Search Engine Optimization: A Hotel Use Case

Transcription

Search Engine Optimization:
A Hotel Use Case
Bachelor thesis
in the eld of study information technology
Veronika Wenger
Supervisor: Dr. Anna Fensel
June 16, 2013
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Contents
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Introduction
1.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2 Research question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Methodology
2.1 Tools . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.1 Drupal . . . . . .
2.1.2 WinSCP Client .
2.1.3 Google Analytics
2.2 Methods . . . . . . . . .
2.2.1 Meta tags . . . .
2.2.2 Sitemaps . . . .
2.2.3 Rich Snippets . .
2.2.4 schema.org . . .
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3.1 Drupal 7 Modules . . . . . . . . .
3.1.1 Module - Token . . . . . . .
3.1.2 Module - Pathauto . . . . .
3.1.3 Module - Meta Tag . . . . .
3.1.4 Module - Sitemaps . . . . .
3.1.5 Module - Global Redirect .
3.1.6 Module - Google Analytics
3.2 Manual insert of Google Analytics
3.3 Metatags . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.4 XML-Sitemap . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Implementation
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Evaluation
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Conclusion
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4.1 Google Analytics results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.2 Search tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2
Abstract
For my bachelor thesis I got an overview of the current state of search engine
optimization methods and applied it on the rotes-wildschwein.at website. This
website illustrates a hotel website. I edited the website in relation to its content
and as a result optimized it to be found more easily via search engines. In the
thesis I talk about what possibilities there are, from Rich Snippets to Drupal
(with which the website is build) modules. As a nal result I am going to show
how the trac of the rotes-wildschwein.at website changed over time by using
Google Analytics. The optimization results will be summarized and also further
tested manually.
3
1
Introduction
In this chapter I am going to give a motivation for my bachelor thesis and
explain my research question in detail.
1.1
Motivation
The highest goal of a webmaster is to make a website that will be visited.
The more visitors the better. Webmasters want their websites to be listed
highly and frequently in search results, because that is the easiest way to get
more visitors. If a user's search got something to do with the topic of the
webmasters' website, they want it to be ranked number one. That brings us to
search engine optimization (SEO). Search engine optimization helps webmasters
to optimize their websites, so that they can be found more easily. There are
many possibilities to choose from and some are more important than others.
1.2
Research question
In my bachelor thesis I am going to show the current state of search engine
optimization. My thesis is divided into two parts, a theoretical and a practical
part. In the theoretical part I am going to explain which possible options for
SEO exist, how they work and which eects they have on websites. The practical part is going to be an application on the rotes-wildschwein.at website. This
website is a mock-up of a ve-stars hotel made by the sti-innsbruck research
group and it is used for testing purposes. The website is constructed in CMS
(Content-Management-System) Drupal 7, which is an open source content management platform. My work on this website is to optimize it, so that it can be
found more easily via search engines. As a result it is going to appear more
frequently and higher ranked on search result pages. Since the website is made
with Drupal, adding search engine optimization methods is done a little dierent than on HTML pages. Normally the methods would be added to the HTML
code. However, to add search engine optimizations to a Drupal website, there
can be chosen from Drupal modules or other particularly adjusted methods.
My bachelor thesis is structured in four core parts. The rst part is the methodology, in which I am going to introduce tools and methods for SEO. After that
I am going to go on with the implementation chapter. In this chapter I explain
the implementation of methods and tools I used for the optimization of the
rotes-wildschwein.at website. The next to last chapter comprehends the evaluation of the optimization results, followed by the last chapter, which is going to
be the conclusion of my thesis.
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2
Methodology
In this chapter I am going to explain the tools I used for the application of search
engine optimization on the rotes-wildschwein.at website. Also I will dene the
methods of SEO, how they are used and what eects they have on websites.
2.1
Tools
First of all I am going to start with the introduction of the needed tools for the
application on the rotes-wildschwein.at website.
2.1.1
Drupal
Drupal is frequently used for website development, because it is free and open
source. As I mentioned before it is a content management system (CMS) and it
is written in PHP. The standard release can be formed into any desired website,
from blogs to wikis or business sites. It contains features like user accounts,
registration, page layout customization, RSS feeds, and so on. Drupal is expandable, which means it can be enhanced with modules or also in the les
itself. Even people with little to no knowledge of programming can use it. It
needs to run on computing platforms, that maintain a web server, which further
supports PHP and a database for storing ([10]).
2.1.2
WinSCP Client
To access the rotes-wildschwein.at Drupal website les, I used the WinSCP
Client, which is a graphic SFTP and FTP client for windows. It is open source
and supports the old secure copy protocol (SCP, where it gets his name from).
It oers a secure data and le transfer between computers. Connections can be
established with SSH (Secure Shell), SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol), SCP
or FTP (File Transfer Protocol) servers.
During the installation or after it under the congurations, between two program
surfaces can be chosen: the Explorer-Surface, which every windows user knows,
or the Norton-Commander-Surface, where only the keyboard is used (without
the mouse). With the WinSCP Client, all fundamental operations with les can
be made, for example down- and uploading, renaming, creating a new folder,
changing properties of les or folders, and so on. Even managing the les on
the local computer is possible ([12]).
After starting the WinSCP Client, I have to choose with which protocol I want
to login, as can be seen in the picture on the next page, in which I chose the
SFTP protocol. After the login, I have access to the rotes-wildschwein.at website's les. Here I could directly access the folders or les I need.
