Drupal 6 Search Engine OptimizationDrupal 6 Search Engine Optimization is a new Drupal book authored by Ben Finklea and published by Packt Publishing. It’s a practical, step-by-step guide that takes the mystery out of Drupal search engine optimization (SEO) by showing you the tricks of today's top marketing pros to achieve top ranking in the search engines.

Packt Publishing is generously offering a 15% discount to any Drupal.org readers. To purchase Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization with this discount, visit www.packtpub.com/drupal-6-search-engine-optimization-seo/book and provide the code DrupalSEO15 (case sensitive) at check out. Also, keep in mind that Packt contributes a portion of every book sale right back to Drupal!

About the book

Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization is a practical guide showing you which modules to install, which settings to use, and dozens of the most closely guarded "tricks of the trade" to get your web site optimized, higher in the search engines, and more profitable.

With this book and basic Drupal 6 knowledge – how to log in, create content, and install modules – you can build a perfectly search engine optimized web site. Each chapter uses clear step-by-step instructions and detailed screenshots to walk you through the Drupal SEO modules, configurations, and content you will need to increase traffic on your web site.

You start by reviewing the modules and tools that you should use to optimize your site, how to set up your analytics, and so on. Each subsequent chapter gives detailed instructions on implementing these features in Drupal. Later chapters cover topics like site organization, A/B testing, and automatic content tagging to maximize SEO and increase the conversion rate of your web site. When you have completed the book, you will have implemented the changes to your site required to rank well in the search engines.

If you want to maximize the return on investment of your Drupal 6 web site and gain a significant advantage over competitors who are not using Drupal, then this book is for you. Imagine how great you'll feel when your site is optimized to increase the number of visitors and convert them into paying customers.

Read an Excerpt Chapter

In order to help promote the book, Packt Publishing has provided a free download of Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization’s second chapter: Keyword Research.

Who should read this book

This book is written for Drupal site owners and those who create Drupal sites including themers, developers, programmers, and consultants. A basic understanding of Drupal will be helpful: what a node is, how to create nodes, how to log in to the admin sections of your Drupal site, and how to properly install and enable a module. No knowledge of SEO will be assumed but a basic knowledge of search engines is expected.

About the Author

Ben Finklea is the founder and CEO of Drupal SEO firm Volacci Search Marketing. He is the creator of the Drupal SEO Checklist module, he contributes to other SEO-related modules in the Drupal community, and is helping out on the SEO for the Drupal.org redesign. Ben is an internationally-known consultant, speaker, and trainer on topics related to SEO, Drupal, and building successful high-tech businesses. He lives with his wife and sons near Austin, Texas.

Comments

JohnForsythe’s picture

Nice idea for a book. There's lots to learn when it comes to Drupal and SEO, so I'm sure this is worth picking up for people new to search engine optimization.

SeedTreeLLC’s picture

This book is very helpful. Very easy to read and understand. I will use this as a basis for all my sites moving forward.

Thank you!

Mediacurrent’s picture

Ben,
Congratulations on a wonderful accomplishment - this looks like a great read!
Keep up the good work,

Dave
Mediacurrent

kidsleep’s picture

You should be proud. This is a VERY good book. Highly recommended.

Ben Finklea’s picture

Wow! There are some great comments here. Thank you very much - I'm glad the book is helping your SEO efforts.

The programmers have made Drupal the best platform for reliability and scalability.
The designers are making Drupal the easiest to theme and design.
The UI folk are making Drupal the easiest to use out of the box.
Let's prove that Drupal is the best platform on the planet for SEO.

Cheers,

--Ben Finklea, CEO
Volacci

benevolent001’s picture

Hi Ben Finklea

I read your book , i noticed one good thing in you as human being (Thanking everyone for his work ). You did that extensively in book and here too. How down to earth are you in real life would be interesting to see while meeting with you face to face and learn aspects of human relations besides Drupal SEO from you :)

Thanks for such a good book. I enjoyed reading that.

