Hi all,
I've tried moodle and relize it's so great for e-learning purpose with rich functionallities & useful plug-in. However, I've not seen any plug-in or something like that related to SEO (sitemap generator, friendly url, custom title, custom metadata, ...) that is important for any website to attract users. It's so strange with a great system as itself.
Any ideas? Can we contribute together to build the interesting shortcomings like that? Any suggestion?
Thanks,
I would be very interested in a project / documentation that explores this subject.
There are Moodle clients that ask how they can use SEO techniques as they would with a standard website. With a Moodle site they feel more limited.
Building a small knowledge-base - integrated into MoodleDOcs? on this subject would be good.
Although this thread is in the General developer forum I think it should focus on things that a standard Moodle administrator can do?
Stu
There are Moodle clients that ask how they can use SEO techniques as they would with a standard website. With a Moodle site they feel more limited.
Building a small knowledge-base - integrated into MoodleDOcs? on this subject would be good.
Although this thread is in the General developer forum I think it should focus on things that a standard Moodle administrator can do?
Stu
Indeed, there isn't much documentation on SEO regarding Moodle. The only other posting I found is http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=59943.
Personally, I am not sure whether an e-learning site really should be indexed in search engines. I see some issues concerning privacy with such an approach.
You could start documentation in Moodle Docs yourself, for example creating a FAQ page like SEO FAQ.
hth
Frank
Personally, I am not sure whether an e-learning site really should be indexed in search engines. I see some issues concerning privacy with such an approach.
You could start documentation in Moodle Docs yourself, for example creating a FAQ page like SEO FAQ.
hth
Frank
fyi - there is a google sitemaps generator for moodle 1.8+ in plugins database. i hvnt tested it - so can't recommend it.
http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=1043
I agree there isn't much going on by way of SEO for moodle. It ought to be achievable bcs Joomla has inbuilt SEO tools for SEF urls & mod_rewrite. there's also a stack of 3rd party extensions (some non-commercial) that achieve these sort of things and more. they have forums dedicated to this stuff! joomla runs on a LAMP configuration, just like moodle.
I can appreciate info privacy concerns - but moodle admin already has an 'opentogoogle' setting. this parameter can be disabled to override any SEO settings, inbuilt or otherwise. there's also a 'forceloginforprofiles' capability that can be enabled to prevent guests (or bots) from accessing user profiles without login.
on the same token, i can understand why certain moodle users wld like to optimise the search engine friendliness of their learning system.
what do other ppl think?..
Cheers, Chad
http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=1043
I agree there isn't much going on by way of SEO for moodle. It ought to be achievable bcs Joomla has inbuilt SEO tools for SEF urls & mod_rewrite. there's also a stack of 3rd party extensions (some non-commercial) that achieve these sort of things and more. they have forums dedicated to this stuff! joomla runs on a LAMP configuration, just like moodle.
I can appreciate info privacy concerns - but moodle admin already has an 'opentogoogle' setting. this parameter can be disabled to override any SEO settings, inbuilt or otherwise. there's also a 'forceloginforprofiles' capability that can be enabled to prevent guests (or bots) from accessing user profiles without login.
on the same token, i can understand why certain moodle users wld like to optimise the search engine friendliness of their learning system.
what do other ppl think?..
Cheers, Chad
In reply to Chad Outten
Generation of a sitemap (for submtting to search engines) for a Moodle site
by Peter Evans -
What is the best (and easiest) way to get an upto date site map for a public Moodle site?
I've had a quick look at
http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=1043
and there is a note that says that it does not work. Is this still the case?
Are there other tools that are available?
PeterEvans
I've had a quick look at
http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=1043
and there is a note that says that it does not work. Is this still the case?
Are there other tools that are available?
PeterEvans
Well, there is some stuff relevant here:
You can set the site name which sets the title of the site.
You can set the site description which (on most themes) is set to be the metadata description for the site (whether or not you choose to show it on the front page in a block).
You can make sure there are course links on the front page for non-logged-in users so that course descriptions get indexed by crawler.
As for mod_rewrite to remove parameters from the paths, is this really an issue anymore? It sounds like old information ... Google for example has no issues indexing all of Moodle.org currently.
A standard sitemap generator would be a nice idea (I guess it would just present search engines with public course descriptions etc, which is easy, and public forums/announcements). What else could/should it do?
You can set the site name which sets the title of the site.
You can set the site description which (on most themes) is set to be the metadata description for the site (whether or not you choose to show it on the front page in a block).
You can make sure there are course links on the front page for non-logged-in users so that course descriptions get indexed by crawler.
As for mod_rewrite to remove parameters from the paths, is this really an issue anymore? It sounds like old information ... Google for example has no issues indexing all of Moodle.org currently.
A standard sitemap generator would be a nice idea (I guess it would just present search engines with public course descriptions etc, which is easy, and public forums/announcements). What else could/should it do?
A few I can think of, all seems a bit obvious though...
- Set site name.
- Set site description.
- Create logical site structure & navigation.
- Use proper heading tags in content. + use headings to define document structure.
- Use Descriptions/titles in images and links.
- Do not duplicate content.
- Generate a sitemap and link with Google Webmaster tools.
- Use mod_rewrite to create "friendly" URL's.
I appreciate your advice on Seo for Moodle.
Can you give me more details ? How exactly can I do it ? Set site name and site description , Use Descriptions/titles in images and links.
I need clear instructions on improving Seo .
Thanks in advance
Can you give me more details ? How exactly can I do it ? Set site name and site description , Use Descriptions/titles in images and links.
I need clear instructions on improving Seo .
Thanks in advance
You're absolutely right that Google can spider dynamic URLs, but there are a number of reasons why it's still worth it to have rewritten URLs. I'm totally convinced of this! I've been in the SEO field for several years and am now getting into Moodle.
URLs that look static:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls-the-best-practice-for-seo-is-still-clear
(And this article may be of interest, if anyone decides to add clean URLs to Moodle
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls
A curious thing is that when SEOMoz moved their blog onto clean URLs, traffic went up something like 20% or more -- even though Google could already index their posts just fine!
(If you don't know, SEOMoz is one of the major educators in the SEO field.)
I'd be glad to offer thoughts and suggestions about it. Hope you find this information helpful.
URLs that look static:
- have keywords in them, which is better for SEO
- look more professional
- are easier to remember and type
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls-the-best-practice-for-seo-is-still-clear
(And this article may be of interest, if anyone decides to add clean URLs to Moodle
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls
A curious thing is that when SEOMoz moved their blog onto clean URLs, traffic went up something like 20% or more -- even though Google could already index their posts just fine!
(If you don't know, SEOMoz is one of the major educators in the SEO field.)
I'd be glad to offer thoughts and suggestions about it. Hope you find this information helpful.
It would be great if Moodle would be able to auto-generate a sitemap using the sitemap protocol. Google, Yahoo and even Microsoft support this protocal and will take these sitemap files as input.
I have used it for a couple of sites and it has made a big difference in indexing all the otherwise dynamic pages. I think this might especially be true for pages with a lower pagerank than Moodle.org.
I guess the sitemap would have to be generated according to what options have been chosen in the "opentogoogle" and "forceloginforprofiles" settings.
Maybe a good GSOC project (for next year 
)
Well, there is a plugin (http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=1043), see Chad's posting above.
And there is such a module for Drupal (http://drupal.org/project/xmlsitemap) which might provide some inspiration. In fact, that was a GSOC project in 2005
Frank
And there is such a module for Drupal (http://drupal.org/project/xmlsitemap) which might provide some inspiration. In fact, that was a GSOC project in 2005
Frank