Wiley Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP: A Developer's Guide to SEO
Contents
1. Chapter 1 You Programmer and Search Engine Marketer The Story So how do a search engine marketer from the USA Jaimie and a programmer from Romania Cristian meet To answer we need to tell you a funny little story A while ago Jaimie happened to purchase a book that shall remain nameless written by Cristian and was not pleased with one particular aspect of its contents Jaimie proceeded to grill him with some critical comments on a public web site Ouch Cristian contacted Jaimie courteously and explained most of it away No we re not going to tell you the name of the book what the contents were or whether it is still in print But things did eventually get more amicable and we started to correspond about what we do for a living Jaimie is a web site developer and search engine mar keter and Cristian is a software engineer who has published quite a few books in the technology sector As a result of those discussions the idea of a technology focused search engine optimization book came about The rest is more or less history What Do You Need to Learn As with anything in the technology related industry one must constantly learn and research to keep apprised of the latest news and trends How exhausting Fortunately there are fundamental truths with regard to search engine optimization that are both easy to understand and probably won t change in time significantly so a solid foundation that you build now will l2. account we assume you already have Apache PHP and MySQL installed with necessary modules 00929c01 qxd 00929c01 3 13 07 10 38 AM Page 7 F Chapter 1 You Programmer and Search Engine Marketer Installing XAMPP XAMPP is a package created by Apache Friends http www apachefriends org which includes Apache PHP MySQL and many other goodies If you don t have these already installed on your machine the easiest way to have them running is to install XAMPP Here are the steps you should follow 1 Visit http www apachefriends org en xampp html1 and go to the XAMPP page specific for your operating system 2 Download the XAMPP installer package which should be an executable file named like xampp win32 version installer exe 3 Execute the installer executable When asked choose to install Apache and MySQL as services as shown in Figure 1 3 Then click Install 4 You ll be asked to confirm the installation of each of these as services Don t install the FileZilla FTP Server service unless you need it for particular purposes you don t need it for this book but do install Apache and MySQL as services Note that you can t have more web servers working on port 80 the default port used for HTTP communication If you already have a web server on your machine such as IIS you should either make it use another port uninstall it or deactivate it Otherwise Apache won t work The exercises in this book ass
3. starts open xampp apache conf httpd conf and make sure this line located somewhere near the end of the file isn t commented Virtual hosts include conf extra httpd vhosts conf 5 Restart Apache for the new configuration to take effect The easiest way to restart Apache is to open the XAMPP Control Panel and use it to stop and then start the Apache service In case you run into trouble the first place to check is the Apache error log file In the default XAMPP installation this is xampp apache logs error 1log 6 To test your new virtual host create a new file named test php in your seophp folder and type this code in it lt php phpinfo gt 7 Then load http seophp example com test php and expect to see a page like the one in Figure 1 6 This way you ve also tested that your PHP installation is working correctly 10 00929c01 qxd 00929c01 3 13 07 10 38 AM Page 11 F Chapter 1 You Programmer and Search Engine Marketer _ phpinfo Windows Internet Explorer E19 b le http seophp example corm test php w 5 x we oe phpinfoo Ey Qe Seton WndowsNTORIETANWSTAGORUINSDOD escript nologo configure js enable snapshot build with gd shared Configuration File php ini CAProgram Fileswampplapachetbiniphp ini Path 0060613 20000513 enabied enabled php file data http tp compress zlib https ftps zip tep udp ssl sslv3 sstv2 tls co
4. to mysql u root If you have a password set for the root account you should also add the p option which will have the tool ask you for the password By default after installing XAMPP the root user doesn t have a pass word Needless to say you may want to change this for security reasons 4 Create the seophp database by typing this at the MySQL console CREATE DATABASE seophp MySQL commands such as CREATE DATABASE are not case sensitive If you like you can type cre ate database instead of CREATE DATABASE However database objects such as the seophp data base may or may not be case sensitive depending on the server settings and operating system For this reason it s important to always use consistent casing This book uses uppercase for MySQL commands and lowercase for object names 5 Switch context to the seophp database USE seophp 6 Create a database user with full access to the new seophp database GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON seophp TO seouser localhost IDENTIFIED BY sSeomaster 7 Make sure all commands executed successfully as shown in Figure 1 7 8 Exit the console by typing exit GS C Program Files xampp mysql bin mysql exe lelcome to the MySQL monitor Commands end with or g our MySQL connection id is 2 to server version 5 6 zian community nt a Lo ix Type help or h for help Type c to clear the buffer ysql gt CREATE DATABAS