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Figure 1: WinSCP login screen
2.1.3
Google Analytics
Google oers a free service to monitor the trac of a website, it is called Google
Analytics. Google Analytics is the most popular website statistics service. With
Google Analytics a webmaster gets information about his website's trac. It
monitors the website and generates statistics about where a visitor comes from
or how he got on the website, like: did he follow a link, through a search, directly, et cetera. The statistics also show if the visitor uses a mobile device,
which browser he uses and so forth.
Now I will explain how I made my Google Analytics Account for the roteswildschwein.at website.
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Google Analytics Account
First of all, a Google Account at the http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/analytics/
website is necessary. I used my wenger.veronika@gmail.com account. Under
"Admin" I added the rotes-wildschwein.at website. After that I got the Web
Property ID for the rotes-wildschwein.at website. The Web Property ID is
unique for every website and it is for monitoring a website. Normally it is
added with an HTML code. In Drupal it can be inserted with a code or module
to the website. After including the ID to the website the monitoring can be
started. How I inserted the code to the rotes-wildschwein.at website can be
read in the Implementation chapter (3.1.6).
The entry "All website data" can now be viewed on the Google Account. There
are all kinds of possibilities. The primary view is a Dashboard, which gives an
overview about visitors: if they are returning, how many new visitors there are,
how long they visit the website on average, and so on. Also visitors could be
tracked in real time, so I could see what they were doing at the moment, which
pages they read on the website, and so forth. An important entry is the "Trac
Sources". Here can be seen how the visitors came to the side, if they came
directly or through a search engine, which search engine or keywords they used
and so on.
2.2
Methods
Now I am going to list some options of SEO. The world of SEO is wide open.
There are many possibilities to optimize a website, but there are some options
that are more important and eective then others.
2.2.1
Meta tags
With the help of meta tags the WWW gets more searchable, because the website
becomes more understandable to search engines. With meta tags the knowledge
robots from search engines can be instructed. Due to misusage of the meta tags
in the past, the meta tags have no direct inuence on the ranking of a website
these days. The search engines prioritise the content of the meta tags, which
also the user will see. This makes the description of the website's content more
crucial.
Meta tags are located in the <head>-element of the HTML document, so they
can not be seen when the actual website is visited. They can be viewed by
entering the "page source". Not all possibilities of meta tags are relevant for
a search. The meta language tag for example tells the search engine in which
language the page is in. It is only necessary for the search, when the website is
written in multiple languages.
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Also another commonly used meta tag is the revisit-after tag. This meta tag
should instruct search engines to revisit the website again after a chosen time
(week, month) and recrawl (Denition of crawl: to scan through) the content.
But no major search engine supports that meta tag anymore ([1],[2],[5]).
Now I will tell you something about the four most famous meta tags and their
importance for SEO.
Meta title tag
Title tags tell the search engine what the subject on the site is. There should
be one-of-a-kind for each page on the website. The chosen title tag will be the
rst line of the search result. So it should be chosen wisely, because the user
will visit only sites who seem relevant to him. Every site of the website should
be considered by itself when creating the title tag, which should represent the
purpose of the site. Also it should not be too long or the search engines will
only show parts of it. A good title tag should be short and revealing ([1],[2],[5]).
Meta description tag
Additionally to the title tags, there can be made a description meta tag for
every page of the website. The description meta tag is a short summary of
the page's content. The summary can be up to a small paragraph. The words
which match the users search will be bolted. When a user makes a search and
the search engine does not nd a part of the website that ts the search, it
will use the description. So creating unique description meta tags for each site
can bring more users to the website, because the search engine will choose the
one which matches the searches the best. A good description meta tag should
be unique, informative and interesting, so that the searcher wants to visit the
website ([1],[2],[5]).
Meta keywords tag
With the meta keywords tag the webmaster chooses keywords with which he
wants the website to be found in a search. The keywords should match the
purpose of the website. This tag used to be one of the most important meta
tags, however nowadays it lost its importance due to abuse of its functionalities.
Webmasters entered keywords to their sites, that would not even remotely have
anything to do with the subject of their sites, in the hope, that many people
would visit the website ([1],[2],[5]).
Meta robots tag
With this meta tag the search engine can be a little bit controlled. Normally
the values are set to follow and index. That means the search engine should
follow links from this page and it should be indexed. This is automatically
set. The meta tag must not be inserted, if someone wants to be followed and
indexed. Only when someone wants not to be followed or indexed, it should be
used. There are some values that Google understands, as shown in the following
table.
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noindex
nofollow
nosnippet
noodp
noarchive
noimageindex
unavailable_after[date]
none
The site will not be indexed.
Google will not follow links from this page.
No extract will be shown in the search result.
The description will not be used by ODP/DMOZ
(Open Directory Project/Directory Mozilla,
an open content directory of WWW links).
Links of a page saved in the Cache will not be
shown.
The page will not appear as a referring page
for an image in search results.
Time and date when the page will be
no longer crawled and indexed.
Equal to noindex and nofollow.
When multiple values should be stated, they are separated with a comma
([2],[14]).
