SEO and MODx

Just an FYI for all those who have questions about SEO effectiveness and MODx.

Because you write all of the xHTML and CSS for any MODx site the SEO performance should always be good. But recently I had two sites - same industry - that show just how well MODx can perform. Creux Salon is in Cherry Creek Colorado. It is a brand new business. The site was finished mid-December. As of today, Creux has a page rank of 2. More important, a search of ’Cherry Creek Salon’ has Creux showing up on the first page of Google! (It seems to vacillate between 1 and 2.) Cherry Creek isn’t small and there is lots of competition so the result is amazing. That’s in just 6 months.

Synergy Salon, in Denver, has had a site for 7 years. Their best Google search performance was page 10 (’Denver salon and day spa’ search). After their re-design using MODx they now come up on page 2.

http://creuxsalon.com
http://synergysalonanddayspa.com

True that! I notice that Bobs Guides is generally kicking butt at Google even though I haven’t put much effort into making it do so.

Nice pointers guys!

/k

I was in charge of the development of a website for a Toronto moving company and a combination of MODx and some SEO good practices, the site went from page 5 (or no page at all) to the top 8 pages in Google in just 6 months using the most popular keyword terms. Plus, the site has site links when you look for it in Google and a PR2.

If you search for Toronto moving or Toronto moving company or Toronto movers, you should find http://www.energycrew.ca both in the organic results and in the local search results among the top 5, especially if you search it from www.google.ca given it’s relevance to the .ca domain,

MODx is a truly SEO-friendly CMS because it separates designing from coding

Share the tricks boys and girls...

Is it just a clear coded XHTML site with XML sitemap and some good keywords/content?

Rossco
Good meta data, keywords and clean xHTML. They’ve both updated their sites twice a month in the last six months. SEF URLs make a difference, too. Most of the sites they are in competition with are older, but not well built. Kudos to MODx as well - Google indexed all pages immediately.

This is awesome information! thanks for sharing and congratulations on the wonderful results. I imagine that with good meta data, keywords and clean xHTML, and frequently updated content a MODx site could rank really well in a short time!

Awesome.

Hey folks, here are a few tips for those venturing in SEO.

The Title tag and the description tag are the most important tags Googlebot uses to rank your site. The more relevant they are to the query, the better your chances of raking higher.

Here are a few things you should keep in mind when optimizing your site for Search engines:

Keyword prominence: Your most important keywords should appear at the beginning of your content. Preferably in Heading titles as explained below.
Keyword density: Your most important keyword should appear at least once on the page so long as they’re relevant to the content. it’s a good practice to use keyword variations and synonyms. Please do not engage in keyword spamming as this will increase the likelihood of your site being flagged by Google.

Content Structure:
If you’re using Firefox, go to modxcms.com and under the view menu go to Page style>No style. You will notice that the page is well structured: going from H1 (logo) > H2>H3>H4 and so forth. Unless your page is a news page, I recommend that your H1 is used to brand the site or the current page. The H2 is usually a subtitle of the current page and I hope you get the trick by now. Heading titles (H1,H2,H3...) are the best place to include your important keywords. The H1 should contain your most important keyword, the H2- the next most important one and so on.

I used this methodology on http://www.energycrew.ca and with the power of MODx, the site is well treated by Google.

Last word, the site has to be relevant to the user and rich in content.

Cheers

treigh

thanks for the tips! For the content structure and heading tags, when you say "Unless your page is a news page, I recommend that your H1 is used to brand the site or the current page", what exactly do you mean? How would you use H1 on a news page? I also read somewhere that it’s not good practice to use h1 for the logo, I don’t quite remember the rationale.

Thanks again!!


Quote from: treigh at May 21, 2009, 01:55 AM

Hey folks, here are a few tips for those venturing in SEO.

The Title tag and the description tag are the most important tags Googlebot uses to rank your site. The more relevant they are to the query, the better your chances of raking higher.

Here are a few things you should keep in mind when optimizing your site for Search engines:

Keyword prominence: Your most important keywords should appear at the beginning of your content. Preferably in Heading titles as explained below.
Keyword density: Your most important keyword should appear at least once on the page so long as they’re relevant to the content. it’s a good practice to use keyword variations and synonyms. Please do not engage in keyword spamming as this will increase the likelihood of your site being flagged by Google.

Content Structure:
If you’re using Firefox, go to modxcms.com and under the view menu go to Page style>No style. You will notice that the page is well structured: going from H1 (logo) > H2>H3>H4 and so forth. Unless your page is a news page, I recommend that your H1 is used to brand the site or the current page. The H2 is usually a subtitle of the current page and I hope you get the trick by now. Heading titles (H1,H2,H3...) are the best place to include your important keywords. The H1 should contain your most important keyword, the H2- the next most important one and so on.

I used this methodology on http://www.energycrew.ca and with the power of MODx, the site is well treated by Google.

Last word, the site has to be relevant to the user and rich in content.

Cheers

Hello einsteinsboi,

If your page is a news page, then the H1 is probably best used for the Headline title. You wanna tell the crawler where the story begins and how important the headline is to the rest of the page. But you can use an H2 as well, there won’t be a problem. I will suggest that you use the H1 tag only once on a page to create a clear content hierarchy.

The H1 tag should be the first of the heading tags to be used on the page, then an H2, H3, H4 and so forth. If for instance, your page starts with an H5 and ends with an H1, you are telling the crawler that the footer is the beginning of the content, thus the most important place to look for relevant content and that would simply be wrong. I hope you get the trick.

I can’t think of another reason why not to use an H1 in the logo other than it is a practice that hides the text from the Human eye. So long as you’re using this for branding (accessibility) and not for keyword spamming, Google ethics rules are not broken. MODx.com uses this, so does digg.com and I’ve used it on many other sites I built and serves me well.

Cheers!