Drupal is phenomenal for SEO.
When you use Drupal 8 for your content management system, you have a powerful tool to improve search engine optimization.
Working with Drupal websites for the past 12 years, we experience first-hand how quickly search engines respond to a well-optimized Drupal website. Customers have been seen to triple their traffic in weeks after upgrading from another platform.
The competitive advantages of site-wide optimizations like RDF or AMP put clients at the forefront of SEO because they use Drupal. The benefits are a faster website, higher rankings, and more traffic.
One of the main reasons why Drupal is the content management system of choice for complex enterprise websites is the fact that it has been built from the ground up with the functionality and flexibility to optimize each node and fragment view. code for search engines.
Drupal has brought many new additions for ease of use, functionality and robustness. It is the superior method to create and market the website to the world. However, despite all the improvements, the most recent version still looks like Drupal. Faster, cleaner, more refined and certainly more up-to-date, but it's still Drupal.
1. Download the Drupal SEO Checklist Module
The most important thing you can do is download the Drupal SEO Checklist module at Drupal.org. IBM's Robert Shea says that “the Drupal SEO Checklist is the most powerful 'do nothing' Drupal module. ”Basically, this module just tells you what to do.
By following the Drupal SEO checklist, you can implement the best modules and tasks that are needed to optimize the website. By giving you a comprehensive list of best practices, it makes on-page Drupal SEO a breeze. When you have completed the to-do list, you will have a fully optimized website.
Module tasks are segmented by functional needs such as title tags, paths, content, and more. Next to each task is a link to download the module and a link to the appropriate administration screen on the website so you can configure the settings to perfection. The Drupal SEO Checklist also keeps track of what has already been done by placing a date and time stamp next to each item.
2. Clean your URLs
For Drupal optimization to be as effective as possible, you need to ensure that URLs are clean, that the site displays the correct content, and that the link value is maintained even when the content changes.
Drupal installs clean URLs by default and cannot be disabled, but you can do even more with the Redirect module. In Drupal, using the Redirect module allows you to redirect from old URLs to new URLs. This is great when you've moved a piece of content to another section of the site or changed the URL inadvertently.
The module creates 301 redirects from old URLs to new URLs on the website. This helps SEO by making sure that any URL that ranks on Google still resolves when a visitor arrives. This module automates what was once an arduous and ongoing SEO task: fixing broken links. Now you can activate this module and forget about it. Have you ever moved content, put the wrong URL in print advertising, or migrated content from another website? Then you know the problems this can create. With the redirect module you can also create manual ones yourself.
Another great module for SEO is the Pathauto module. Using the Pathauto module, Drupal automatically generates URLs for your content that are great for SEO. This means that you don't need to manually create every content URL on your website.
3. Implement meta tags
Meta tags are an important step in making Drupal as effective as possible. Meta tags are snippets of text that are used to inform Google, other search engines and social media sites about the content of each page on the website. This helps the SEO to clearly communicate what they think each page on the website is about and how it is intended to be described on the sites. If you don't do this, you will have to rely on the search engines to make a decision on the content. While they are pretty good at it, it's important enough not to leave it to chance.
- The Metatag module allows you to automatically provide title tags and structured metadata to each page of the website. This module places both the HTML title tag and meta tags in the header of a web page. This means less code and faster rendering of web pages, which also helps with SEO.
- The Alternate Hreflang module automatically adds hreflang tags to all or some pages of the web site. Search engines refer to the alternative hreflang tag to display the correct language or regional URL in search results. This is very important for multilingual websites.
4. Communicating directly with search engines.
Search engines help crawl and index the website. To do this, they provide tools and reports that will help you communicate with them and better understand what is happening with it. Marketers who do this well will receive better search results and get a lot of traffic.
- The XML Sitemap module creates an XML sitemap of the content that you can submit to search engines. An XML sitemap is a special formatted summary of each piece of the website's content. The module creates a properly formatted XML sitemap that can be submitted to Google, other search engines and other sites. Having an XML sitemap helps with SEO by giving Google a list of all the pages you want them to crawl. While Google can crawl the site without an XML sitemap, the larger and more complex the site becomes, the greater the chance that the crawler will get confused and miss pages or even entire sections of the site.
- Cron is a system that maintains and cleans the Drupal site. It does things like checking for updates, indexing content and rebuilding XML sitemaps. Now, the XML sitemap will be kept up to date with all the new content you add to the website.
The Google Analytics module adds the Google Analytics code snippet to the website and allows you to control how and when it is used. Google Analytics is an incredibly important tool for any web marketer. It allows you to find valuable information about visitors, including demographics, behavior on the site, where they found you online, what keywords they used to find you and, more. However, Google Analytics is not perfect. For example, it tracks all visitors by default, even administrators. The Google Analytics module can fix this by showing only the trimmed Google Analytics code when a non-admin is using the site. This keeps the data clean and the most useful reports.
5. Download the best Drupal modules for SEO
Nothing is as powerful as Google suddenly falling in love with the website and pushing it up the SERP (search engine results pages). If anything, all the tools work together to produce a result that is significantly better than what the parts alone could achieve. The Drupal modules mentioned above are just a few of the best.
6. Accelerate and secure the web site
Two important attributes for websites are security and speed. Google rewards websites that are secure (using https with a valid SSL certificate) and fast to render. All the SEO in the world won't make your site great if you get hacked. There are bad people on the Internet who want to break your website, infest your visitors, steal your data and/or blackmail you. From the Panama Papers fiasco (yes, Drupal was involved) to your garden variety child script, you must protect yourself and the Drupal website.
Speed became a ranking factor for Google searches in April 2010. This means that, all things being equal, the faster site will rank higher.
Drupal has responsive web design as the default methodology. That's good because Google specifically states that they prefer this method for serving mobile devices. In this configuration, the server sends the same HTML code to all devices and CSS is used to change the appearance of the page for each mobile device. It allows a single URL for the same content and is ideal for sharing and delivering pages to all visitors. One way to speed up your website and make it responsive to mobile devices is to download and implement Google's AMP module.
More information with Drupal SEO
Search engine optimization is a game of inches. A title tag that's missing a keyword, a body that doesn't speak to the topic, metadata that isn't entirely correct. Together, that's enough to knock you off the front page of Google. Using only the tips above will help you move towards a spectacular Drupal website. Of course, there is much more to learn.
Taken and translated from: https://www.volacci.com/blog/6-tips-rock-drupal-seo?utm_source=drupal-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=drupal-newsletter-20210708