Here is a meta tag example in HTML that I prepared:
<html>
<head>
<t i t l e >Meta tag example code </ t i t l e >
<meta name=" d e s c r i p t i o n " content="Here I i n s e r t the
d e s c r i p t i o n o f what e v e r I want to d e s c r i b e .">
<meta name="keywords " content="d e s c r i p t i o n , meta tag ,
t i t l e tag , keywords , html , SEO, b a c h e l o r t h e s i s ">
<meta name="r o b o t s " content="noindex , n o f o l l o w">
<meta c h a r s e t="UTF−8">
</head>
As I mentioned before the meta tags are located in the <head>-element of the
HTML document. First of all I inserted a meta title tag, after that comes the
meta description tag and after that the meta keywords tag. They are, as can
be seen, pretty self-explanatory. The meta title tag is technically no meta tag,
which can be seen here, but it is used as such. Next there is the meta robots tag,
where I stated that the page should not be followed or indexed. In the last meta
tag is the character coding, where I used UTF-8 (8-bit Universal Character Set
(UCS) Transformation Format).
2.2.2
Sitemaps
The sitemap should be a single page, that provides an organized map of links to
the most important pages of the website. Also it should oer short paragraphs
with the keywords in descriptive text for each link.
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Sitemaps primarily serve the visitors, because they can nd content on the website more easily. Secondarily it helps the search engines to crawl the site more
quickly and eectively. The search engine starts at the rst site, and after reading it, it looks at the navigational links which include the sitemap. Through
the sitemap the search engine could crawl sites that it wouldn't have found in
the rst place. Sitemaps can be created in HTML, but some search engines
require an XML based sitemap. Google, Yahoo!, Bing and many more support
the XML based sitemap.
Pros of sitemaps:
• For sites, which have already been found, the search engine uses the pro-
vided metadata like lastmod date, changefreq and so forth. This optimizes
the crawl of the website.
• Search enginges crawl sites, which they would not have found in the rst
place, so the crawl coverage is improved. Also it could have an indirect
positive eect on the ranking in the search result and an increasing internal
link popularity.
• The sitemap helps the search engine to dene the relevant page of sites
that appear to be duplicates.
As good as sitemaps are, important for them is, that they are updated regularly.
They should not have broken links, but if they do, they become out of date, The
pages of the website listed in the sitemap should also be organized, for example
by subject, use, et cetera, and not just in a random order ([3],[4],[5]).
XML-Sitemaps
As mentioned before some search engines require XML based sitemaps. XML
based sitemaps can be created with a simple text le or they can be created with
a XML-Sitemap-Generator. Google advises to apply one of the XML-SitemapGenerators. Google's Sitemap-Generator can be found here: http://www.xmlsitemaps.com/. I will explain its use later on in the implementation part of my
thesis (3.4).
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I will now demonstrate a simple XML-Sitemap.
<?xml v e r s i o n ="1.0" encoding="UTF−8"?>
<u r l s e t xmlns="http : / /www. sitemaps . org / schemas / sitemap /0.9" >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at/</ loc >
<changefreq >weekly </changefreq >
<p r i o r i t y >1.0</ p r i o r i t y >
</url >
</ u r l s e t >
This XML-Sitemap contains a few important specicatons:
• version="1.0" is the version number of the current XML specication.
• encoding="UTF-8" the encoding to be used.
• XML-Sitemaps start with an <urlset>-tag and end with an </urlset>-tag
• In the <urlset>-tag the protocol standard is dened.
• Every URL that will be entered starts with an <url>-tag and ends with
</url>.
• Between <loc> and </loc> comes the URL.
There are also three optional specications for a XML-Sitemap:
• <lastmod> can be used to tell the search engine when the page was up-
dated the last time. It has the format JJJJ-MM-DD.
• <changefreq> tells the search engine, how often the site properly changes.
There are seven values: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly,
never. That does not mean, that the search engine will crawl that site
that often.
• <priority> tells the search engine which page of the website is more im-
portant. The standard value is 0.5, the highest value is 1.0 and lowest is
0.0 ([3],[16]).
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2.2.3
Rich Snippets
Rich Snippets were invented by Google in 2009. They show up on search engines
result pages from Google, Yahoo, Bing, and so on and help the search engine
to better understand the content of a site. Users are more able to detect if the
website is worth visiting. Rich Snippets are additional information to search
results, like ratings with stars, information about a person or product, et cetera.
The content can be marked up with three formats:
• microdata,
• microformats,
• RDFa.
The following content types are supported:
• reviews
• person
• product
• business, organization
• recipe
• event
• music
• video [13]
Microdata
Google recommends the use of microdata. It is also used by the schema.org
website. More about the schema.org website can be read here: 2.2.4. With
microdata, content can be marked to describe a specic type of information
(person, event, ...).
I prepared an example HTML code about myself for the common use of microdata, as can be seen here:
<div>
My name i s Veronika Wenger . For my b a c h e l o r t h e s i s
I worked on t h i s w e b s i t e :
<a h r e f="http : / /www. r o t e s −wildschwein . at">
www. r o t e s −wildschwein . at </a>
I l i v e i n Innsbruck , A u s t r i a .
</div>
12
In this common HTML code I inserted microdata, as can be seen here:
<div itemscope itemtype="http : / / data −vocabulary . org / Person">
My name i s <span itemprop="name">Veronika Wenger</span >.
For my b a c h e l o r t h e s i s I worked on t h i s w e b s i t e :
<a h r e f="http : / /www. r o t e s −wildschwein . at " itemprop=" u r l ">
</div>
What do the changes do:
• itemscope tells that the content, that follows, is an item
• itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Person" tells that the type of the
item is person
• itemprop identies properties of the item person ([13])
Microformats
Microformats are entities, which also mark up content, describe a specic type
of information, as microdata does. Microformats got properties for each entity.
