Drupal 7 SEO Checklist

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Posted by alltooeasy on April 12, 2011 at 12:13pm
Last updated by Rajeshreeputra on Tue, 2020-06-16 08:42

I would love to put together a Drupal 7.0 SEO checklist. Please feel free to add/edit.

All comments should be related to SEO in Drupal 7.0 and unless directly relevant should not contain Drupal 6.0 advice (although links to D6 are welcome).

  1. The SEO Checklist module (available for both 6 and 7) has most of these included it in with automatic checks, datestamps, links to the download pages, and links to the config pages. Very, very helpful module. http://drupal.org/project/seo_checklist
  2. Alt Text for Images
  3. Metatag Module - https://www.drupal.org/project/metatag - This module must have in every Drupal website who wants to make website SEO friendly. It contains - keywords, title tag, description, abstract, Open graph, Dublin Core, Twitter Cards, Robots, Google News Keywords, Canonical URL, Publisher URL, Author URL, Serch Engine Revisit and many more. This module support token.
  4. How to get an SEO snapshot of your website (what has/has not got SEO) and where there is room for improvement. The SEO Checklist module will give you a snapshot of what SEO-related modules are installed but not what has or hasn't been done. Acquia & Volacci created a Drupal SEO Grader (released in Oct 2011) that does just that. You have to have the Acquia connector module installed to get it. (Free trial works ok.) You'll need both the Checklist and the Grader as they do different (but overlapping) things.
  5. Google Analytics module for Drupal 7.0 getting the most out of your analytics.
  6. Optimising for Bing.
  7. Social Media Indexing and Drupal.
  8. Pathauto: http://drupal.org/project/pathauto
  9. XML Sitemaps: http://sitemaps.org/ http://drupal.org/project/xmlsitemap
  10. Site information/Site name and Slogan is used in browser name
  11. Feed Aggregator module to produce new content on home page etc
  12. Site verification - prove your site is yours http://drupal.org/project/site_verify
  13. Page Title Module for D7: - Gives SEO friendly page titles and names (e.g. About Us - not content/contactus/page/contact.....
    http://drupal.org/project/page_title
  14. Global redirects Module http://drupal.org/project/globalredirect
  15. Search 404 Error pages. Makes the user experience better http://drupal.org/project/search404
  16. SEO checker module. Drupal 7: - automatically gives SEO compliance feedback on nodes. http://drupal.org/project/seo_checker
  17. Robots.txt http://drupal.org/project/robotstxt
  18. 301 Permanent Redirects. Here is more information about it: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=93633
  19. Content Optimizer module http://drupal.org/project/contentoptimizer
  20. SEO Compliance Checker module http://drupal.org/project/seo_checker
  21. Keyword Research http://drupal.org/project/kwresearch
  22. SEO Tools (advanced Drupal SEO suite) http://drupal.org/project/seotools
  23. SEO Essentials (streamlines installation and configuration of the must have Drupal SEO modules) http://drupal.org/project/seo
  24. This is the most important article to read about SEO Guidelines, though this is not in Drupal or modules but I think everyone in Drupal must read this - Google Webmaster Guidelines - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en and Google Quick SEO Guidelines - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35291?hl=en.

Here's another / external list that might be good to have folded back into here:
http://www.kristen.org/content/drupal-seo-modules

Categories:

Comments

Experience from working in Drupal Gardens

Posted by Susan MacPhee on April 12, 2011 at 1:44pm
Susan MacPhee's picture

Hi, I added 8-12 from my experience in Drupal Gardens which is 7 hosted. As I think of things, I'll come back to add more. But knowing what your key words are and adding them to your body text and head tags will always play a key role. I learned a lot from Ben Finklea's http://www.drupalseobook.com/. I'm not sure it he's coming out with a D7 version but I suspect so.

Great tool for SEO: https://adwords.google.com

www.macpheedesign.com

Thanks.

Posted by alltooeasy on April 12, 2011 at 5:17pm
alltooeasy's picture

Thanks a lot. I checked out the book. Going to wait for the D7 version. Not sure there is any going back.....

http://www.alltooeasy.co.uk

Check this out:

Posted by luke_b on April 12, 2011 at 1:38pm
luke_b's picture

Check this out: http://drupal.org/node/1123584

Adwords is good in my book.

Posted by alltooeasy on April 12, 2011 at 3:04pm
alltooeasy's picture

Luke,

Looks pretty promising. It would be great to individually track page or better yet node tracking of Adwords.

