Google's opinion of Drupal re SEO

Posted by scottwolpow on March 12, 2011 at 6:50pm

My associate was at SMX West. He stated that Google felt that Drupal was not SEO friendly based on its design. I plan to learn more at SES NY, but has any one else heard about this?
The basic feeling that out of the box other CMS's are better suited for SEO.

Comments

Is Drupal SEO friendly?

Posted by Kipp Elliott Watson on March 12, 2011 at 7:13pm

I'd like to know the reasoning for this opinion. IMHO Drupal is very SEO friendly. It allows you to automatically create SEO friendly internal urls that use the primary text used in the content node, makes appropriate adjustments for the location of scripts and even has a module that provides for an SEO checklist so that a newbie can just go through the checklist to maximize SEO friendliness. This is not to say that all Drupal sites are SEO friendly. I am saying that your Drupal website can be very SEO friendly if you use the tools that are available. If you're sloppy about this, no CMS can help you.

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Image Optimisation and W3C Validation

Posted by sundarrawat on June 16, 2011 at 6:45am

Hello Sir,

Sometimes it happens that we got pblms in W3C validations by adding Modules... And another thing that I did not find the way to optimize the images for Image Search in Search Engines.
do i need to install module for the same?

thanks
--*
Sundar

I've also heard this

Posted by aaronpinero on March 12, 2011 at 7:24pm

I've definitely also heard from people before that Drupal is lacking when it comes to SEO. I'm very curious to hear about the specifics. What exactly about it is not good for SEO? I'd be very surprised if there are not modules out there to mitigate any issues Drupal may have "out of the box".

Out of the box (for D6) you

Posted by sprugman on March 12, 2011 at 9:16pm

Out of the box (for D6) you didn't have automatically generated search-engine-friendly urls, or an easy way to create meta tags. Of course both of these can be overcome with modules, but still....

Meta tags don't mean much

Posted by jasonkchapman on March 13, 2011 at 2:44pm

Meta tags don't mean much anyway. With the exception of CANONICAL, Google and everyone else mostly ignore them these days. Google will use the meta description cosmetically, but puts almost no weight on keywords found there.

SEO is an Art as much as a Science

Posted by mrynearson on March 13, 2011 at 4:14pm

Highly recommend you get Ben Finkles book: http://www.amazon.com/Drupal-6-Search-Engine-Optimization/dp/1847198228

There is no magic SEO button , that's why SEO optimization is a skill set.

That being said the SEO checklist , SEO friend, pagetitle , and nodewords modules are a good start. SEO checklist is great, a module to show you allthe SEO changes you can and may want to employ.

Jen Lampton did a great session on this subject last year at Drupalcon SF, you can hear the archive at http://sf2010.drupal.org/conference/sessions/search-engine-optimization-...

To make Drupal SEO friendly,

Posted by datarazor on March 18, 2011 at 7:15pm

To make Drupal SEO friendly, you have to do work beyond just flipping D6 on. You have to download and install a multitude of other modules to get it all working right, links, image alt/title tags, metas... to name a few, these are all extras you have to think of. And you also need to do some page.tpl.php work.

Drupal also creates a ton of semantic html with deep nesting unless you customize it's default outputs. Most websites don't need such deep nesting and this pushes the content down from the top quite a bit so you end up with a lower ratio of content to tagging. Again, this is fixed with customization.

--
Fountain City Inc
Creative-Technical solutions
Beautiful websites built with Drupal
http://fountaincity.tech

I talked to a Google Engineer at SXSWi

Posted by mrynearson on March 18, 2011 at 10:02pm

I had the pleasure of having a sidebar conversation with Matt Cutts from Google at SXSW interactive who is one of their chief engineers and search guru. He indeed indicated there is nothing inherit in Drupal that makes it worse than Joomla or Wordpress. In fact I asked him that point blank and he said no, Drupal is not worse. Also asked him a few other questions, he was great and eager to answer all questions.

One of the head guys from Bing was there as well and his tip was deep content and authority are the key metrics for SEO.

And as datarazor says the key in Drupal is to use the modules and if necessary do some page.tpl work.

Interetign post re Drupal SEO

Posted by mrynearson on March 19, 2011 at 5:39pm

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1733049/reasons-why-drupal-is-best-c...

I've been using drupal for

Posted by grabo on September 17, 2011 at 10:22am

I've been using drupal for the last 6 months now and think that one can obtain good onsite seo with drupal because it is highly configurable. Unlike wordpress drupal is maybe a little bit complivated but this also suggests that we have more options than needed. Finally compared to wordpress drupal system is much more stable and secured.

Drupal SEO

Posted by cjfly on April 4, 2012 at 4:43pm

I have been using a company for SEO of a Drupal website, they promised to get the site to page one of Google within 6 months, after 6 months they said Drupal was not good and i should go over to Wordpress as Google did not work well with Drupal

I have done further research and found I can see no reason for them to say this, as it should be just as good as others for SEO work.

Saying this after 12 months my website is still not appearing on page one of Google, if anyone has any ideas or knows a company that can help with this the information it would be greatly appreciated.

seo snake oil

Posted by ericg on April 4, 2012 at 5:55pm

Any company that makes a "promise" to get you on the first page of any search engine is almost always selling snake oil. Companies like the one that mrynearson links to are clear, they will help improve your ranking, no where do they claim that they can make you first page or #1. That is because they understand that ranking is about how your information is organized for the non-human reader (which most drupal themes do a very good job of handling) and the relevance of your data to the search.

Is the company in question offering to rebuild your site in wordpress for a fee? Have they given you a money back guarantee that their services will put you on page 1? Have they shown you any case studies of other clients that were pushed up to page 1 and stayed there?

If your content is not well organized and not relevant, no amount of seo snake oil, back links or shady practices will move you up.

A reputable company working on SEO will give you pointers and advice but never make promises.

Find a new vendor and demand your money back.

Thanks for your info, yes i

Posted by cjfly on April 4, 2012 at 5:59pm

Thanks for your info, yes i have got my money back so thats one thing

Drupal SEO for DIY

Posted by bpriceless on April 5, 2012 at 12:08am

For us do it yourselfers - what is the best Drupal SEO related modules, training, books, tutorials, blogs, etc.

I get clean urls, pathauto and path aliasing. But besides these basic tools, what are the best TECHNIQUES to implement SEO for a Drupal site? Simple questions like what URL path is best to put on blog articles (title, author, tags, ...). What about image paths (particularly if geo location is important). Can anything SEO special be done about About and FAQ pages? What about social media posts - how best to create links back to ones site? etc.

We had an SEO "expert" flat tell us we were doomed with Drupal for any organic SEO (his shop wanted to build the whole web site in static HTML - kind of counter to the idea of a CMS!). I'd like to prove him wrong.

Matt Cutts from Google says no

Posted by mrynearson on April 4, 2012 at 5:17pm

I asked that precise question over a year ago to Matt Cutts, principal engineer at Google and he said no, Drupal is not a factor. SEO looks at a lot of factors like organization, content, and authenticity. It does not care if its Drupal or Wordpress. I recommend you contact Volacci in Austin, Tx. ( http://www.volacci.com/)

Thanks I will give them a