DotNetNuke Tutorials and Articles

Many of you have asked the question, How to Get XMod Detail Pages Indexed On Search Engines.

Let's begin with a typical XMod application setup.

In most cases, when an Xmod application is developed, you have a form and two templates. These templates are called a list view template and a detail view template.

The list view template renders a list of records to your visitor and when a <xmod:detailbutton> is added to your list view template the visitor is sent to the detail view a particular listing.

By default, when you configure your list view template, you have a choice to either:

1. Show your listing detail inline (the detail opens on the same page as the listings)
    
2. Not show details inline (the detail opens in a window that defaults to using the designated admin skin you have assigned to your DotNetNuke portal in Administration Settings.

Unfortunately, neither of these options will help get your detail pages indexed by search engines. The reason being, that with the first option, the URL of the detail page is the same as the listing page. Although option 2 is slightly better, nobody really likes the fact that is defaults to the portal admin skin and you cannot add any additional modules to the page.

But, a third option exists.

Often overlooked, the XMod Detail View for XMod 5.0 - PA (You will need to register at the XMod site http://dnndev.com to download this free module) is a Xmod detail module that allows you to create your detail page on a unique DotNetNuke portal page and has the following benefits:

1. You can add any other DotNetNuke module to this page.
    
2. It now gives us the ability to get our listing detail pages indexed by search engines.

Here comes the magic...

Thanks to my fellow Xmod MVP Tony Harrison, a.k.a. fatgeorge, a Xmod add-on exists named Syndication.

 Web syndication is a form of syndication in which website material is made available to multiple other sites. Most commonly, web syndication refers to making web feeds available from a site in order to provide other people with a summary of the website's recently added content (for example, the latest news or forum posts).

The problem with using the DNN built-in syndication option is that it knows nothing about your XMod application, it cannot link a feed item to the correct detail view of your data it simply leads the user back to your list template.

Syndication for XMod is built specifically for XMod, with it you can generate RSS 2.0 feeds on a scheduled basis.

What's more because it's built for XMod it knows about your XMod data; to create a feed you use the provided XMod built application 'fg_RSS_Manager' to specify your portal, XMod form, which form fields to use for the feed's title, description and items.

Here is how I use it

After I have my Xmod application set up on my site, I create an RSS feed using Syndication. I now have a Syndication generated file on my site that is a xml file that allows me to do the following:

1. Create an RSS 2.0 feed link on my listing page
    
2. Use this file to create a Google sitemap in Google webmaster tools.

Yes, you heard me correctly, you can submit this rss feed just like you would any other site map.

Once Google has indexed your RSS feed, the detail pages of your Xmod application will be available in the search results.

References:

Here is a live example using our Business Directory application:

When you click the RSS icon on the example above you are directed to:
http://dnnprofessor.com/portals/0/DNNPDirectory.xml. This is the RSS feed file generated by FatGeorge Syndication.

Now you get the benefit of visitors adding the feed to their favorite Google, Yahoo page, etc.

And, when you supply Google with the feed, as a site map, your detail pages are now indexed.

Click here to see the results in Google.

The same procedure can be used for any of the DNN Professor applications.

Click here to learn more about the FatGeorge Syndication XMod add-on.

Enjoy!
Buck