SEO for Drupal

SEO is a topic a lot of people find mysterious, and with so many charlatans claiming they possess the "secrets" to ranking highly with search engines, it's no wonder. But the truth is, anyone can learn to do a good job at SEO and there are Drupal modules that can help. In this post, I've chosen to focus on modules that are available for Drupal 7, but have a look around Drupal.org for those that are compatible with previous versions. 

Page Title

By default, the title you assign to your node is the value that appears inside your <title></title> tags. This value is what search engines use to identify your page in their results, as well as help determine its relevance to keywords.

The Page Title module allows you to change this default behavior for improved SEO. Integrating with Token opens up even more possibilities, including specifying title patterns that can include the highest weighted taxonomy term for a node or any other information you want to add.

Another really nice feature of this module is how it handles paged content.  You see, as you page through a node of content, the title will stay the same. The problem with this is search engines see paged content as separate pages that all have the same name, something that raises a red flag. The Page Title module allows you to attach suffixes to each of the pages on your node, leaving you in Google's good graces.

Content Analysis

Content Analysis is a helper module that works with a collection of other modules that analyze your content. This provides multiple views into the content on your site. Supported analyzers include Scribe SEO, Quick SEO, Alchemy, Keyword Research and more.

At the time of this writing, this module is in alpha for Drupal 7 and a number of the analyzers it works with do not yet offer a D7 version at all. In my own testing, it was quite buggy, but considering its usefulness, this is a module to watch. If you have a D6 site, however, it's ready to go.

Content Optimizer

Content Optimizer works with the Content Analysis module to make sure your site's content conforms to SEO best practices. The module performs an analysis of your content and displays statistics and recommendations for improving your site's search rankings.

SEO Checklist

Billed as the, "the most powerful Drupal module that does nothing" the SEO Checklist module provides recommendations of other Drupal modules and SEO best practices for your site. If you're new to search engine optimization, this module can be a big help in keeping you on track.

SEO Compliance Checker

SEO Compliance Checker is another module that can help you make sure your content is optimized. It analyzes node content upon its creation or modification and then provides feedback on compliance with optimization rules. 

The module comes with two sub-modules, SEO Rules and Keyword Rules. However, any Drupal module can define further SEO rules by use of a hook provided in the base module.

Global Redirect

When you set the URL alias for a content node, Drupal will create the path specified, but it doesn't get rid of the original path, typically named something like, 'node/25'. What you're left with are two paths that direct to the same page, and this can really damage your search rankings. Global Redirect solves this problem by always directing users to the page set as the URL alias, keeping you in line with SEO best practices.

Google Analytics

This module is an obvious choice, and hopefully you're already using it. It adds the Google Analytics web stats tracking system to your website. Some of the included features are:

• Selectively track/exclude, certain users, roles and pages;
• Monitor what type of links are tracked (downloads, outgoing and mailto);
• Monitor what files are downloaded from your pages;
• Custom variables support with tokens;
• And much more...

If you don't already have this module installed, it should be at the top of your to-do list.

Metatags Quick

 The Metatags Quick module is intended to be a replacement for the popular Nodewords module which is not being ported to Drupal 7. This module provides a meta description field for all of your non-administrative pages. Although meta description tags aren't important for your search ranking, they are very important in getting users to click through from search results.

SEO Watcher

The SEO Watcher module searches the major search engines for keywords that you specify and then checks the rank of your site against those keywords. It also allows you to check how competing sites rank against those same keywords. These checks can be set to run everyday and the report emailed to you. Pretty slick, huh?

Wrapping It Up

These modules can be a big help when it comes to SEO on your Drupal site. If you're interested in some practical guidance on creating optimized content, check out my post on Drupal SEO tips.