In terms of technical optimization Drupal is in a good relationship with search engines, but to promote sites to high positions you have to work hard. In the basic package of the engine you will find only a minimal set for customizing SEO. We are not talking about automation – without modules each URL will have to be formed manually, so that it had a view, convenient for human perception, not a machine.
Optimization includes at least three stages:
- Forming aliases – synonyms of addresses assigned to units of content;
- Adding metadata for search engine optimization;
- Setting up a sitemap for better page indexing.
All content placed on the engine is a node – a unit with a unique address. Between themselves they differ only by numbers at the end, so it is difficult for people to make them out, and even more so to reproduce them. This also affects the perception of content by search engines, whose algorithms are aimed at bringing the most informative and user-friendly pages to the top positions.
You can change machine addresses to CNC manually when publishing. But this is quite a painful task, and practice shows that users constantly forget to rewrite the URL. Automation of aliases creation helps to solve the problem, which can be implemented through a combination of modules Token, CTool and Pathauto. In addition to installation, you will have to customize the template, but in any case it requires less effort than manual editing of each address.
For proper indexing of pages under the editor window there should also be fields with metadata, in which the title, description and key phrases are specified. The standard Drupal functionality does not provide this feature. Modules are also used to add metadata – especially common is a pair of Metatag and Real-time SEO. Each of these applications has its own settings, through which you can fine-tune their work.
Another important part of optimization is the formation of the page map. This also requires a module called XML Setup. After its installation, the main page will be automatically added to the map. You will have to manually specify other sections created before the installation of the module. However, after the module is installed, the addition process will become automated.