I again prepared an example HTML code:
<div>
<img s r c ="www. t e s t . at / vwenger . jpg " />
Veronika Wenger
P e e r h o f s t r a ÿ e 12
6020 Innsbruck
Austria
</div>
Here I inserted microformat:
<div c l a s s ="vcard">
<img c l a s s ="photo " s r c="www. t e s t . at / vwenger . jpg " />
<span c l a s s ="fn>Veronika Wenger</span>
<span c l a s s ="adr">
<span c l a s s =" s t r e e t −a d d r e s s">P e e r h o f s t r a ÿ e 12</span>
<span c l a s s ="p o s t a l −code">6020</span>
<span c l a s s =" l o c a l i t y ">Innsbruck </span>
<span c l a s s ="r e g i o n">Austria </span>
</span>
</div>
13
I used the hcard (Person) microformat. The hcard is an open format. With it
people, companies or organizations can be published on the web. Here are some
explanations about the changes I made to the HTML code:
• class="vcard" identies that the HTML code is about a person
• The properties of the person entity are dened by the class attribute
• fn is for the name of a person, photo for a photo and adr for the address
of a person
• street-address, postal-code, locality, region are subproperties of the adr
property ([13])
RDFa
RDFa (Resource Description Framework in attributes) is again another possibility to mark up content on a website. They are called items or entities to
describe a specic type of information. RDFa also got properties for each entity/item.
Lets take a look at an example:
<div>
My name i s Veronika Wenger . For my b a c h e l o r t h e s i s
I worked on t h i s w e b s i t e :
<a h r e f="http : / /www. r o t e s −wildschwein . at">
</div>
The example with the RDFa changes:
<div xmlns : v="http : / / r d f . data −vocabulary . org/#" t y p e o f="v : Person">
My name i s <span p roperty="v : name">Veronika Wenger</span >.
<a h r e f="http : / /www. r o t e s −wildschwein . at " r e l ="v : u r l ">
</div>
14
The changes have the following eects:
• xmlns:v="http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/#" here the vocabulary is de-
ned
• typeof="v:Person" tells that it is an entity of the type person
• properties are labeled with property, like here the name <span prop-
erty="v:name">Veronika Wenger</span>
• for URLs, rel is used ([13])
2.2.4
schema.org
The schema.org website helps webmasters with microdata. It has a collection
of vocabularies that can be used to mark up any page. Every major search
engine like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and so on understands the vocabulary from
the schema.org website.
Using microdata with the help of the schema.org website works the same way.
The only thing that changes is, that the vocabulary of schema.org is used. The
schema.org website also oers a large documentation about how to insert microdata on a website ([15]).
Here is the example from before, only with the schema.org vocabulary:
<div itemscope itemtype="http : / / schema . org / Person">
My name i s <span itemprop="name">Veronika Wenger</span >.
<a h r e f="http : / /www. r o t e s −wildschwein . at " itemprop=" u r l ">
</div>
15
3
Implementation
In this chapter I will explain how I optimized the rotes-wildschwein.at website,
so that it is found more easily via search engines and appears more frequently
in search results. Therefore I used the possibilities of Drupal modules, directly
accessing the Drupal les of the website and adding code to them and using
Google tools for webmasters to enhance the website.
3.1
Drupal 7 Modules
In this subchapter I am going to introduce the Drupal 7 modules which I chose
for the rotes-wildschwein.at website. Notice that there are many more modules
for SEO, but I chose the most important once for two reasons. Firstly, because
they have the most inuence on search engine optimization and secondly, Drupal
websites get more complexer the more modules are installed. They start to get
slower, so the few modules that get chosen, should be chosen wisely.
3.1.1
Module - Token
The Token module is a token handling service for other modules. It assists the
Pathauto module (3.1.2), that I needed to improve the website. Text can be
insert into documents with placeholders. The Token module oers an API (application programming interface) so that other modules can show their own data.
Now I will show an example installation of a module using the Token module. The installation of a Drupal module works always alike. First of all the
module les need to be downloaded. I retrieved them from the drupal.org website. There are multiple versions available. I always picked the newest ones,
as long as there were no problems with them. After I extracted the les they
could be uploaded. To upload the les on the website I used the WinSCP client
(see 2.1.2). The website les are accessible after logging in. I open the current
Drupal installation folder on the right site of the client and switch to the folder
modules under "sites/all". On the left site of the client I select the folder with
the module les and copy it to the website, as shown in the picture below.
Figure 2: Uploading les to rotes-wildschwein.at
16
After the installation of the module, it can be enabled on the website under
"Modules" and if necessary the permissions and congurations can be modied. The Token module does not need any modications, because it is just an
assisting module for the Pathauto module.
3.1.2
Module - Pathauto
With the Pathauto module the website becomes more user and search engine
friendly, because it generates URL/Path aliases for an object of the website.
That is an important element for SEO. When a new path is created on an
Drupal website, it looks like this: website.at/node/12. With the help of the
Pathauto module the path name will be changed to any title the webmaster
wants, like website.at/category/my-node-title instead of website.at/node/12.
When for example we search something in a search engine like Google, Yahoo or
Bing, the second part of a search result (in Yahoo the third) is the path of the
search result. If the path would be like rotes-wildschwein.at/node/30 neither the
user nor the search engine could do anything with it. However when the path
of the search result would look like this: rotes-wildschwein.at/events/testingvienna-workshop it is more friendlier to the user because he could read it and
would know that it is an event of the website. The search engine also could
include it into more searches because it can do more with the words events,
testing, vienna, workshop than with node and 30.
