Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques are very important for websites to hit that coveted number number 1 spot on related keyword searches.

With Drupal there are some specific tools that can assist with this. The major Search Engines, (Yahoo, Bing and Google) provide tools to do this and there are some Drupal modules that work with this.

The following process takes you through the entire process - excluding signing up for the accounts at Yahoo, Google and Bing.

Before starting make accounts (or sign in with your existing accounts) to each of these services:

• Google https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home
• Yahoo https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysites
• Bing http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters/#

Then make sure you have a current download of these modules:

• Global Redirect http://drupal.org/project/globalredirect
• Site Verifications http://drupal.org/project/site_verify
• Xmlsitemap http://drupal.org/project/xmlsitemap

Copy these up to your sites/all/modules folder and then go to modules in your sitebuilding menu to install them.

Once installed then configure things in the following order:

Site Configuration | XML Sitemap

Select the Search Engines Tab

select all as below

and click Save Configuration

Select the Settings Tab

for now just change the minimum sitemap lifetime to 1 day and save

If you want to improve the sitemap by adding in links for taxonomy or menu related items then you can do that here also:

By clicking on Taxonomy, then opening any vocabulary settings you can choose included in the XML Sitemap settings for that vocabulary.

Once completed you should rebuild the links even though it says you don't need to.

Note: your sitemap is at domainname/sitemap.xml

Now in each of the Google, Bing and Yahoo site builder sites add the sitemap as follows:

Bing

click Add Site and add the domain

Choose option1: Place and XML file on your web server and save the file that is downloaded after clicking BingSiteAuth.xml.

Don't do anything else here yet! Just leave this tab open.

Go to the Yahoo Sites Explorer and add a site:

Select the option to upload a verification file to my site and download the authentication key.

Don't do anything else here yet! Just leave this tab open.

Now go to the Google webmaster tools and add a site.

Choose the option to upload an HTML file to your server and dwnload the HTML Verification file

Don't do anything else here yet! Just leave this tab open.

Now go to Site Building | Site Verifications

Add Verification

Select Bing and Click Next

Click Choose file and locate the file downloaded previously and click Save

Repeat for Yahoo and Google

All three should now be added.

Now its time to verify each of them in their own tools websites

Bing first. Click Verify

Once it has been added there will be no data for at least a day. however we can speed it up by asking it to crawl the site.

Click the Crawl Tab, then Sitemaps from the left hand menu, then Add Sitemap.

Enter the sitemap address and click Submit. Close the Bing tab now.

Back in the Yahoo sites tab click the ready to Authenticate button.

click on feeds and add the sitemap as a website feed. then you can close the Yahoo tab.

In the Google webmaster tools click the Verify Button

O the left hand side open up Site configuration and click Sitemaps

Click Submit a Sitemap, enter the address and click Submit Sitemap

You can close the Google tab now.

Congratulations; your Drupal site is now configured for sitemap indexing and crawling by the search engines everyday.