Drupal 8 SEO Hands-on Seminar

Can you afford to have a website that doesn’t rank well in Google?

Join Ben Finklea, author of Drupal 8 SEO (https://www.drupal.org/node/2838399) and creator of the Drupal SEO Checklist, for a 2-hour, hands-on, get your SEO done NOW event.

Search Engine Optimization is a key part of the success of any Drupal website. It’s not trickery or magic—it’s simply making sure that your website communicates properly with Google and your audience. With recent releases, Drupal 8 is ready for the SEO prime-time but it’s difficult to know which modules to use and exactly how to configure them for your site. That’s where this class comes in!

We will do the most important on-page optimizations that I’d execute for a Volacci SEO client. We’ll cover things like redirects, URLs, paths, meta tags, sitemaps, handling broken links, fixing SEO problems before they start, and optimizing content for specific keywords. The goal is to show marketers how to achieve SEO results with Drupal 8 with minimal need for developer help.

Attendees will receive a free electronic copy of Ben's new book, Drupal 8 SEO.

SYLLABUS/AGENDA

• Key Concepts (very short)
• Modules & Permissions, Coffee module, Admin Toolbar module.
• Redirect Module, Pathauto module
• Meta tags with the Metatag modules
• Search Engines submissions with the XML Sitemap module
• Content Optimization with the Real Time SEO for Drupal module

This course is designed for marketers with no development background. However, developers, designers, content creators, and site administrators who are stakeholders in the marketing success of their Drupal 8 website would benefit.

To do the hands-on portion of this class, you MUST bring your own dev environment. See below for specific recommendations.

REQUIREMENTS for the hands-on portion

• You need a website that you want to optimize. (If you don’t have a site you want to optimize but you want to take the class to learn Drupal SEO, that’s fine, just set up a dummy site.)
• You’ll need Drupal admin access to your Drupal 8 (or 7) dev website and the ability to load contrib modules to the site. You can and should preload the modules mentioned above to speed things up.
• Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we may not be able to help you load modules and/or troubleshoot your dev server setup. We will do our best, though!

Best choice: Local Dev Environment

You have a full development environment on your laptop with the site loaded, modules installed, and ready to go before the session begins. You’ll have it set up with Git, Composer, Drush, and Drupal Console. If you don’t already have a dev environment set up, I recommend Jeff Geerling’s amazing DrupalVM. 

Second best choice: External server

You have a dev environment on an external server preloaded with all the modules from the SEO Checklist. You run the risk of Internet problems slowing you down but this will work if you just do not have the expertise to set up an environment yourself. 

Not ideal: Live Server

It’s not recommended that you take this class using your live, production server.

Modules composer list:

"require": {
        "composer/installers": "^1.2",
        "cweagans/composer-patches": "^1.6",
        "drupal-composer/drupal-scaffold": "^2.2",
        "drupal/addtoany": "^1.7",
        "drupal/admin_toolbar": "^1.19",
        "drupal/advagg": "^2.3",
        "drupal/alinks": "^1.0",
        "drupal/amp": "^1.0",
        "drupal/amptheme": "^1.0",
        "drupal/checklistapi": "^1.4",
        "drupal/coffee": "^1.0@beta",
        "drupal/console": "~1.0",
        "drupal/core": "^8.3",
        "drupal/devel": "^1.0@RC",
        "drupal/diff": "^1.0@RC",
        "drupal/easy_breadcrumb": "^1.6",
        "drupal/editor_advanced_link": "^1.4",
        "drupal/google_analytics": "^2.1",
        "drupal/hreflang": "^1.0",
        "drupal/linkit": "^4.3",
        "drupal/metatag": "^1.0",
        "drupal/mollom": "^1.2",
        "drupal/pathauto": "^1.0@RC",
        "drupal/rdfui": "^1.0@beta",
        "drupal/redirect": "^1.0@alpha",
        "drupal/scheduler": "^1.0@RC",
        "drupal/search404": "^1.0@beta"

}