5. 00929c01 qxd 00929c01 3 13 07 10 38 AM Page 1 F You Programmer and Search Engine Marketer Googling for information on the World Wide Web is such a common activity these days that it is hard to imagine that just a few years ago this verb did not even exist Search engines are now an integral part of our lifestyle but this was not always the case Historically systems for finding information were driven by data organization and classification performed by humans Such systems are not entirely obsolete libraries still keep their books ordered by categories author names and so forth Yahoo itself started as a manually maintained directory of web sites organ ized into categories Those were the good old days Today the data of the World Wide Web is enormous and rapidly changing it cannot be confined in the rigid structure of the library The format of the information is extremely varied and the individual bits of data coming from blogs articles web services of all kinds picture galleries and so on form an almost infinitely complex virtual organism In this environment making information findable necessitates something more than the traditional structures of data organiza tion or classification Introducing the ad hoc query and the modern search engine This functionality reduces the afore mentioned need for organization and classification and since its inception it has been become quite pervasive Google s popular ema
6. E seophp uery OK 1 row affected 6 68 sec gt ysql gt USE seophp Database changed ysql gt GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON s gt TO seouser localhost IDENTIEI ED BY seonaster Query OK rows affected 6 88 sec mysql gt m EEE Figure 1 7 Summary Congratulations You will soon be ready to write some code and delve into more advanced SEO concepts The next chapter takes you through a quick SEO tutorial and builds the foundation for the chapters to come 12 p
7. book without interfering with the existing applications on your web server To create the virtual host you need to edit the Apache configuration file In typical Apache installations there is a single configuration file named httpd conf XAMPP ships with more configuration files which handle different configuration areas To add a virtual host add the following lines to xampp apache conf extra httpd vhosts conf If you installed XAMPP with the default options the xampp folder should be under Program Files 00929c01 qxd 00929c01 3 13 07 10 38 AM Page 10 F Chapter 1 You Programmer and Search Engine Marketer NameVirtualHost 127 0 0 1 80 lt VirtualHost 127 0 0 1 80 gt DocumentRoot C Program Files xampp htdocs ServerName localhost lt VirtualHost gt lt VirtualHost 127 0 0 1 80 gt DocumentRoot C seophp ServerName seophp example com lt Directory C seophp gt Options Indexes FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Order allow deny Allow from all lt Directory gt lt VirtualHost gt In order for http localhost to continue working after you create a virtual host you need to define and configure it as a virtual host as well this explains why we ve included it in the vhosts file If you have any important applications working under http localhost make sure they continue to work after you restart Apache at the end of this exercise 4 To make sure httpd vhosts conf gets processed when Apache
8. ectly load http localhost using your web browser An XAMPP welcome screen like the one in Figure 1 5 should load T Finally after you ve tested that both Apache and PHP work it s recommended to turn on PHP error reporting Apache logs errors in a file named error 1og located in the xampp apache logs folder looking at the latest entries of this file when something goes wrong with your appli cation can be very helpful at times To enable PHP error reporting open for editing the php ini configuration file located by default in the xampp apache bin folder There locate this entry display_errors Off and change it to display_errors On 8 To configure what kind of errors you want reported you can alter the value of the PHP error_reporting value We recommend the following setting to report all errors except for PHP notices error_reporting E_ALL amp E_NOTICE Preparing the Working Folder Now you ll create a virtual host named seophp example com on your local machine which will point to a local folder named seophp The seophp folder will be your working folder for all the exercises in this book and you ll load the sample pages through http seophp example com The seophp example com as virtual host won t interfere with any existing online applications because example com is a special domain name reserved by IANA to be used for documentation and demonstration purposes See http example com for the o
9. essful if they do not convert or result in click throughs respectively We do give some pointers though to get you started We also do not discuss concepts related to search engine optimization such as usability and user psy chology in depth though they are strong themes throughout the book 00929c01 qxd 00929c01 3 13 07 10 38 AM Page 5 F Chapter 1 You Programmer and Search Engine Marketer Optimizing a site s architecture frequently involves tinkering with variables that also affect usability and the overall user perception of your site When we encounter such situations we alert you to why these certain choices were made Chapter 5 Duplicate Content highlights a typical problem with breadcrumbs and presents some potential solutions Sometimes we find that SEO enhancements run counter to usability Likewise not all designs that are user friendly are search engine friendly Either way a compromise must be struck to satisfy both kinds of visitors users and search engines SEO Cannot Be an Afterthought One common misconception is that search engine optimization efforts can be made after a web site is launched This is frequently incorrect Whenever possible a web site can and should be designed to be search engine friendly as a fundamental concern Unfortunately when a preexisting web site is designed in a way that poses problems for search engines search engine optimization can become a much larger task If a web site ha