Anonymous’s picture

What makes Drupal a better CSM for SEO (and for SEO only) than Wordpress?

hass’s picture

Wordpress is a Blogging system and NOT a CMS.

@Ben: Thank you very much for your book. Got it yesterday... :-)

silverwing’s picture

@hass: WordPress is a Content Management System - it's just that it's content is usually sequential blog-type posts.

Pathauto module is really the key (for me) to SEO - it's far more mature than anything wordpress has in renaming urls that help make search engines take notice - if you do it right.

~silverwing

Anonymous’s picture

Wordpress is a system that manages content = CMS

q.e.d.

How good and how speicialized it is is another thing. Years ago i made a company website with wordpress. No blogging section at all. Well that was before i knew Drupal, but i did work very well. The customer could manage his content. Btw, the user backend in Wordpress is still much better than Drupal. I's getting better, i.e. the D7UX project os awesome, but the average user can still work easier with Wordpress than with Drupal. I know many SEO guys that only use wordpress. They usually don't have lots of functionality in their site. They tend to be crappy content providing pages. But for that reason there are tons of SEO plugins for wordpress.

I love Durpal for the total package, it's better than the rest, but i don't think it is the best system in every single aspect.

hass’s picture

Wordpress is a software of type Weblog software from the first day. It has only violated by a few to get a few CMS features inside for all who started with blogging only and found out they need more. For not loosing this users to Drupal, Joomla and others it may be extendable by plugins to a pseudo-cms... also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordpress -> citation: "Weblog software". This cannot compared to real CMS systems.

Anonymous’s picture

So why don't you cite your whole source then?

"WordPress is a blog publishing application and content management system"

hass’s picture

History wise this is not correct. Wordpress is a blogging system. Also see the right box, it says type "Weblog". Search for "wordpress CMS". All articles say - "Wordpress could be used as CMS" or "How to use wordpress as a CMS" or "WordPress as a CMS" - and other wordings. Only for the reason that Wordpress is able to create "pages" since 1.5 doesn't make it a full CMS system. You may be able to extend it to an CMS, but in the basics it's not.

And the reason is as I said earlier - this was only done for the reason that people have started with Wordpress and after some time they figured out a blogging system only is tooo limiting and they need more features.

More examples:
http://wordpress.org/ -> title: WordPress › Blog Tool and Publishing Platform - They should know best what type of system they have build.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Pages#WordPress_as_a_CMS -> You can use WordPress for basic content management. If you do, you'll probably create a large number of pages for your content. -> "Pages" don't make a CMS.
http://kb.siteground.com/article/What_is_WordPress.html -> What is WordPress? WordPress is the most popular web blogging software because it provides:

Again - all this basic features don't make a bloging system a full CMS. :-)

Anonymous’s picture

So what is your definition of a CMS?

I would suggest this one:

"A content management system [...] is a computer application used to manage work flow needed to collaboratively create, edit, review, index, search, publish and archive various kinds of digital media and electronic text."
-Wikipedia

crutch’s picture

As a developer, CMS could be Content Management System, Content Management Server, Content Management Solution, Content Management Software, whatever...

CMS covers Drupal & Wordpress. Drupal is a CMS for most any solution and is very feature rich. Wordpress primary purpose is for blogging but can be sliced and diced as needed.

Drupal is a Content Management Software that, I think, is the best open source launching pad for a customized solution per purpose, client, user...

maxibaut’s picture

It's a good and fast read for a drupal 6 beginner.

Samuel Lavoie’s picture

I really like the idea to bring more SEO tips and tricks to the developpers who in the end are the people building sites. Of course this is about onsite SEO which is often only half of the story, the other part almost purely marketing.

esafwan’s picture

This is a comprehensive article of search engine optimization for Drupal.
http://safwan.in/drupal/drupal-search-engine-optimization-seo-tip

bappea23’s picture

Congratulations on a wonderful book . it will be very much helpful for me