The Pathauto module needs the Token module to work. The installation of
the Pathauto module is the same as I explained before (3.1.1). After uploading
the Pathauto les and enabling the module, the nodes can be changed in the
conguration menu. The rst tab in the conguration menu "List" shows all the
aliases of the website. The existing aliases can be edited here. Also new aliases
can be added. The second tab is "Patterns". Here under "Content paths" a
pattern for the path alias can be specied for each category of the website.
When no pattern is dened the "Default path pattern" is used. For example, I
dened the pattern for the events paths as events/[node:title]. With [node:title]
the title of the current node will be used. So instead of node/26 the path will be
events/happy-easter. More settings can be changed in the conguration menu,
like the maximum length of an alias or to only use lower case characters.
Figure 3: Pattern for the rooms paths aliases
17
Figure 4: Some aliases examples
3.1.3
Module - Meta Tag
The meta tag module creates the meta tags: page title, description and keywords. The page title tag is the rst thing that shows up on a search result.
So it should explain what the page is about in a few words. The next part is
normally the path of the search result and after that the search engine picks
either a part of the website that matches best with the search of the user or the
description tag. The description should therefore be invitational. Keywords are
not that important to search engines nowadays as they used to be. Still they
should be used, even if they do not have an eect on the ranking of the page,
they should contain the most important words, with which the website should
be found. More on meta tags can be found here: 2.2.1.
I downloaded the meta tag module again from the drupal.org website and installed it the same way like the other modules (Description: 3.1.1). Under
Conguration → Search and metadata → Meta tags or under Modules → Meta
tags → Congure the meta tags can be insert to the individual sites. Meta tags
can be constructed with the "Add a meta tag default" link. First I select the
page of the website for which I want to create meta tags. I will explain it on
the events page. After choosing "Events" it can be congured. Now I choose a
proper title for the page. Next I ll in a description and the keywords for the
page. This is shown in the picture on the next page.
Also very important is the advanced eld. The robot settings for the search
engines can be dened here. Normally I allowed search engines to index the
site and to follow links on this page. Only like on pages as the user page or
the administrator page, I prevented the search engines from indexing the page,
because this are not pages that should be shown in a search result ([6],[10]).
18
Figure 5: Meta tags for the events page
3.1.4
Module - Sitemaps
A sitemap is an organized map to the most important pages of a website. They
help search engines to crawl the website. Sometimes a search engine nds paths
through the sitemap that they could not in the rst place. Sitemaps tell the
search engine what they want to be indexed with them, like content, pages,
menu items and so on. Also sitemaps help the user to nd content on the website more easily. Read more about sitemaps here: 2.2.2.
After installing the module, I enabled the module and the necessary parts, like
XML sitemap engines (for submitting it to search engines), under "Modules".
In the "List" tab of the conguration menu, a new XML-Sitemap can be added.
To change the content of the sitemap I change to the "Settings" tab. Here I
choose one day for minimum time, which will pass until the sitemap will be refreshed. I included a stylesheet for humans. This makes the map easier to read
for humans. The search engines just ignore this. The important settings are at
the end of the page, here are the settings for what is included in the sitemap
and what not. First of all I included the frontpage and I gave it the highest
priority. After that I chose from the content, which pages I wanted to include
and which not. An own priority can be chosen for each page. I gave a higher
priority to the events and news page than the history of the page for example.
Because these pages will change more often and mostly visitors want to be informed about events and news in a hotel, not the history. The next important
tap is "Search Engines". Here I submitted the sitemap to the search engines. It
should be submitted every day, if it has been updated since the last submission.
In the picture on the next page there is the sitemap that I generated with the
module of the rotes-wildschwein.at website.
19
Figure 6: XML-Sitemap made with the Sitemap Module
3.1.5
Module - Global Redirect
Global Redirect is a necessary module. It is indirectly a SEO module. I installed
it, because of a side eect of the Pathauto module. With the Pathauto module
URLs like /node/30 become like /events/testing-vienna-workshop. These are
more understandable and friendlier URLs, but the problem is, that Drupal does
not remove the old paths. So now there exist two pages with the same content. So a search engine that crawls the rotes-wildschwein.at website, will nd
a page /events/testing-vienna-workshop and a page /node/30 with the same
content. Hence the search engine could mark the rotes-wildschwein.at website
as a spammer website. That brings us to the "sandbox eect". The Google
"sandbox eect" is a conrmed phenomenon by engineers from Google. It is
a side eect caused by some algorithms. Normally it should hold back spammers to reach the top of search results, with websites that have no use for the
searcher. When the website is eected by this "sandbox" phenomenon, it can
show up ranked highly at rst for some weeks in the search result and after that
it vanishes from the search results for about six months or at once([10],[7],[8]).
To prevent this from happening I installed the global redirect module. The
global redirect module removes duplicated pages and redirects paths. Now when
I visit the website rotes-wildschwein.at and for example the node/12, the module
redirects me to /standard-single-room-summer-2012.
3.1.6
Module - Google Analytics
I added this module to monitor the website, how the visitor rate went up, which
pages are the most popular, how many new visitors the website got through a
search engine, how many returned and so forth. For monitoring the website I
had to make a Google Analytics Account where I got a Web Property ID for
the website (See: 2.1.3).
20
After installing the module and getting the ID, I simply added it under Modules
→ Google Analytics → Congure. Also I made the needed justications, like
if it is a single domain page, every page except administration or user pages
should be monitored, everyone should be monitored, and so on.
