Hi there! I've been using Drupal for a while now but only just now decided to try posting to the forum. Our primary website is located at the following URL.
It employs a customized Marinelli theme and also makes use of the Commerce module for the ordering pages (separate Drupal install--long story). I'd be interested in hearing any feedback on it as well as suggestions for getting us higher up in search engine rankings. We just recently began offering a new service which is a non-invasive method for prenatal paternity testing and I've found that we do not show up in a Google search "prenatal paternity test" until page 12. :-(
I've had a lot of suggestions for improving our page rank, from segmenting the website into a subdomain for each page (?!?) to including our URL in my signature on other websites which I've done here. I'm a little hesitant on the first suggestion because of the work involved and on the second because I don't want to "spam" our brand on web sites where it might be considered irrelevant.
One other concern--I have been getting a message from Drupal that I need to update the script but upon further investigation it says we are on Drupal core version 7.7 and need to "upgrade" to version 7.1.7. That sounds more like a downgrade but I will implement if that is the consensus here. Thanks in advance for any feedback, ideas and suggestions you can provide. I promise not to be offended. :-)
Comments
I am pretty sure it said 7.17
I am pretty sure it said 7.17 which is newer that 7.7
The subdomain comment does not make sense and from what I know could work against you.
As for putting your URL out there, it goes both ways, if the link is on a site where the context makes sense it should help but otherwise can lower your ranking.
You are correct
Thank you nevets for the feedback. You are right that it says 7.17. I guess I was reading it as 7.1.7 rather than 7.(seventeen) which would be newer than 7.(seven). I just need to get in the mindset that this is how the versioning is written.
The subdomain suggestion was brought up by a colleague and was accompanied by about three pages worth of explanation, most of which didn't make much sense to me. It just sounded like a lot of work to segment our website in such a way with separate Drupal installations (but using the same database) for each subdomain so I dropped the idea for the time being.
Getting my URL out there... did posting it here hurt or help? :-) I don't plan on spamming this or other forums I just wish I understood the methodology behind SEO a little better. Basically, I have management telling me that we need to show up on page 1 instead of 12 and without having much in-depth knowledge of the subject nor a tie-in with these types of sites, I feel a little powerless.
Thanks again for the helpful feedback! It looks like I have an upgrade coming in the very near future.
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placing the link is likely to have no impact based on: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=96569
The following is the HTML the renders in the browser when users place links on drupal.org
note the rel="nofollow" tag