to to help them grasp no I think let's

see I mean there's a lot of research

done Eric resources on kind of SEO and

keywords that type of thing just kind of

around the internet I guess I'm not

exactly sure I know like yeah there's

one like search engine land or moz.com

search engine land if another website

yeah and then moz.com is a second one

there's some you know kind of search

engine news and and I think moz.com is

like one of the top search engine

companies there's very SEO companies

worldwide or something but you know

those are maybe some good like I've

definitely looked at those for some

other blog posts on how things should

should work I think you know let's see I

think I think Drupal and if you solve

most these modules I think it does a

pretty good job of giving SEO to a point

where it's you know um you just write

good content on your page is going to

kind of just show up to some extent but

you can always kind of you know really

get deep into like oh hey this keyword

is actually not really used by a lot of

our competitors but a lot of people are

searching for it

and so maybe you want to start

optimizing for that keyword instead and

I think that's where you know you

usually get like an SEO or internet

marketing company coming in because the

client says something like hey we're not

getting as much traffic as you want and

we want to improve that more so that

that's one you have to do a little more

research on that here's what you're

looking for that make sense yeah even so

I mean I've noticed a lot of times that

clients will for instance title unknown

something that is maybe not really

related or it's to the content or it's

so generic that is fine with us right

right you know like great a benefice we

kind of stuff I mean was I playing today

yeah yeah so it's that's you know and of

course see the stuff after the fact

because we're not actually adding the

content right yeah I think content I

think they're not really you know

writing content and that's such a way

that it makes it's very helpful for the

reader or for search engines in general

um yeah I you know I guess what I would

do very often is just kind of say hey

you know I noticed this and I think it

could be confusing maybe for your

clients or for your customers and maybe

try just say hey like this would make

more sense I think you know and just try

to try to you know put them in their

shoes I guess you know yeah I face that

same issue with clients of two most

important things with page title and

page description th title is important

for Google to find out what the keywords

are so they can go there see the

description is important for people who

see a results on Google what would -

sentence

show up yeah yeah I've written a

one-page description of what those

elements are what's what should be put

in them into my clients so they could

write that stuff so I can yeah I am by

no means an SEO expert have a one-person

C so that means I design I build I sure

a certain level of SEO for my clients

which isn't a whole lot but I'd like to

share a link that I found really useful

it's it's very very simple for those of

us who don't really know much about SEO

and then perhaps to share with your

clients also and it's back link Oh so

back link and with an O at the end that

SEO - okay exactly Okami slash SEO -

this - here yeah and it's just got and

I'll probably six or eight tips based on

what Google is really looking for right

now and yeah it's simple that's like

stuff if you have the opportunity to

implement

anything at all in terms of content

descriptions I'm just like you're

working on it's definitely yeah that's I

think true likely the pages title the

keywords that you have in the URL and

and actually the you know the URL of the

name of the site reminds me to like

backlinks is when they call like links

that are going to your website and those

are all kind of very important things

that search engines like Google and most

people will use to kind of say hey this

is a important website people in looking

to your website you have some important

information so well subject back there

somehow important search engines I think

these days they're pretty important

because the idea yeah

like I think if no one's linking to your

website and that's like whoa you know

maybe no one finds this useful that's

something you know that maybe the search

engine shouldn't either

but I think you know if you I think

there's also the other side of that too

where you just have a bunch of random

websites that have nothing to do with

your industry and nothing to do with

yeah they're just swarming with a bunch

of spam whatever so I can help you

either because Google is pretty smart at

saying hey this is somebody just trying

to game our system so you know it that's

where like she said every year kind of a

slightly new thing that's going on

because Google's always trying to keep

one step ahead of has the SEO people or

the spam people that are trying to game

the system that they've just created so

it's always a little bit changing but

hopefully this at least you know my

presentation gave you some ideas of like

here's things you can do that will at

least get things started and help you

know if you have an internet marketing

group that's doing a lot more help them

to kind of manage that without having to

you know we've dive into the triple code

so let's call it throw a wildling thing

out there and that is I find that it's

useful on through this super often but I

find it useful look at silver alloys

because it's remarkable to me that like

to the Box yeah that's true

yeah I was gonna say look at server logs

that's not really that exciting because

it's not gonna I think most of it's just

just noise yeah but a couple things

about it is that directly a5 something

which you can block it with HD access

for instance yeah fancy but it also it

will tell you although you can find this

out in the Google search console to

it'll actually tell you what pages are

being indexed by but you know by Google

or by being or by Yahoo or whatever yeah

yeah so that's sometimes worthwhile

because yeah in the logs the bots will

say actually hey we're at Google about

oh yeah Google Mike to say something

card good for some part of Google that's

that's where I have seen a couple times

where like you know a few configured

wrong and we have a million URLs and

Bing just starts trying to index all of

them why is our server so slow and it's

like well yeah this is trying to index a

thousand different variations of this

page and some happy actually end up

blocking them for a little while and you

know fixing the issue or something like

that

that district yeah looking through the

log female board but I think we're out

of time but if you have any questions

for me I'll be standing right up here if

you want a Twin Cities drupal sticker

posted triple camp

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