10. fficial information p 00929c01 qxd 00929c01 3 13 07 10 38 AM Page 9 F Chapter 1 You Programmer and Search Engine Marketer XAMPP Windows Internet Explorer E Ow v le http localhost xampp splash php v ts x w g e XAMPP A gt by r XAMPP English f Deutsch f Francais f Nederlands f Polski f Italiano Z Norsk f Espa ol f hy Portugu s Brasil A Figure 1 5 Follow these steps to create and test the virtual host on your machine 1 First you need to add seophp example com to the Windows hosts file The following line will tell Windows that all domain name resolution requests for seophp example com should be handled by the local machine instead of your configured DNS Open the hosts file which is located by default in C Windows System32 drivers etc hosts and add this line to it T2 OR hal localhost TAE OON seophp example com 2 Now create a new folder named seophp which will be used for all the work you do in this book You might find it easiest to create it in the root folder C but you can create it any where else if you like 3 Finally you need to configure a virtual host for seophp example com in Apache Right now all requests to http localhost and http seophp example com are handled by Apache and both yield the same result You want requests to http seophp example com to be served from your newly created folder seophp This way you can work with this
11. ikely stand the test of time We remember the days when search engine optimization was a black art of analyzing and improving on page factors Search engine marketers were obsessed over keyword density and which HTML tags to use Many went so far as to recommend optimizing content for different search engines individually thusly creating different pages with similar content optimized with different densities and tags Today that would create a problem called duplicate content The current struggle is creating a site with interactive content and navigation with a minimal amount of duplicate content with URLs that do not confuse web spiders and a tidy internal linking structure There is a thread on SearchEngineWatch http www searchenginewatch com where someone asked which skill everyone reading would like to hone Almost all of them enumerated programming as one of the skills http forums searchenginewatch com showthread php t 11945 This does not surprise us Having an understanding of both programming and search engine marketing will serve one well in the pursuit of success on the Internet When people ask us where we d suggest spending money in an SEO plan we always recommend making sure that one is starting with a sound basis If your web site has architectural problems it s tantamount to trumpeting your marketing message atop a house of cards Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP A Developer s Guide to SEO aims to i
12. il service GMail features its searching capability that permits a user to find emails that contain a particular set of keywords Microsoft Windows Vista now integrates an instant search feature as part of the operating system helping you quickly find information within any email Word document or database on your hard drive from the Start menu regardless of the underlying file format But by far the most popular use of this functional ity is in the World Wide Web search engine These search engines are the exponents of the explosive growth of the Internet and an entire indus try has grown around their huge popularity Each visit to a search engine potentially generates busi ness for a particular vendor Looking at Figure 1 1 it is easy to figure out where people in Manhattan are likely to order pizza online Furthermore the traffic resulting from non sponsored or organic search results costs nothing to the vendor These are highlighted in Figure 1 1 p 00929c01 qxd 00929c01 3 13 07 10 38 AM Page 2 F Chapter 1 You Programmer and Search Engine Marketer pizza delivery in Manhattan Google Search Windows Internet Explorer balba G tg G http www google com search q pizza delivery intManhattan vite xX Google P2 gt ce iG pizza delivery in Manhattan Google Search E gt A 7 vi Pave Gi Tods Sign in Web Images Video News Maps more Goi gle pizza delivery in Manhattan Search gt Bella Napo
13. li Manhattan pizza delivery Sponsored Links BELLA NAPOLI Restaurant Pizzeria Bar Manhattan pizza delivery For your special occasion at your home office or at our facilities our party room is Pizza Delivery nrw bellanapoli corr ached ar pages Top resource and guidelines about Pizza Delivery ssVVeb Delivery Menus kwdr info SeamlessWeb is the fastest easiest and smartest way to order food delivery online okly oboken Jersey City Boston Philadelphia Pizza Delivery 9k C F g The Top Websites For Figure 1 1 The less obvious effect of the search engine explosion phenomenon is that web developers are now directly involved in the search engine marketing process To rank well in these organic results it may not be enough to write relevant content as your typical search engine marketing tutorial drones Rather the web application developer must work together with the marketing team and he or she must build a web site fully aware that certain features or technologies may interfere with a search engine marketing campaign An improperly designed web site can interfere with a search engine s need to periodically navigate and index the information contained therein In the worst case the search engine may not be able to index the content at all So ironically while users are becoming less interested in understanding the structure of data on the Internet the structure of a web site is becomi
