Xit0

Random Scribblings of a Linux Enthusiast

SEO for Octopress Websites

I recently switched my blog from Blogger to Octopress (hosted on Github) and it’s fantastic!!! Here are the search engine optimizations I performed on the blog. Most of them are from www.yatishmehta.in, www.learnaholic.me and nothoughtcontrol.com.

I’ve also incorporated these SEO fixes into the classic octopress theme. It is available at octopress-classic-no-blog.

Keywords & Description for individual posts

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---
layout: post
title: "SEO for Octopress Websites"
date: 2013-05-03 20:26
comments: true
categories: ["octopress", "theme", "seo"]

keywords: "keywords, for, this, post"
description: "Description for this post"
---

Octopress, by default, when generating a new post using rake new_post["Title"] doesn’t include keywords and description metadata for individual posts. But, if they are manually added to a post, the generated html will include them.

You could include both manually for each newly created post or modify the Rakefile in the root of the Octopress installation to include these whenever a new post is created. Find the new_post task and modify it as follows:

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# usage rake new_post[my-new-post] or rake new_post['my new post'] or rake new_post (defaults to "new-post")
desc "Begin a new post in #{source_dir}/#{posts_dir}"
task :new_post, :title do |t, args|
  if args.title
    title = args.title
  else
    title = get_stdin("Enter a title for your post: ")
  end
  raise "### You haven't set anything up yet. First run `rake install` to set up an Octopress theme." unless File.directory?(source_dir)
  mkdir_p "#{source_dir}/#{posts_dir}"
  filename = "#{source_dir}/#{posts_dir}/#{Time.now.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')}-#{title.to_url}.#{new_post_ext}"
  if File.exist?(filename)
    abort("rake aborted!") if ask("#{filename} already exists. Do you want to overwrite?", ['y', 'n']) == 'n'
  end
  puts "Creating new post: #{filename}"
  open(filename, 'w') do |post|
    post.puts "---"
    post.puts "layout: post"
    post.puts "title: \"#{title.gsub(/&/,'&')}\""
    post.puts "date: #{Time.now.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M')}"
    post.puts "comments: true"
    post.puts "categories: "
    post.puts "keywords: "
    post.puts "description: "
    post.puts "---"
  end
end

Similar modifications can be performed for new_page task as well.

Keywords & Description for the main website

Octopress utilizes the keywords and description of the latest blog post for the main website. In most cases, this doesn’t bode well for the website in terms of SEO. It is possible to provide a separate set of keywords and description for the main website. Modify _config.yml in the root of the Octopress installation to include the additional metadata. description option would already be present there.

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url: http://yoursite.com
title: My Octopress Blog
subtitle: A blogging framework for hackers.
author: Your Name
simple_search: http://google.com/search

description: "Description for the website"
keywords: "keywords, for, the, website"

Now modify source/_includes/head.html, the file responsible for generating the html header for the website, to use this metadata when available. The modifications go after the author meta tag.

html source/_includes/head.html 
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{% capture description %}{% if page.description %}{{ page.description }}{% elsif site.description %}{{ site.description }}{% else %}{{ content | raw_content }}{% endif %}{% endcapture %}
<meta name="description" content="{{ description | strip_html | condense_spaces | truncate:150 }}" />

{% capture keywords %}{% if page.keywords %}{{ page.keywords }}{% elsif site.keywords %}{{ site.keywords }}{% endif %}{% endcapture %}
<meta name="keywords" content="{{ keywords | strip_html | condense_spaces }}" />

Remove Redundant /blog Prefix From Octopress URLs

Octopress, by default, generates static websites with a /blog prefix attached to categories, archives and post URLs. This is particularly annoying when the blog is hosted at blog.yourdomain.tld and have funny URLs like blog.yourdomain.tld/blog/archives. I’ve written about this before.

Single domain for the website

To prevent google from de-valuing content for having two different URLs, one through www.yoursite.tld and another through yoursite.tld, it is better to redirect one to the other with a HTTP 301 status code.

I’ve redirected www.xit0.org to xit0.org through a DNS CNAME record. Refer your domain registar’s help pages on setting this up. If you run the blog/website off Heroku, rack-rewrite can be used to achieve this as mentioned at www.yatishmehta.in.

In Short

These 4 SEO fixes are beneficial to an Octopress website:

  • description & keywords metadata for individual posts/pages
  • description & keywords for the main website
  • Remove redundant /blog prefix from Octopress URLs
  • Single domain for the website

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