By carltonrsmith on

Hi All,
We launched a Drupal site (for our ecotravel company) last January, but I've made some recent updates I'd like the share.

The www.ietravel.com homepage has a new slider with an expedition search functionality that I'm really proud of.

Our product pages have a new right-hand sidebar that gives more prominence to the calls to action. See galapagos islands cruise product page.

Some things that need to be improved:
Not crazy about the Lightbox 2 module we're using for the image gallery. See Galapagos travel photos page.
For one thing, I've determined it's not SEO-friendly and is outputting duplicate titles and URLs.
Does anyone have any recommendations for another module that would give me the ability to create a unique title, URL, and meta description for each slide?

My landing page template is was custom designed by the first Drupal firm we used. I feel it's been somewhat effective for PPC, but I've tried using them for SEO landing pages and they're not getting ranked. Please see costa rica tour landing page here. In all likelihood, it is because it's "unconnected" from the site nav, which was intentional for PPC, but I now believe it's not the right use for an SEO campaign.

The hardest thing about Drupal one year in is that I don't feel self-sufficient. I have built and maintained many Wordpress sites and I find them easier to work with. I don't feel capable of trying to install my own plug-ins or even do simple things such as build a webform. Thus, I am still having to rely upon a firm for web development. I would like to become more self-sufficient ultimately.

If anyone has any tips/books/resources to recommend, that would be great. And please provide some suggestions to improve the links I submitted above.

I look forward to your feedback!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

john_b’s picture

john_b commented

Looks good, In fact it looks great.

Drupal takes time, a year is not much, though people with computer science background get there faster. The site is impressive.

I am not an SEO guru but someone whose sites I work on has a track record. On that basis I would say (aside for the question of which terms you want to rank for) there is a whole menu of stuff you can improve. Most SEO is off-page.

For on-page you are lacking lacking RDF of any kind (it is said by some SEO 'gurus' that this is very important, and that the D7 core RDF works better than D6's contrib). Features like stumble upon, google +1, twitter feeds, podcasts, videos, blogs, customer reviews all help. Far more content, regularly updated, on homepage seems useful for Google in our experience.

Page load speed, also rated by Google, is good considering I am reading it from London, the only thing missing on yslow is using cookie-free domain for static content, which may be more hassle than it is worth. Is there any reason you are not using Varnish, which is great for anonymous users? I personally would not run a Drupal site without it, but as said you are doing pretty well without it.

Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors

carltonrsmith’s picture

carltonrsmith commented

I appreciate your positive thoughts and feedback. I have seriously been looking at upgrading to D7, however, the firms(s) I have spoken with regarding this have both been explicit - it would be expensive - more than $10K - because so much "discovery" time would be needed to make sure all modules could make the transition.
Does that estimate seem inflated to you?
Upgrading would probably not only make my SEO better, but also help with the photo gallery issue as well as adding ecommerce elements, which I plan to do soon.

john_b’s picture

john_b commented

I find the quote / guide price entirely realistic. If you put it out on paid services here you will get lower offers from freelancers (like me). My impression is that a top Drupal shop will be very expensive but they know they can bring the resources to get the work completed to a high standard. A freelancer will take on the job, possibly expressing confidence, hoping that it will go OK, but he knows (or should known) that it might turn out be a much bigger problem than expected. What happens then depends on various factors, including your attitude to price and deadline, and his.

If you told the Drupal shops, or if they noticed, that you are using a Fusion theme + Skinr module, the price could potentially be much higher, as there is no upgrade path for Skinr. The Fusion handbook says:

Skinr has been replaced by Fusion Accelerator in Drupal 7. Skin formats are completely different, and you will need to rewrite your skins.

If it was my site I would I would be thinking about a more step-by-step approach, rather than a single, possibly expensive, decision to go for the upgrade all at once. On a dev version of the site I would first upgrade to latest version of D6 (unless you have it already). Then override anything exported to code using Features module. Then upgrade Views 2>3, Panels 2>3, convert slideshow Views Rotator (no D7 version) > Views Slideshow, and make sure the site is working. Cast an eye over other modules that could cause upgrade problems and if necessary get the site working without them in D6.Then disable Skinr and look to see how badly broken the site is. Then take an executive decision about how much of the them to recreate in static css files, whether to go for a new theme (possibly cloning the current appearance, which is good), or whether to simple follow the upgrade path for the theme in http://fusiondrupalthemes.com/support/theme-developers/upgrading-subthem... and rebuild skins.

There is almost sure to be other debugging after the upgrade, even if all modules have an upgrade path....

Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors

carltonrsmith’s picture

carltonrsmith commented

Hi Again John B.,
I sincerely appreciate your thoughtful response. I'm wondering if we could have an offline conversation. I'm looking for some freelance help, and also, possibly some instruction as we go (I want to become more self-sufficient in Drupal).
I will make an inquiry through your website.
Thanks so much!

darrell_ulm’s picture

darrell_ulm commented

Looks great! Love theme elements. Very nice!

I only have one caveat (and I say this as I am overhauling several sites at once).
Some of your images may be a bit large for fast load times which search engines take into account.

For instance on the image:
page: http://www.ietravel.com/about-ie/nature-travel-guides
name: AmazonGuide-JorgeSalas.jpg
size: 269.4 KB (275826 bytes)

I have some of my own image issues I need to deal with. :)

Great site! Great look! I am no themer, but your site looks great!

Cheers,