At rst I thought everything worked ne, only after some time I noticed on my
Google Analytics Account, while I was testing the tracking system, that mostly
only mobile devices where tracked. I looked into that problem and thought it
had to do something with the browser settings of the people, however I found
out that Drupal has some problems when many modules are installed. When
there are too many modules installed, the complexity of the website rises. The
site gets slower, because it has more code to load ([9]). I solved the problem manually with the "drupal_add_js()" function. With the manual solution
monitoring the website worked without any side eects.
3.2
Manual insert of Google Analytics
As I mentioned before, with the Google Analytics module I got some problems with monitoring the website. So I decided to manually insert a code to
track visitors of the website. In the websites folder I opened the "page.tpl.php"
le, which is in the current themes folder. By using the Web Property ID of
my Google Analytics Account for the rotes-wildschwein.at website I inserted
the "drupal_add_js()" function on top. The code loads much faster then the
Google Analytics module and I could now monitor every visitor of the roteswildschwein.at website.
Due to the starting problems, there were probably several visitors more then
got tracked. I can not nd out how many got lost, however with this new function a better picture of the current state of visitors can be shown. Here is the
"drupal_add_js()" function that I used:
<?php
drupal_add_js ( ' var _gaq =[[" _setAccount " ,"UA− 40165390 − 1"] ,
[ " _trackPageview " ] ] ; ( f u n c t i o n ( d , t ){
var g=d . createElement ( t ) , s=d . getElementsByTagName ( t ) [ 0 ] ;
g . async =1; g . s r c =(" h t t p s :"== l o c a t i o n . p r o t o c o l ?"// s s l " : "
//www")+". google − a n a l y t i c s . com/ga . j s " ;
s . parentNode . i n s e r t B e f o r e ( g , s )}
( document , " s c r i p t " ) ) ; ' ,
array ( ' type ' => ' i n l i n e ' , ' scope ' =>
' f o o t e r ' , ' weight ' => 2 ) ) ;
?>
21
With this function a JavaScript le, setting or inline code can be added to the
page. Therefore two important parameters are required. The rst parameter
must be a path, when the second one is a "module", "theme" or "core". When
the second one is a "setting" it must be an array. Or the rst one is JavaScript
code, when the second parameter is "inline" ([10],[11]).
3.3
Metatags
I also manually inserted meta tags to the rotes-wildschwein.at website. Normally they are included with simple HTML code (See: 2.2.1). However to
insert meta tags manually to a Drupal website I opened the "template.php" le
which is located in the websites data folder in the current Drupal installation
under sites/all/themes/danland/. With the code below the meta tags can be
inserted:
<?php
f u n c t i o n danland_page_alter ( $page ) {
$meta_description = array (
'#type ' => ' html_tag ' ,
'#tag ' => ' meta ' ,
'# a t t r i b u t e s ' => array (
' name ' => ' d e s c r i p t i o n ' ,
' content ' => ' Welcome to our
Rotes Wildschwein h o t e l ! '
)
);
drupal_add_html_head ( $meta_description , ' meta_description ' ) ;
}
?>
Here I used to functions hook_page_alter() and drupal_add_html_head. The
hook_page_alter() function is for removing, adding or altering elements from
a page. Here I used it to add the meta tag. And the drupal_add_html_head
function is for adding it to the <head>-element of the page. Because, as I already explained, meta tags are enclosed in the <head>-element of the HTML
le. The meta tags can now be viewed in the pages source code:
Figure 7: Meta tags in the website's source code
22
3.4
XML-Sitemap
I wrote an own XML-Sitemap for the rotes-wildschwein.at website. It can be
found in the appendix 5. I already got one submitted to the search engines, so
it is not necessary to submit this one. Here is an extract of the XML-Sitemap:
<url >
<loc >http : / /www. r o t e s −wildschwein . at / h o t e l
</loc >
<changefreq >yea rly </changefreq >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / /www. r o t e s −wildschwein . at / h o t e l /
g e s c h i c h t e </loc >
<changefreq >never </changefreq >
</url >
The XML-Sitemap is similar to the one that I explained in the Methodology
(2.2.2). I also used the possibility of the XML-Generator. Google advises to
use one of the generators. The XML-Sitemap can be created on the website
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ . Here I just lled in the information of the
website, as can be seen in Figure 8 on the next page.
After that I started the creation of the XML-Sitemap. I downloaded the le.
The whole le can be seen in the appendix 5. Using my Google account I
submitted the XML-Sitemap under the "Webmaster Tools". It delivered 18
URL paths of the website to Google. The XML-Sitemap from Google is pretty
similar to mine. It just calculated the priorities on its own and as I set that it
should ask the server when the last modication was, this element is also in the
sitemap. Here is a short example:
23
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / w e l l n e s s /heubad</loc >
<lastmod >2013 −06 −12T15:48:53+00:00 </ lastmod>
<changefreq >monthly</changefreq >
</url >
Figure 8: XML-Generator by Google
24
4
Evaluation
In this chapter I will show the trac data from the rotes-wildschwein.at website
that I got from the Google Analytics account. Thereby I could see how many
new visitors were won through the search engines. Also I will execute some tests
that will show how the changes I made eected the search results.
4.1
Google Analytics results
Now I will show the results of the rotes-wildschwein.at website's trac from
Google Analytics over a period of time. As I had the problem in the beginning,
that not all visitors got tracked, I will show the results from the 14. April 2013
to the 10. June 2013. During this period 49 people visited the website, as can
be seen in the graphic below.
