SEO basics for Exponential sites #

This page is for website creators who want a site search engines understand. Most of what matters is already built in or one extension away; this page lists it as a checklist and points to the page that explains each item.

Contents #

1. What Exponential gives you
2. The checklist
3. One address per page
4. Content editors control
5. What to measure

What Exponential gives you #

The checklist #

• To do: Every page has a unique <title> and a description.
• To do: One <h1> per page, the page's name; headings in order below it.
• To do: Addresses are readable and stable; folder names chosen with care (Structuring the content tree).
• To do: Moved and renamed content redirects (it does by default; do not remove history aliases).
• To do: robots.txt lists your sitemap and keeps crawlers out of search results and print views.
• To do: A sitemap is generated by cron and submitted to search engines.
• To do: Images have alternative texts and sensible file names.
• To do: Each language version has its own address and the others are named as alternates (Language switchers and addresses per language).
• To do: Pages are fast and work on phones (Performance and caching).
• To do: HTTPS everywhere, one host name (redirect the others) (Going live).
• To do: Error pages return the right status codes (12. Response headers of error pages).

One address per page #

The same content can be reached by several addresses: /content/view/full/123, its URL alias, a second location, another siteaccess. Search engines prefer one. Do this:

• link only to URL aliases in templates ($node.url_alias|ezurl), never to content/view/full/...;

• for content with several locations, print a canonical link to the main location in the pagelayout:

  {if is_set( $module_result.node_id )}
    {def $n = fetch( 'content', 'node', hash( 'node_id', $module_result.node_id ) )}
    <link rel="canonical" href={$n.object.main_node.url_alias|ezurl( , 'full' )}>
    {undef $n}
  {/if}

• send visitors of the other host names (with and without www) to one host with a redirect in the web server.

Content editors control #

Editors write the titles, intros, image alternative texts and link texts that search engines read. Give them a short guide: the name becomes the title and the address; the intro becomes the description when no metadata field is filled; link texts say where they lead ("Opening hours", not "click here").

What to measure #

• Search statistics of the site's own search show what visitors look for and do not find (URL aliases, wildcards and search statistics).
• The search engines' own webmaster tools show indexing and errors.
• The link check finds broken outgoing links (Broken links and content checks).

Related pages #

• Page metadata and social sharing
• XML sitemaps
• Accessibility for site builders
• Free documentation: this page is free to copy, translate and improve under the GNU FDL 1.3.