Thanks for the input. Feel free to add to the list.

Cheers

John

http://www.alltooeasy.co.uk

Added 13 - 19

Posted by alltooeasy on April 12, 2011 at 3:02pm
alltooeasy's picture

I added points 13 - 19.

I am trying to keep it as much within stable release components and less dev. versions as possible.

http://www.alltooeasy.co.uk

301 Permanent Redirects

Posted by danhamnz on April 14, 2011 at 10:28pm
danhamnz's picture

Hi ,

Please add 301 Redirects to your list as well. This will help you getting benefits from your previous website to the new one. It passes link juice and page rank to your new url from the older one. These are important for 404 Error pages also

Here is more information about it:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=93633

How to do in Drupal - http://drupal.org/node/38960

Cheers

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can provide businesses with better ROI. Follow our SEO Blog for more information on SEO.

danhamnz

Posted by alltooeasy on April 15, 2011 at 1:55pm
alltooeasy's picture

Dahamnz its an open wiki list. just add it to the bottom of the list. This is a more general SEO issue. But good to have on there.

Thanks!

http://www.alltooeasy.co.uk

RE: 20) 301 redirects

Posted by fjen on July 8, 2011 at 11:44am
fjen's picture

I removed the link to:
http://drupal.org/node/38960

… as it suggests adding the links to the .htaccess file. This is bad in some ways: the file might accidentally get replaced when updating and not everyone has hosting with mod_rewrite (or can use htaccess files in the first place).

A way to do 301's is to use the menu system with a custom module:

<?php
function mymodule_menu ()
{
       $items = array();
     
       // each line contains "old_url   new_url" (whitespace separated)
     $dead_links = file_get_contents( drupal_get_path('module','mymodule').'/'.'old_links.txt' );
      
                if ( $dead_links !== FALSE )
      {
          $dead_links = explode("\n",$dead_links);
         foreach ( $dead_links as $link )
           {
              $link = trim($link);
              
               if ( !preg_match('/.+/i',$link) )
                    continue;
                 
               list($link_from, $link_to) = preg_split("/[\s]+/",$link);
               
               $link_to_uri = drupal_parse_url($link_to);
            
               $items[$link_from] = array(
                    'access arguments' => array('access content'),
                  'page callback' => 'drupal_goto',
                   'page arguments' => array($link_to_uri['path'], $link_to_uri, '301'),
                 'type' => MENU_CALLBACK
               );
         }
      }
     
       return $items;
}
?>

very useful

Posted by hariharasuthan_mk on August 12, 2011 at 9:12am
hariharasuthan_mk's picture

nice module for 301 redirect

Or you could just use

Posted by Dave Reid on August 13, 2011 at 2:16pm
Dave Reid's picture

Or you could just use http://drupal.org/project/redirect

Senior Drupal Developer for Lullabot | www.davereid.net | @davereid

Some of the nice SEO stuff...

Posted by connellc on August 29, 2011 at 6:35pm
connellc's picture

... is set up for D6, and many haven't even started on D7 SEO modules.

I do like the "Meta Tags Quick" module, though.

However, "Meta Tags Quick" - when configured - is good for content that is created going forward - it's not retroactive.

I'd already created most of the pages in D7. (I did not have D6 for this site, so no "Nodewords" module applies here.)

Perhaps the D7 SEO Checklist module ought to be installed at the beginning of site installation/construction - especially a companion module like "Meta Tags Quick."

That will take some of the grunt work of keyword/description/abstract/copyright maintenance (that is featured in "MTQ") down to a minimum.

re: SEO Checklist - with relatively few D7 versions of the SEO modules compared to the number of SEO modules listed in the Checklist for D6, it actually behooves the engineers behind D8 to more fully integrate SEO at the core level - SEO will probably be more of a level playing field in, say, 2013 - as the other CMS tools will try to keep up with Drupal over the next two years.

Meta tag has banned

Posted by vaishakhem on April 28, 2012 at 5:31am
vaishakhem's picture

Now most of the search engine including google and yahoo doesn't support meta tag for finding keywords. Then why should we use it ?

Why some Meta Tags do matter. .

Posted by HyperGlide on April 28, 2012 at 5:36am
HyperGlide's picture

Why Meta Tags do matter. . .
@vaishakhem have a read of this article

http://www.techwyse.com/blog/search-engine-optimization/do-meta-descript...

