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19.03.2022, 15:20

Drupal – SEO for Content Editors in 2022

You have a great digital platform, but still not attracting enough customers? It's time to take care of your SEO. This article will tell you how Drupal can help you stand out online.

SEO (search engine optimization) is the cornerstone of online presence today. In a nutshell, it is a set of actions and content designed to make your website appear as high as possible in the search results of your future customers.

In practice, it goes like this: someone types in the phrase they are looking for into Google and the search engine gives them the answer in the form of a list of results, directing them to various pages. These are often hundreds of results. The more popular the phrase, the more results are popping out.

Conclusions drawn from research into user behavior on the web indicate that few users get beyond the top ten search results. If your project is positioned further, the chances of conversion (a user visiting your website) are very slim. This is why SEO activities are so crucial. They make your website rank high in the search results, thus increasing the number of visits from potential customers.

If you want to know more about the basics of search engine optimization, check out our article SEO Basics – less searching, more finding. Some time ago, we also described the current SEO trends, the knowledge of which will help you to attract customers online.

Drupal – SEO within your hand’s reach

You already know the importance of SEO and how taking care of this aspect can help your business leap to prominence. You also know that traditional SEO techniques, i.e. spicing up your content with keywords, are not enough to get you noticed on Google. Today's algorithms are very complex and your position in search results will depend on multiple factors.

What does this have to do with Drupal? Well, a lot. This popular CMS, which has been in development for over 20 years, is consistently one of the best of its kind in the world. Its developers are constantly adding improvements to help you keep up with changing SEO trends. What's more, most of them are already available in the basic version and "out of the box".

A "mobile first" approach

Nowadays, when designing a digital platform, you need to consider smartphone and tablet users first and foremost. According to research, more than half of all online content visits are made using mobile devices. In many Western countries, this share is even higher. People are simply more comfortable browsing the web on handheld devices. Responsiveness, i.e. the ability to adapt to the size of the screen and the way the user operates it (e.g. touch gestures), is therefore extremely important to keep in mind.

By choosing Drupal 9, you will immediately get a number of built–in features that make it easier to design a responsive platform. Examples include editing content and visualizing it before publishing it in both versions (desktop and mobile) in real-time. You will be able to easily control exactly what your users will see. 

Speed of display

Have you ever experienced site hiccups? Google, when searching the web, also pays attention to the loading speed of pages. This is one of the most important factors that can cause your work to disappear into the depths of the internet if you don't take care of its speed.

The latest version of Drupal will help you significantly with this. It includes modern solutions and functionalities that control intelligently what is displayed and when. All of this is to keep your application running quickly and efficiently. Creating and publishing dynamic content has never been so easy.

Popular SEO modules in Drupal

Thousands of modules are available for Drupal 9. They are created and developed in line with the open source initiative by developers affiliated with a global community. Importantly, its members are exceptional people who bring a sense of passion and commitment to the development of this free CMS project. As a result, Drupal is a great choice and is trusted by institutions and concerns around the world. It's a really great solution that will also work for your business.   

Many of the available modules extend Drupal's core functions and will make the work of marketers and SEO specialists even easier. Here are some modules that are worth trying out:

  • Metatag – enables the automatic provision and customization of structured metadata (meta tags). These are largely responsible for ranking and position in search results. It contains dozens of options and functions ranging from the ones for basic to advanced-level editors. The module also makes it easier to control the appearance of social media content (Open Graph Protocol from Facebook, Twitter Cards from Twitter). 
  • Schema.org Metatag – extends the Metatag module to display structured data as JSON LD in the header of web pages. In a nutshell, the idea is that before anyone sees your content, a search engine has to find it first. If it has the right structure, Google will preview it or select a snippet of it and display it in the search results. This greatly increases the chance of conversion.
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schema.org Metatag
source: drupal.org
  • SEO Checklist – one of the best SEO in the Drupal toolset. It will check if your platform is properly optimized for search engines. You will get a functional list of tasks to be performed. Very importantly, the module is regularly updated. It will make it easier for you to keep up with Google's algorithm changes. To take full advantage of the potential of this add–on, you must have at least a basic knowledge of SEO.
  • Real Time SEO for Drupal –  a very handy tool. Maybe your post is too long, you have a bad metadata format, and keywords are missing or misplaced. Thanks to this module you will notice all the kinks immediately and deal with them. It really makes your job easier.
  • Pathauto – with this add–on you will save time when creating URLs for new content for your platform.
  • Sitemap – creates a site map that makes it easier for visitors to navigate your site. It can also display the RSS feeds of your blog and its individual categories.
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sitemap
source: drupal.org
  • Require on Publish – this module allows you to specify which fields editors creating content must fill in before publishing it. These include tags, URLs, or meta descriptions.
  • Google Analytics – a module that facilitates integration with Google Analytics. 

These are, of course, only some of the available modules. Do you need more? You can find them on the official Drupal site.

Summary

As you can see, Drupal is a great tool that gives you many options for optimizing your content for search engines. Even its basic features will help you optimize your site for SEO and make it visible on the web.

We know that using a solution even as good as Drupal can sometimes be difficult. If we can help you in any way to build or develop your project, let us know. We're at your service!

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