If you have an inner hunger for success as an entrepreneur, Search Engine Optimization is indispensable. It is the key to improving your site’s visibility and attracting swarms of organic traffic. Besides, a high SEO ranking gives you an edge over your competitors and enhances your brand reputation. Although there is a plethora of SEO tools available in the market, Drupal SEO is a preferred choice of a majority of organizations.
In case you are struggling with choosing the right SEO tool for your website, this blog will help you get acquainted with the benefits of Drupal SEO and facilitate easy decision-making.
What Makes Drupal SEO Exceptional?
Right from its inception, Drupal has been validating its worth by persistently ranking among the most advanced content management systems (CMSs) worldwide. A major factor that distinguishes Drupal CMS from others is its incredible suite of SEO modules and features. While other CMSs do not promise higher SEO rankings and organic search performance, Drupal is power packed with SEO features to help your business website rank among the top search engine results.
Given below is a list of the phenomenal features present in the Drupal SEO suite:
● Top-notch SEO modules
● Clean URLs
● XML sitemaps
● Page speed optimization
● Customizable metatags
● Multilingual capabilities
● Mobile optimization
Now, let’s take a plunge into the sea of Drupal SEO modules to help you get a better view of the CMS’s SEO capabilities.
Drupal SEO Modules
Drupal boasts multitudinous SEO modules that possess the potential to boost your SEO rankings. Automatic SEO-friendly URL generation, XML sitemap generation, and metadata optimization are some examples of functionalities these fantastic modules exhibit.
The best part is that being an open-source CMS, Drupal empowers you to exercise the freedom to modify it according to your site’s individual needs. You can also create your own customized Drupal SEO modules, and accomplish your SEO goals.
1. Pathauto
Path auto leverages the power of automation to create URLs/ path aliases for a plethora of content types such as nodes and taxonomy terms. As there is no need for your SEO team to specify the path alias manually, it adds some comfort to their lives.
2 . Redirect
With this Drupal SEO module, you can effortlessly redirect from old URLs to new ones.
3. Metatag
As the name suggests, this fabulous Drupal SEO module automatically renders structured metadata or metatags about your business website.
4. Simple XML Sitemap
The Simple XML Sitemap module generates a sitemap for your website that possesses sitemaps.org specification. This helps search engines crawl your website in a more efficient manner and display updated results. The best part is that this module automatically submits your sitemap to search engines at regular intervals of time, and keeps them updated.
5. Real-time SEO for Drupal
This module acts as your SEO assistant. It performs real-time and thorough SEO analysis of your web pages and generates incredible ideas to optimize your content around the main keyword. It also checks all the required elements for SEO and informs you whenever you forget something such as ensuring appropriate length and meta description.
6. SEO Checklist
With this module, you get a to-do list with checkboxes of various steps you are yet to undertake to optimize your business website. Whether you have modules to install or other tasks to complete, everything is listed. Besides, it also adds a timestamp and username to keep proper track of task completion.
7. Hreflang
Hreflang is a Drupal SEO module designed specifically for multilingual websites. It helps search engines understand various language versions of your website in a better manner, and present more accurate results to users in different languages.
8. Scheduler
Removing outdated content is as imperative for good SEO ranking as generating new and captivating content. The Scheduler module enables you to schedule node publishing and unpublishing. This empowers editors to automate updates well in advance and ensure persistently high search engine rankings.
If all these incredible modules have inspired you to switch to Drupal SEO, you might be pondering over how to make the most of Drupal’s impactful SEO features. So, without any further ado, let’s proceed to discuss the same.
The 5-Tier Process to Make the Most of Drupal SEO
When it comes to SEO, there is a lot to do. After all, multitudinous parameters affect your site’s SEO ranking and overall performance such as image loading speed, URL structure, and metadata. Here, we’ll discuss various elements you should focus on to make the most of Drupal SEO and improve your site’s overall ranking.
1. URL optimization
URLs are a major search engine ranking factor. Besides, they also affect user experience and understanding of your site structure. Well-drafted URLs with effective usage of relevant keywords enable search engines and people to get a clear idea of what to expect from a particular page. Hence, URL optimization is an integral part of search engine optimization.
