(Tips) Creating An SEO Strategy, Part 4: Code - Drupal Tips

Tips : Creating An SEO Strategy, Part 4: Code - Drupal Tips

In Part 3 of Creating An SEO Strategy we discussed ways of writing better HTML markup in your content. In this part of the series, we will discuss some Drupal specific modules and tips, as well as other resources for learning more about SEO.

Drupal Configuration

  • Set your website name and slogan
  • turn on clean urls
  • Setup custom error pages for 403 and 404: this is super simple, create a page, call it "Error 404" and another called "Error 403" put some helpful text on there, or even use the Google Webmaster Tools "Search This Site" widget. Then go to /admin/settings/error-reporting and enter the urls for these two pages.
  • Use semantic url names (meaningful plain English) for your Views and Panels url paths. For example, if you have a view that shows recipes, give the view the url "/recipes".
  • Make sure to title all of your views and panels with descriptive and relevant titles.

Drupal Modules

In this section I highlight what I believe are the 5 most important modules that improve SEO for Drupal Sites. They are also pretty easy to install and configure, even if you don't know much about writing code, or theming, with the exception of Page Title, these modules are configured solely through the GUI, and are all easily installed.

Path Auto

The Path Auto Module allows you to programatically create URL Aliases for your nodes. If you install and configure just one module to improve your site's SEO, this one is it. You will need to enable the Path module (which is part of core) and also install and enable the Token Module. Once you've installed and enabled the modules, go to admin/build/path/pathauto in Drupal 6 or admin/settings/pathauto in Drupal 5 to configure. Path auto allows you to set patterns for the creation of meaningful URLs, so instead of all of your nodes having a url like http://yoursite.com/node/182 they can have urls like http://yoursite.com/blog/2008/seo_tips_for_drupal. Each content type can have a different replacement pattern consisting of static and dynamic elements, the latter created by using the Tokens available from the Token Module. Read the Path Auto handbook for more information.

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Courtesy : Pronovix.com