By shojo on

Recently I found an interesting tool to evaluate the design of my website, Localghost. The site that provides the tools is Sitening. They analyzed my drupal 4.6.x website and came up with the following evaluation which I would like to share with the community.

Of particular interest to me was the lack of head attributes, the obsolete HTML, etc. butI wasn't sure what to make of the data. The fact is, I am a loyal drupal user, but one who doesn't have the design skills to really optimize my site. I modify themes in the most superficial way, but I am still happy with my site. We work very hard at providing original content in the field of education and I would like to increase our readership. Unfortunately, we never show up on google (I know...its a matter of linking popularity) and therefore never have much of a readership.

Is there anything to the analysis I received and is there anything I can do about it? I would appreciate the advice.

shojo

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.6.x

Comments

kowalke’s picture

kowalke commented

Check out this thread: http://drupal.org/node/36724

Looks like nodewords is the mod for your head attributes problem.

Maybe use a table-free template to get around the table issue? I Friends Electric is well-coded, for the most part: http://drupal.org/project/friendselectric . Creating your own is better, though, of course. I recommend "Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS," by Dan Cederholm.

I wouldn't worry too much about the SEO test results, though...in your case, they're mostly picking on stuff that modern seach engines don't care too much about. short urls and good, old-fashioned linking seem to be the biggies.

-Peter

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

killes@www.drop.org commented

I just asked them to analyse drupal.org and they gave 80/100. You may consider changing you theme to another one. I think that meta tags are vastly overrated.

http://www.sitening.com/tools/seo-analyzer/report/index.php?id=58077

Another two websites I built using Drupal got 80/100 as well. I guess the use of a tableless theme explains the differencs to yours. I suggest to use the box_grey as a basis for devlopment: http://drupal.org/project/box_grey
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pwolanin’s picture

pwolanin commented

...our Drupal 4.7 site go a 90/100. I'm surprised, since we haven't even put in path_auto:

http://www.sitening.com/tools/seo-analyzer/report/index.php?id=58111

We're using a theme developed from box_gray and it uses tables for the overall 3-column layout.

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shojo’s picture

shojo commented

Thanks everyone. I'll check out the themes issue. Of course a rock solid user base would be nice too and would make the SEO thing obsolete.

Theme develpment a big issue with drupal. I tried using different themes in 4.7 and find them to be a little buggy at times. Or I should say, they need more fine tuning. I wish I could go to a drupal class or something just to get my knowledge base a little better.

But I am devoted!

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kirkcaraway’s picture

kirkcaraway commented

I just used this to test my test site. It scored 55 in bluemarine. Simply changing to no-tables Friends Electric boosted the score to 65. While it says that you get penalized for tables, it does seem that you can get a pretty high score using bluemarine.

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

and I do NO SEO optimization. I use node/## for my posts.

My test site scratch.blkmtn.org got an 85/100 using Yahoo GRID CSS, but the mark down was I had less then 250 words and they recommended at least 300.

Both said this.

Your web page appears to be missing potentially important information inside the head element area. This may be caused by not having a title element or not having a description attribute inside of a meta element. Many search engines use the title element to understand what your page is about. The description attribute is often displayed in search results. If your description is missing or poorly written, users may not click on your link.
Missing Head Content

    * <meta name="description" content="">

-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

shojo’s picture

shojo commented

I added the node words module and increased my score by ten points. It is still quite low, 65, but perhaps when I update to 4.7.x it should correct itself.

That is, if there is anything "wrong"

I can hear'em clicking for my site now ;-)

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martin@drupal.org.uk’s picture

martin@drupal.org.uk commented

Just checked my 4.6 site it gets a 100/100 :) , so no need to update for that reason.
The theme validates and I use nodewords.

shojo’s picture

shojo commented

which theme do you use?

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martin@drupal.org.uk’s picture

martin@drupal.org.uk commented

Started with the plain1 theme, really like the code. Hope it helps :)

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

100/100
http://www.sitening.com/tools/seo-analyzer/report/index.php?id=69980

Running Drupal 4.72
Theme based on BlueMarine

with modules:
path_auto
nodewords
excerpt
gsitemap
robotstxt

I'm not too sure what these modules have to do with the rating, but I figured I would list them anyway.

-txcrew

yepitem’s picture

yepitem commented

these are what i am using:
gsitemap
nodewords
robots
excerpt
Also I use the clean url, this is very important.

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