With Drupal, you can customize your URLs and embed the required keywords in alignment with the needs of your target audience. Moreover, in Drupal 8 and higher versions, ‘clean URLs’ are activated by default to ensure that the URLs exhibit absolute user-friendliness and good readability.
2. Sitemap generation
A sitemap is basically a roadmap of your business website that enables search engines to crawl your site, understand its structure, and access all the important pages. With Drupal’s Simple XML sitemap module, you can create your sitemap effortlessly.
As you go about adding and modifying the content of your website, the phenomenal module will automatically update your sitemap without any hassle. Hence, you can rest assured that search engines always display the most up-to-date view of your website’s content.
3. Optimizing content
Content is still the central point of search engine optimization. If you create high-quality, relevant, captivating, and unique content while following other SEO best practices, nothing can stop you from achieving top ranking on search engines.
Being a top-notch content management system, Drupal possesses an intuitive and powerful content creation interface. It has all the tools in its arsenal required for generating and managing content effectively and efficiently. Besides, there is no limitation when it comes to the types of content you can create, all thanks to Drupal’s flexible content architecture.
From blogs to polls, Drupal empowers you to create anything you want and engage with diverse audience groups, which in turn takes your SEO performance to a whole new sphere.
4. Optimizing metadata
Metadata optimization is an indispensable part of an impactful SEO strategy. Accurate and SEO-optimized titles and descriptions contribute to better search engine ranking. With Drupal’s metatag module, you don’t have to expend your precious time and energy on generating structured metadata or metatags. This is because the module itself automatically provides structured metadata about your business website.
Open Graph, Twitter cards, and other metatags are widely supported by the metatag module, which makes it an incredible Drupal SEO feature. By using the various types of metatags, you can enhance your content’s visibility on different social media platforms.
5. Improving website speed and overall performance
Page speed continues to be used as an SEO ranking factor by Google. This is primarily because users prefer nimble websites with quick page loading and abandon the slow ones. As per research, if page load time goes from one to three seconds, there is a 32% increase in the chances of bounce.
Given that, it is crucial for you to focus on improving website speed and overall performance for SEO as well as reducing bounce rate. The following are some ingenious methods Drupal offers to help you with the same.
● Drupal caching
Drupal renders in-built caching features to give an enormous boost to your site’s page loading speed and overall performance. By customizing your settings, you can take complete charge of how long the content is cached and when it should be cleared.
● Advanced caching modules
Drupal is power-packed with multitudinous advanced caching modules such as Memcache API and integration module. You can install and enable the desired caching modules to optimize website performance.
● Aggregate JavaScript and CSS files
With Drupal, you can effortlessly aggregate and compress JavaScript and CSS files, which reduces the number of HTTP requests and file size to a great degree. This can in turn reduce your site’s loading times.
● CDN integration
A content delivery network (CDN) is a potent tool for optimizing website speed and performance. It serves your website content to the users from the servers located geographically close to their location. Drupal’s CDN module promotes seamless CDN integration to help you build a nimble website.
● Responsive web design and mobile-friendly themes
Today, a majority of users access websites through their smartphones. Hence, mobile optimization has emerged as a prominent search engine ranking factor. Drupal offers a responsive default theme to empower your business website to fit well into all screen sizes.
Besides, you can utilize other mobile-friendly Drupal themes such as DXPR to deliver exceptional experiences to those who access your site through their smartphones.
Let’s Wrap Up
In a nutshell, Drupal CMS is power packed with incredible SEO modules such as an SEO checklist and scheduler that can take your website’s search engine performance to a whole new sphere. With its incredible features such as automatic sitemap upgradation and provision of structured metadata, the CMS can simplify the life of your SEO team to a great degree.
If you are feeling convinced to switch to Drupal SEO and need assistance with the process, LN Webworks is always there to help you. We have a proficient Drupal SEO team that can help your marketing team leverage the power of Drupal’s SEO suite to secure a top rank for your website. So, without waiting any further, reach out to us today.
Author Information
LN Webworks
Your Drupal Solution PartnerLN Webworks have championed open-source technologies for nearly a decade, bringing advanced engineering capabilities and agile practices to some of the biggest names across media, entertainment, education, travel, hospitality, telecommunications and other industries.
