Presentation Outline and Notes

Outline

  1. Definitions (Info Architecture vs. SEO vs. SEM) - Dan and Brian
  2. Determining content and organization of site
    • what is site's emphasis? pick the keywords and determine the organization - Brian
    • picking keywords: google adwords tool and card sorting - Dan
    • Placement of keywords: title, URL, links, h1 etc., distributed throughout HTML body - Brian and Dan
    • navigation (keywords) - Dan
    • meta tags - Brian
  3. Drupal modules to use
    • Packages (Info Architecture, SEO, SEM) - Dan
    • taxonomy - Dan
    • pathauto - Dan
    • taxonomy browsing modules - Dan
    • page title - Brian
    • meta tags module - Brian
    • global redirect module - Dan
    • Show an example with Google - Brian
  4. Marketing the site
    • Inbound links - Brian
    • service links module and forward module - Dan
    • Exposure - tell friends, put out ads, upload tutorials to tutorial sites and link back to your site - Brian

 

Notes

Definitions

  • Information Architecture: "Information Architecture is the art and science of organizing and labeling websites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability." ("What is Information Architecture?" The Information Architecture Institute. http://iainstitute.org/documents/learn/What_is_IA.pdf Accessed on May 9, 2008.)
  • Search Engine Optimization: "Search engine optimization means ensuring that your Web pages are accessible to search engines and are focused in ways that help improve the chances they will be found." (D. Sullivan. "Intro to Search Engine Optimization." Search Engine Watch, Mar 12, 2007. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167921 Accessed on May 9, 2008.)
  • Search Engine Marketing: "Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, SEM methods include: search engine optimization (or SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion." ("Search Engine Marketing." Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_marketing Accessed on May 9, 2008.)

Information Architecture refers to the practice of organizing a web site and using labels that improve usability. A site should be organized in a way that the target audience understands or expects it to be, and it should use terminology and labels that the target audience understands. In other words, good use of keywords and good navigation are key factors in a site's information architecture.

Search Engine Optimization also requires good use of keywords and good site navigation. The keywords should match the ones users are typing into search engines, and the site should provide navigation that makes it easy for search engines to crawl.

Determining content and organization of site

Picking Keywords

To find keywords that your site’s visitors actually use, there are several methods.

One method is to find out what people are typing into search engines. You can use Google’s adwords tool to search different phrases and find keywords and keyword phrases people are using on Google.

If you can together some real users who are part of your target audience, you can also find out what keywords they would use by conducting a card sorting activity. To conduct a card sort, you write onto index cards examples of actual pages and content items you have or plan to have on your site, and then you have 3-5 people who belong to your target audience or user population arrange the cards into piles based on where they would expect to find that information. They then collaboratively decide on a label for each pile. They can create groups within groups. Use the labels they create for their groups as keywords for your site.

Drupal modules to use

Taxonomy

Allows you to create categories for the content on your site. Categories can be arranged in a structured hierarchy or can consist of free-form "tags."

Pathauto

Out-of-the-box, Drupal's core module Path allows you to manually create search engine-friendly aliases for your URL paths. Pathauto builds upon this functionality by creating these aliases for you automatically, based on rules you set up.

Taxonomy browsing modules

  • Taxonomy Menu - Automatically builds a menu based on a taxonomy vocabulary you select. Doesn't give you control over which terms to display on the menu and which ones to hide - it's all or nothing. Difficult to integrate with pathauto.
  • Taxonomy Term Menu - Allows you to add a menu item for the taxonomy page when creating or editing a category/term. Integrates with pathauto but doesn't allow you to manually change the URL.
  • Edit Term - Similar to Taxonomy Term Menu, it allows you to add a menu item linking to the taxonomy page when creating or editing a category/term. It allows manual creation of the URL alias, but there is a bug in the pathauto integration (the module maintainers have been alerted).
  • Tons more

Global Redirect Module

This module checks for links with system-generated URLs. It checks if there is an alias available and if so, it replaces the URL in the link with the alias.