Figure 9: Daily visitors
57.1 percent of those people visited the site indirectly via a search engine, the
rest directly. 92,86 percent of the indirect visitors came via Google search
engine, the others via Bing. The next graphic shows the direct/indirect visitor
percentage.
Figure 10: Trac source
55,1 percent where new visitors, the rest were returning ones. This means that
I raised the visitors count of the website by about 27 visitors in this time period
with the help of search engine optimization. The graphic on the next page shows
the new/returning visitor percentage.
25
Figure 11: New and returning visitors
The rotes-wildschwein.at website got visits form the cities: Innsbruck, Vienna,
Austin, Leipzig, Mesa, Cambridge, Lincoln and Wanaque, like the map below
shows.
Figure 12: Visitors map
26
The following 6 browsers were used to visit the website:
• Chrome
• Internet Explorer
• Firefox
• Mozilla Compatible Agent
• Safari
• Android Browser
With the following operating systems:
• Windows
• Android
• Linux
• iOS
• Macintosh
In the graphic below the service provider of the visitors can be seen.
Figure 13: Service provider
27
Mostly the keywords hotel wildschwein, rotes wildschwein hotel, hotel rotes
wildschwein, rotes-wildschwein.at, rotes wildschwein, and rotes schwein hotel
where used. The most visited site was the frontpage with 76,19 percent, after
that /hotel/zimmer and /news, both with 9,52 percent and on the last place
/events/seekda-workshop with 4,76 percent. During the time period the pages
were viewed 224 times. The highest page views, as can be seen in the graphic
below, were on the 9. June 2013 with 62 views.
Figure 14: Daily page views
Most of these views go to the frontpage with 20,09 percent and after that, which
is interesting, comes the XML-Sitemap I inserted, with 10,27 percent. The
graphic below shows the average visit duration with the visited pages. Mostly
the sites were just clicked through and not looked at very long, only on some
days they were viewed more closely.
Figure 15: Average visit duration with number of pages
28
Outbound links where used two times, on the 17. April 2013 and the 8. May
2013. In the picture below the In-page Analytics is shown. It shows what was
clicked most per percentage.
Figure 16: In-page Analytics
4.2
Search tests
I prepared some search tests that I executed. I tried to nd the website on different search engines with keywords that are not directly related to the website.
After applying the SEO changes to the websites, these searches got good results.
I tested the keywords on the search engines from Google, Yahoo and Bing. I
executed these tests, because the most important part for a webmaster is that
the websites are found in search results even if the keywords of the search do
not directly mention there business name, the title of the website and so forth.
The website could not be found with the keywords I used before the changes on
it. Only through changes like the path aliases, descriptions, keywords, sitemap,
etc. the website started to show up on search results that were not directly
related to the website.
1. Test
The rst keywords I used were: tiroler bergweihnacht. "Tiroler Bergweihnacht"
is a special oer on the website. As mentioned, none of the keywords got a
result before the changes on the website. When I executed the search after the
changes on the website, the website was ranked on third place of page one on
Google, ninth place of page one on Yahoo and rst place of page two on Bing,
which is a pretty good result. After three days I executed the search again,
sadly the result went down a little. However the website is just a simulation
of a hotel website, so the competition is really big, therefore the result is good
nevertheless.
29
2. Test
For the second test I used the keywords happy easter event hotel. "Happy
Easter" is an event's page of the rotes-wildschwein.at website. The results are
really good: rst place of page one on Google, even before other hotel pages.
On Yahoo the website got the fth place on page two and on Bing ninth place
on page one. The same test after three days brought pretty much the same
result, still rst place on Google, the others dropped slightly.
3. Test
For the third test I used the "Seekda Workshop" event from the website and
searched it. The results were on the rst page, three days later the search
showed the same results. On Google, the website came in third place of page
one, only after the seekda.com website. On Yahoo and Bing we got the same
result, second place of page one, both times after the seekda.com website again.
4. Test
For the last test I used the keywords Junior Suite Alpenrausch. This search
showed the website on the rst three places of page one on Google, the rst
place of page one on Yahoo and Bing. The result also stayed that way after
three days.
30
5
Conclusion
I optimized the rotes-wildschwein.at website from July 2012 to the mid of April
2013. After the optimization process I measured that 27 new visitors were won
from 14. April 2013 to the 10. June 2013 through search engines. That is a rise
of 55.1 percent over a time period of 57 days compared to the website's visitor
count before the optimizations. Also the structure of the website got optimized.
Changes on the website like the XML-Sitemap, meta tags, improving the URL
structures, global redirects and so on made a positive impact on nding the
website in search engines.
I would recommend other webmasters of hotel websites to integrate own meta
tags (title, description, keywords) to every page of their website. These meta
tags should be individually adjusted to the content of the pages. Also for the
frontpage, there should be meta tags that describe the purpose of the whole
website. Furthermore I recommend to insert an XML-Sitemap, that structures
the website and includes all paths of the website that the webmaster wants to
be indexed by the search engine. The sitemap should be of course submitted to
the search engines. Another important part is to mark up content of the website
with the help of Rich Snippets. By marking up products, events, and so on, it
helps the search engine to understand the content of the website and to list it
more frequently in search results. I therefore recommend to mark up the content
with the microdata format. It is easy to understand and every major search
engine supports it. Finally I would advise to sign up hotel websites to Google
Analytics. The website can be easily monitored and webmasters can nd out
which pages are the most interesting ones for visitors or how they respond to
pages, like if they look at them longer or quit after a short look, and so forth.
