Install Drupal

Now that you’ve created your database, go back into your favorite browser (I use
Chrome: http://www.google.com/chrome) and go to localhost:8888/d7-demo/install.
php. Choose the “standard” installation profile for now (see Figure 1-8); it will
take care of some basic configurations for you. On the next page, select English as the
installation language. If you need to install it in another language, there’s a handy link
on that screen that will show you how to do it.

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Internal link architecture

Website linking architecture is important when it comes to SEO, especially when your
site has many pages or is continuously growing. To create a sound linking structure for
your site, you will likely need to partition your site into distinct subsections (or categories),
forming a uniform (inverted) treelike structure. Sometimes creating
subdomains can help in this regard. Other times, using XML Sitemaps can help showcase
your most important links.

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Long-term content

If you use Google to search for any word that appears in the English dictionary, chances
are Google will provide among its search results a result from Wikipedia. The English
dictionary does not change much over time. Sites containing English language dictionary
definitions, such as Wikipedia, are well positioned to receive steady traffic over time.
Most computer programmers use Google to find answers to their development problems.
Sites providing answers to such problems can also benefit from this, as they will
receive a steady flow of traffic.

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Creating custom website widgets

Everything starts with an idea. Creating custom widgets
can be as simple or as complex as required. You can create some website widgets by
simply creating custom HTML pages. Others you can create by utilizing Atom/RSS
feeds, Java applets, and Flash. In this section, we will create a sample HTML-based
widget to illustrate the concepts of link baiting and website widgets.
Let’s suppose you own a site that sells many different brands of alarm clocks. To promote
your site, you want to create your own link bait. Specifically, you want to create
a simple digital alarm clock widget (called Wake Up Service) that any site can link to
or use. When the widget is used on other sites, you specify the condition that your link
must be present to use the widget.
On your site, you also want to ensure that your link bait is highly visible (typically
placed at a strategic location for easy recognition).

Widget promotion and distribution.
You can proliferate your widgets in many ways. You can
do it from your site, you can use a third-party site, or you can employ both methods.
Make it easy for your visitors by offering simple cut-and-paste HTML code such as the
following:
<a href="http://scripts.seowarrior.net/quickpanel/wakeup.html"
target="_new">Wake Up Service</a>
This sample code shows the link to our Wake Up Service widget, which will open in a
new window. For website widgets such as the one we created in this example, you could
also write a small article that will be syndicated along with all of your other articles.
People subscribing to your feeds will be able to read about it and propagate the information
if they find it interesting.

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Web server compression?

The best way to understand web server compression is to think of sending ZIP files
instead of uncompressed files from your web server to your web user. Sending less data
over the network will minimize network latency and your web users will get the file
faster.
The same thing applies to web spiders, as the major ones support HTTP 1.1. In fact,
search engines would appreciate the fact that they will need to use a lot less network
bandwidth to do the same work.
Web server compression is a technology used on the web server where you are hosting
your pages. If you have full control of the web server, you can set up this compression
to occur automatically for all websites or pages this server is hosting.
If you do not have this luxury, you can set this up in your code. To set up web server
compression in PHP, you can use the following PHP code:
<?php
ob_start("ob_gler");
?>
<HTML>
<body>
<p>This is the content of the compressed page.</p>
</body>
</HTML>
You can enable web server compression in your code in another way that is even easier
than the approach we just discussed. You can use the php.ini file that usually sits in
your root web folder. If it does not exist, you can create it. You can also place this file
in your subfolders to override the root php.ini settings.

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Website Performance Traps

Website performance is important from two perspectives: the web spider’s and the web
user’s. If your site has many thousands of pages, you will want to make sure your site
response times are reasonable.

Web spiders are busy creatures. If any of your dynamic pages are computationally
intensive, the web spiders might give up waiting on your page to finish loading. In
technical terms, this is called timing out on a request.

Dynamic pages aren’t the only issue that will cause a web spider to give up. If your
website is running on a server that is hosting many other sites, it may be slow to respond
because of the overwhelming load caused by one of the other sites. As a result, your
website might take many seconds to respond. Another problem could be with your
web host if it experiences network latency due to limited bandwidth.
You can do some things to remedy these situations. The basic idea is to speed up page
transitions to any web client, not just the web spider. Consider using the following:
• Web server compression
• Web page caching

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Integrating FeedBurner with your site

Integrating FeedBurner with your site is relatively simple.
You can think of FeedBurner as your website’s feed wrapper service to make your
feed more compatible, more visible, and more easily tracked.

To redirect your existing feed(s), you can use the .htaccess redirect mechanism. The
following fragment shows an example of a permanent redirect and a temporary redirect:
RewriteEngine On
Redirect 301 /news.rss http://feeds2.feedburner.com/NewsFeed
Redirect 302 /news2.rss http://feeds2.feedburner.com/NewsFeedTemp


FeedBurner is still one of the most popular services for content publishers
who want to measure their content syndication subscriber base. After Google
acquired FeedBurner, many publishers reported bugs, including a significant drop in
their subscribed user base. Google claims to have fixed these bugs in addition to providing
more accurate reporting analytics. FeedBurner continues to be a tool of choice
for many content publishers. If you wish to use FeedBurner for statistical or marketing
purposes, you can redirect your existing feeds to FeedBurner.

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Traditional Marketing

The value of using SEO is clear. Studies have shown that organic search results are more
highly trusted than PPC (SEM) advertising. SEO is about having the right knowledge,
applying proven techniques, experimenting with new ones, and letting the search engine
do the rest. Naturally, the prerequisite to all of that is to have engaging content
and a quality product (or service). Stay away from:
• Making changes to emulate the competition without knowing why the change was
made
• Applying every SEO rule in the book (overdoing it)
• Not trying different keywords, and instead stopping at only one or a few
• Making frequent SEO-related changes without realizing the effects of previous
changes
The SEO work for each website is different. What is similar, though, is the actual SEO
process. You still have to go through the same exercise, regardless of whether you are
working on a new site or an existing one.

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SEO monitoring phase

Once the major SEO work is done in the implementation phase, the focus will be on
website maintenance. The maintenance phase takes care of problems (minor and major)
found in the (re)assessment phase. In many ways, the maintenance phase is similar
to the implementation phase.


The assessment phase uses the output of the monitoring phase as well as a series of
checklists (on which to base the assessment). This phase is also referred to as the
checkpoint phase. SEO checkpoints can be defined on a monthly, quarterly,
semiannual, or yearly basis. At the very least, quarterly assessments are required.
The point of the assessment phase is to see what is and isn’t working according to the
SEO plan. The assessment phase can uncover many problems.

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Microblogging with Twitter

Microblogging with Twitter has its limitations. You can do only so much with a single
tweet. You have only 140 characters to describe what you are doing. Anytime you want
to share a long URL, you may run over the 140-character limit.
To create the most efficient tweets, make them even shorter than the 140-character
limit. This way, anyone wishing to retweet your tweets can do so more easily. This is
your way of ensuring that your tweets can propagate to their fullest potential.
To solve this character limitation problem, you can use URL shortening services. In
addition to Bit.ly and TinyURL, you can also use BudURL.

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