8 SEO optimization tips and plugins for your Drupal site: here’s a clear plan to help you showcase your site by boosting its visibility on the web.
Especially since a site built with Drupal often requires a significant amount of time and skills…
Drupal is a CMS, or content management system. Popular with developers, it nevertheless lives in the shadow of Joomla and especially WordPress, which still firmly holds first place among the most popular CMSs.
Free and open-source software like its competitors Joomla and WordPress, Drupal lets you modify and evolve a site without needing a programming professional or having to code.
A major advantage of Drupal is that it is a modular CMS: its core is very lightweight, and around it revolves a whole ecosystem of modules, a range of functions that extend Drupal’s capabilities.
This modular structure offers great flexibility, but at the same time requires a certain level of expertise.
Moreover, updates can prove more complex than on other CMSs due to the interdependence of many Drupal extensions.
But whether it’s WordPress or Drupal, the CMSs’ DNA isn’t SEO. The crucial question for anyone planning to build their own site with Drupal is: which tools should you add for SEO?
The aim of this article is therefore to offer you, in 8 points, everything you need to know to improve the SEO of your Drupal site.
5 SEO optimization plugins for your Drupal site geared toward Google indexing, 3 SEO optimization plugins focused on user experience, and finally 1 concise tip.
1. The Drupal Meta Tag module: to create titles and meta tags relevant to both visitors and Google
Let’s start with a SEO best practice fundamental one: the creation of titles and of tags clear and relevant content for both users and search engine crawlersGoogle indexing.
This involves prioritizing content on two levels: how the site appears in search results, and at the level of individual pages on the site.
In this respect, the Drupal Meta Tag module helps you create effective titles and tags.
Structuring with Hn tags will be obvious if you are familiar with HTML. But sometimes, absorbed in the lengthy process of building a site, you can forget a very important SEO aspect: the meta description.
This is a short piece of text, about 150 characters long, that appears in the SERPs just below your site name.
This meta description therefore has a strong impact on the click-through rate.
To encourage users to click on your site, the meta description must strike a balance between a concise explanatory description and aiming for an emotional impact (arousing curiosity, prompting action, etc.).
Related to the Meta Tag module, the Drupal Schema Meta Tag module enables structured data — a standardized format that gives indexing robots clear information about the meaning of a page.
2. The Simple XML Sitemap module: to automatically create a sitemap
No one is likely to publish the definitive, foolproof guide to the Google criteria that determine the ranking of sites in search results…
However, among these necessarily multifactorial and evolving criteria, one can single out the value of having a sitemap.
This "map" in XML format maps your site: it makes it easier and faster for Google's crawlers to crawl it.
Indeed, it is obvious that a well-structured site (see tip #1) that is well mapped promotes its indexing.
Hence the usefulness of the Simple XML Sitemap module offered by Drupal, which can automatically generate the expected sitemap.
3. The Robots.txt module: to guide crawling of your pages
Still with the aim of promoting your site's indexing, Drupal offers the Robots.txt module.
This allows you to guide the crawling of your site's pages by preventing crawlers from accessing certain pages of your site.
Indeed, robots.txt is a root file that search engines read before accessing a site's content.
This robots.txt sends an "allow" or "disallow" signal that directs Google's crawlers. Ideally, this robots.txt module should be configured before launching a website.
4. The PathAuto module: to automatically create URL aliases
Creating URL aliases is a long and laborious task. Indeed, after having refined your site's address, you will need polish the URL for each of your pages.
A URL should act like a business card: conveying, in a very limited format, the essential information of a page in a defined and systematic order.
If you have a large number of pages on the same site, or even a multi-site project, the Drupal PathAuto module will save you time and increase efficiency by automatically generating URL aliases after custom configuration.
5. The Redirect module: to hunt down 404 errors
A site is almost… a living organism. Consequently, you cannot understand and optimize its operation without projecting into the future.
During its life cycle, a site will evolve due to the creation, deletion, or merging of its different pages.
These frequent changes are a sign of a living site, but they have an annoying downside for SEO because they increase the risk of dead ends and wrong paths.
For what could be more disastrous for both your SEO and your image than a visitor landing on a duplicate or a “404 error” page?
This is the purpose of the Drupal Redirect module: to avoid dead links and repair broken links.
You can pair it with the related Search 404 Drupal module, very useful for exploring potential errors when a site contains several hundred deep pages.
6. The Easy Breadcrumb module: a breadcrumb trail in the maze of large sites
For a visitor to find exactly the information or product they are looking for, it is essential that they can orient themselves at a glance on your site.
That is the whole point of the breadcrumb : this feature displays, at the top of the deep page being viewed, in order, all the other levels of pages in which this page is nested.
In Drupal, the Easy BreadCrump module makes this task easier for you.
7. The Cache API: to optimize your site's loading time
In the merciless fight between sites to win and keep users’ attention, speed is the key to the battle.
The widespread availability of broadband and fierce competition between sites has drastically reduced the user’s attention span to an average of no more than 10 seconds. Yes, you read that right…
Needless to say, however good your site is, if it takes too long to load it simply won’t be seen because the user will quickly move on, or worse, go to a competitor’s site.
An effective SEO technique to reduce loading time? Caching many pages of your site. That is the whole point of Drupal’s powerful Cache API.
A tip to regularly check your site’s loading time? Consult Google’s PageSpeed Insights page.
8. The Drupal AMP module: to improve mobile users' experience
When looking for SEO optimization for a Drupal site, this fact cannot be ignored: nearly 50% of queries are now made from a smartphone.
The CMS is no exception in this area: in fact, since Drupal 8, all core themes are responsive.
It's up to you to keep playing along as you add the Drupal features you choose.
You need to think not only mobile-friendly, but even mobile-first.
That's what the Drupal AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) module aims for: to help you design a site whose formats, styles and loading speed are suited to smartphone viewing.
9. The SEO Checklist module: to always know where you stand
Enable the Drupal SEO Checklist module. This very comprehensive to-do list will show you what remains to be done to optimize your Drupal site's SEO.
Furthermore, each task includes a download link for the relevant module.
This SEO Checklist serves as an effective reminder both for carrying out and tracking your SEO strategy.
We have now reached the end of the 9 tips and plugins for optimizing your Drupal site's SEO.
Each of these 9 points aimed to boost your site's visibility, both with users and with Google's indexing bots.
But as the web continues to grow, both groups are becoming increasingly demanding.
There's no point putting all your bets on the sitemap, URLs or HTML tags if your texts are just a collection of keywords with no added value.
Current indexing bots scan with a nuance close to human reading: you therefore have every reason to focus on high-quality text content to optimize your SEO.
Writing copy that is both original and timely, while also being specialized and educational, doesn't come easy: it's often wiser to entrust this important copywriting task to professional web writers, such as those you will find on Writer.com.