31
References
[1] N. M. Weber, SEO Suchmaschinenoptimierung. Pro Buisness GmbH, Berlin,
2010
[2] R. Lieb, The truth about search engine optimization. Pearson Education,
2009
[3] E. Enge, S. Spencer, J. Stricchiola, R. Fishkin, Die Kunst des SEO. O'Reilly
Verlag GmbH Co. KG, 2012
[4] M. H. Fleischner, SEO Made Simple. Library of Congress Cataloging, 2011
[5] Google, Search Engine Optimization Startet Guide.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=deanswer=35291
[6] F. Stahl, O. Schettler, Praxiswissen Drupal 7. O'Reilly Verlag GmbH Co.
KG, 2012
[7] D. George, ABC of SEO. Lulu Press, 2005
[8] J. Sirovich, C. Darie, Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP
Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2007
[9] B. Melancon, A. Micka, A. Scavarda, B. Somers, J. Luisi, K. Negyesi, R.
Scholten, R. Szrama, S. Boyer, S. Corlosquet, D. Hakimzadeh, K. Dolin, S.
Freudenberg, The Denitive Guide to Drupal 7. Apress, 2011
[10] drupal.org, Drupal. stand 2012/13
[11] drupalst.com, Druaplst. stand 2012/13
[12] http://winscp.net/eng/index.php, WinSCP Client. stand 2012/13
[13] http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=deanswer=99170,
Google - Rich Snippets. stand 2012/13
[14] http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=enhlrm=deanswer=79812
Google - Meta tags. stand 2012/13
[15] http://schema.org/ schema.org. stand 2012/13
[16] http://www.sitemaps.org/de/protocol.html Sitemaps. stand 2012/13
32
XML-Sitemap for the rotes-wildschwein.at website
<u r l s e t xmlns="http : / /www. sitemaps . org / schemas / sitemap /0.9" >
<url >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / /www. r o t e s −wildschwein . at / h o t e l </loc >
</url >
<url >
g e s c h i c h t e </loc >
<changefreq >never </changefreq >
</url >
<url >
zimmer</loc >
<changefreq >weekly / changefreq >
33
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / /www. r o t e s −wildschwein . at /
pauschalen </loc >
</url >
<url >
packages / t i r o l e r −bergweihnacht </loc >
</url >
<url >
w e l l n e s s </loc >
</url >
<url >
w e l l n e s s / fu −massage</loc >
</url >
34
<url >
w e l l n e s s /heubad</loc >
</url >
<url >
w e l l n e s s /schlammbad</loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / /www. r o t e s −wildschwein . at / events </loc >
<changefreq >weekly >/changefreq >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / /www. r o t e s −wildschwein . at / e v e n t s /
happy− e a s t e r </loc >
</url >
<url >
35
seekda −workshop</loc >
</url >
<url >
some−c o n f e r e n c e </loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / /www. r o t e s −wildschwein . at /news</loc >
<changefreq >d a i l y </changefreq >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / /www. r o t e s −wildschwein . at /news/
f i r e f l y −opening </loc >
</url >
</ u r l s e t >
36
XML-Sitemap from Google created
<u r l s e t
xmlns="http : / /www. sitemaps . org / schemas / sitemap / 0 . 9 "
xmlns : x s i ="http : / /www. w3 . org /2001/XMLSchema− i n s t a n c e "
x s i : schemaLocation="http : / /www. sitemaps . org / schemas / sitemap / 0 . 9
http : / /www. sitemaps . org / schemas / sitemap / 0 . 9 / sitemap . xsd">
<!−− c r e a t e d with Free Online Sitemap Generator www. xml−sitemaps . com −−>
<url >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / h o t e l </loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / h o t e l / g e s c h i c h t e </loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / h o t e l /zimmer</loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / pauschalen </loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / packages /
t i r o l e r −bergweihnacht </loc >
</url >
<url >
37
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / w e l l n e s s </loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / events </loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / e v e n t s /happy− e a s t e r </loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / e v e n t s / seekda −workshop</loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / e v e n t s /some−c o n f e r e n c e </loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at /news</loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / user </loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / h o t e l /
rooms/ j u n i o r − s u i t e −alpenrausch </loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / h o t e l /
38
rooms/ standard − s i n g l e −room</loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at /
standard − s i n g l e −room− t i r o l e r −bergweihnacht </loc >
</url >
<url >
j u n i o r − s u i t e −alpenrausch − t i r o l e r −bergweihnacht </loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / w e l l n e s s / fu −massage</loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / w e l l n e s s /heubad</loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / w e l l n e s s /schlammbad</loc >
</url >
<url >
e v e n t s / t e s t i n g −vienna −workshop</loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / e v e n t s /go−bed</loc >
</url >
39
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / e v e n t s /
seekda −workshop −2</loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at /news/
f i r e f l y −opening </loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / t a g s / t e s t </loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / t a g s / f i r e f l y </loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / t a g s / opening </loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / t a g s / video </loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / u s e r / password </loc >
</url >
<url >
j u n i o r − s u i t e −alpenrausch −summer −2012</ loc >
40
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at /summer −2012</ loc >
</url >
<url >
standard − s i n g l e −room−summer −2012</ loc >
</url >
<url >
standard − s i n g l e −room−winter −201213</ loc >
</url >
<url >
<loc >http : / / r o t e s −wildschwein . at / winter −201213</ loc >
</url >
</ u r l s e t >
41

Search Engine Optimization: A Hotel Use Case

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