14. llustrate how to build a solid foundation To get the most out of this journey you should be familiar with a bit of programming PHP preferably You can also get quite a bit out this book by only reading the explanations And another strategy to reading this book is to do just that then hand this book to the web developer with a list of concerns and directives in order to ensure the resulting product is search engine optimized In that case don t get bogged down in the exercises just skim them pe 00929c01 qxd 00929c01 3 13 07 10 38 AM Page 4 F Chapter 1 You Programmer and Search Engine Marketer We cover a quick introduction to SEO in Chapter 2 which should nail down the foundations of that subject However PHP and MySQL are vast subjects and this book cannot afford to also be a PHP and MySQL tutorial The code samples are explained step by step but if you have never written a line of PHP or SQL before and want to follow the examples in depth you should also consider reading a PHP and MySQL tutorial book such as the following Q PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites Visual QuickPro Guide 2nd edition Larry Ulman Peachpit Press 2005 Q Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP amp MySQL 314 Edition Kevin Yank Sitepoint 2005 Q Teach Yourself PHP in 10 Minutes Chris Newman Sams 2005 SEO and the Site Architecture A web site s architecture is what grounds all future search engine marketing effo
15. ng an increasingly important facet in search engine mar keting This structure the architecture of a web site is the primary focus of this book We hope that this brief introduction whets your appetite The remainder of this chapter tells you what to expect from this book You will also configure your development machine to ensure you won t have any problems following the technical exercises in the later chapters Who Are You Maybe you re a great programmer or IT professional but marketing isn t your thing Or perhaps you re a tech savvy search engine marketer who wants a peek under the hood of a search engine optimized web site Search engine marketing is a field where technology and marketing are both critical and interdepend ent because small changes in the implementation of a web site can make you or break you in search engine rankings Furthermore the fusion of technology and marketing know how can create web site features that attract more visitors The raison d tre of this book is to help web developers create web sites that rank well with the major search engines and to teach search engine marketers how to use technology to their advantage We assert that nei ther marketing nor IT can exist in a vacuum and it is essential that they not see themselves as opposing forces in an organization They must work together This book aims to educate both sides in that regard p 00929c01 qxd 00929c01 3 13 07 10 38 AM Page 3 F
16. ngly test the effi cacy and usability of a design in Internet Explorer and Firefox with dedicated QA teams Unfortunately many fall short by neglecting to design and test for the spider Perhaps this is because you have to design in the abstract for the spider we don t have a Google spider at our disposal after all and we can t inter view it afterward with regard to what it thought of our usability However that does not make its assessment any less important The Spider Simulator tool located at http www seochat com seo tools spider simulator shows you the contents of a web page from the perspective of a hypothetical search engine The tool is very simplistic but if you re new to SEO using it can be an enlightening experience pe 00929c01 qxd 00929c01 3 13 07 10 38 AM Page 6 F Chapter 1 You Programmer and Search Engine Marketer Preparing Your Playground This book contains many exercises and all of them assume that you ve prepared your environment as explained in the next few pages If you re a PHP and MySQL veteran here s the quick list of software requirements If you have these you can skip to the end of the chapter where you re instructed to create a MySQL database for the few exercises in this book that use it Q Apache 2 or newer with the mod_rewrite module Q PHP 4 1 or newer Q MySQL Your PHP installation should have these modules Q php_mysql necessary for the chapters that work wi
17. nverticony string rot1 3 string toupper string tolower string strip_tags convert consumed zlib Figure 1 6 Preparing the Database The final step is to create a new MySQL database You re creating a database named seophp that you will use for the exercises contained in this book You ll also create a user named seouser with the password seomaster which will have full privileges to the seophp database You will be using this database only for the exercises in Chapter 11 and Chapter 14 so you can skip this database installation for now if desired To prepare your database environment follow these steps Note that this exercise uses the MySQL console application to send commands to the database server Follow these steps 1 Load a Windows Command Prompt window by going to Start gt Run and executing cmd exe In Windows Vista you can type cmd or Command Prompt in the search box of the Start menu 2 Change your current directory to the bin folder of your MySQL installation With the default XAMPP installation that folder is Program Files xampp mysql bin Change the directory using the following command cd Program Files xampp mysql bin 11 p 00929c01 qxd 00929c01 3 13 07 10 38 AM Page 12 F Chapter 1 You Programmer and Search Engine Marketer 3 Start the MySQL console application using the following command this loads an executable file named mysql exe located in the directory you have just browsed
18. rts The content rests on top of it as shown in Figure 1 2 An optimal web site architecture facilitates a search engine in traversing and understanding the site Therefore creating a web site with a search engine optimized architecture is a major contributing factor in achieving and maintaining high search engine rankings Architecture should also be considered throughout a web site s lifetime by the web site developer along side other factors such as aesthetics and usability If a new feature does not permit a search engine to access the content hinders it or confuses it the effects of good content may be reduced substantially For example a web site that uses Flash or AJAX technologies inappropriately may obscure the majority of its content from a search engine Content Site Architecture Search Engines Figure 1 2 We do not cover copywriting concepts in detail or provide much coaching as to how to create persuasive page titles These are also very important topics which are masterfully covered by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg in Persuasive Online Copywriting How to Take Your Words to the Bank Wizard Academy Press 2002 and by John Caples and Fred E Hahn in Tested Advertising Methods 5th edition Prentice Hall 1998 Shari Thurow also has an excellent section on creating effective titles in her book Search Engine Visibility New Riders Press 2002 Writing copy and titles that rank well are obviously not succ
19. s to be redesigned or partially redesigned the migration process frequently necessitates special technical considerations For example old URLs must be properly redirected to new ones with similar relevant content The majority of this book documents best practices for design from scratch as well as how to mitigate redesign problems and concerns The rest is dedicated to discretionary enhancements Communicating Architectural Decisions The aforementioned scenario regarding URL migration is a perfect example of how the technical team and marketing team must communicate The programmer must be instructed to add the proper redirects to the web application Otherwise existing search rankings may be hopelessly lost forever Marketers must know that such measures must be taken in the first place In a world where organic rankings contribute to the bottom line a one line redirect command in a web server configuration file may be much more important than one may think This particular topic URL migration is discussed in Chapter 4 Architectural Minutiae Can Make or Break You So you now understand that small mistakes in implementation can be quite insidious Another common example would be the use of JavaScript based navigation and failing to provide an HTML based alter native Spiders would be lost because they for the most part do not interpret JavaScript The search engine spider is the third browser Many organizations will painstaki
20. th MySQL Q php_gd2 necessary for exercises in Chapter 5 and Chapter 10 Q php_curl necessary for exercises in Chapter 11 The programming exercises in this book assume prior experience with PHP and MySQL However if you follow the exercises with discipline exactly as described everything should work as planned If you already have PHP but you aren t sure which modules you have installed view your php ini configuration file On a default Windows installation this file is located in the Windows folder if you install PHP through XAMPP as shown in the exercise that follows the path is Program Files xampp apache bin To enable a module remove the leading from the extension module_name d11 line and restart Apache After installing the necessary software you ll create a virtual host named seophp example com which will point to a folder on your machine which will be your working folder for this book All exercises you build in this book will be accessible on your machine through http seophp example com Lastly you ll prepare a MySQL database named seophp which will be required for a few of the exer cises in this book Creating the database isn t a priority for now so you can leave this task for when you ll actually need it for an exercise The next few pages cover the exact installation procedure assuming that you re run ning Microsoft Windows If you re running Linux or using a web hosting
21. ume that your Apache server works on port 80 they may not work otherwise 5 Inthe end confirm the execution of the XAMPP Control Panel which can be used for adminis tering the installed services Figure 1 4 shows the XAMPP Control Panel ca XAMPP 1 5 5 win32 Basic Package bo XAMPP Options Install options on NT 2000 XP Professional systems XAMPP DESKTOP Create a XAMPP desktop icon XAMPP START MENU Create an Apache Friends XAMPP Folder in the start menue SERVICE SECTION Vlinstal Apache as service Install MySQL as service Instal Filezilla as service See also the XAMPP for Windows FAQ Page r lt Back B Instal Cancel Figure 1 3 00929c01 qxd 00929c01 3 13 07 10 38 AM Page 8 F Chapter 1 You Programmer and Search Engine Marketer 2 XAMPP Control Panel Application kodla XAMPP Control Panel Settings Modules Status Ji Svc Apache Runnin ae P g Stop Admin eros Vi sve MySql Running Stop Admin hs Explore Sve Filezilla Start Help Mercury Start dmir XAMPP Control Panel Version 2 3 17 May 2006 Windows 6 0 Build 6000 Platform 2 Current Directory C Program Files xampp Status Check OR Figure 1 4 The XAMPP Control Panel is particularly useful when you need to stop or start the Apache server Every time you make a change to the Apache configuration files you ll need to restart Apache 6 To test that Apache installed corr
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