Description and Keywords

Posted by DavidMinton on April 30, 2012 at 4:44pm
DavidMinton's picture

As has been pointed out, Meta Descriptions are often used on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) under the title of the page. In some ways this is the most important part of SEO: if you get a #1 listing, and the title/description/ Path doesn't appeal to the search user, they won't click through to your website. If they don't click though, what did all of your SEO effort to get the #1 spot gain you? Nothing.

Meta Keywords can be used for your internal site search. You can stuff keywords, and weight these heavily by your internal site search to better control the results.

David Minton, Managing Partner, DesignHammer | Durham, NC, USA

Meta Tags increase conversions

Posted by two trees marketing on February 3, 2015 at 5:50am
two trees marketing's picture

Too many seo's worry about the visibility in google, and not how it helps improve their conversions.

10,000 visitors a day is great, but I would rather convert 10% then 2% ;)

1-2

Posted by valthebald on August 6, 2011 at 7:17am
valthebald's picture

Meta tags, including keywords and description, can be done in D7 with http://drupal.org/project/metatags_quick, which can import data from D6 nodewords modules data

Aggregate Feeds ...maybe not so much

Posted by greta_drupal on January 15, 2012 at 3:52pm
greta_drupal's picture

As to #12: You gotta be careful with aggregate feeds, as you are introducing duplicate content. I wouldn't recommend using them unless they are targeted and add true value to your site. Definitely don't do it because you think that it will help you with SEO.

What do you mean " targeted"?

Posted by Johnny.Love on April 8, 2013 at 12:42pm
Johnny.Love's picture

What do you mean " targeted"?

JL

Cool!

Posted by Kristen Pol on January 19, 2012 at 6:02pm
Kristen Pol's picture

Glad to see this here and hope my Drupal SEO modules list is useful. I just updated it yesterday with some of the LevelTen modules that were written in the last year or so.

Cheers!
Kristen

I just heard about this last

Posted by BDaggerhart on January 19, 2012 at 12:54pm
BDaggerhart's picture

I just heard about this last night at our local meetup, thanks for this!

Glad To See This!

Posted by stlouisseo on February 3, 2012 at 9:04pm
stlouisseo's picture

As a huge SEO guy I absolutely love seeing this post. About three years ago I started using Drupal and really liked it, except for all the hacking I had to do in order to get it to "work" SEO wise. At the time it was tough just to piece together anything at all and it seemed like there wasn't really any support for the SEO industry, although I might have prejudged I could be mistaken. Now that there seems to be more support I'm really liking the security that Drupal offers. I've used everything from Joomla, to ModX and now I'm using WP. Let's just say I recently had a site hacked using the latter.

Enough rambling, thanks for the list. Glad to have Drupal back on my radar. :)

Organic SEO is my specialty.

This has to be one of the

Posted by Myers123 on March 20, 2012 at 1:06pm
Myers123's picture

This has to be one of the best checklists for SEO as a Drupal user. I cannot tell you how many times I refer back to this page to make sure that I have not forgotten anything. I really appreciate everyone's time and expertise. This search engine optimization list has been a great time saver for me.

Thanks for starting such a great list alltooeasy!

Best,
J.M.
http://www.smallboxweb.com/indianapolis-seo

Thank you!

Posted by catarinavclemente on March 9, 2013 at 5:56am
catarinavclemente's picture

This is a really important SEO and marketing module. The tips are very useful. Being the website promotion a continuous process, the idea of a check list is really smart. There are, though, a few tasks that are never definitely concluded and should be done in a routine basis, like checking for broken links or check on crawl errors, for instance.

Catarina Clemente -- Crafting the web and treating users as individuals
http://www.catarinaclemente.com
https://www.twitter.com/cvclemente
http://www.linkedin.com/in/catarinavclemente

Thank you!

Posted by catarinavclemente on March 9, 2013 at 6:06am
catarinavclemente's picture

Ben Finklea is a really incredible guy. This important SEO and marketing module gives you the most accessible and efficient tips. Besides, being website promotion a continuous process, the idea of a check list is really smart.
There are, though, a few tasks that are never definitely concluded and should be done in a routine basis, like checking for broken links or check on crawl errors, for instance. So if this module would have reminder alerts, then it would be perfect!
I hope this works for my professional website.

Catarina Clemente -- Crafting the web and treating users as individuals
http://www.catarinaclemente.com
https://www.twitter.com/cvclemente
http://www.linkedin.com/in/catarinavclemente

Updating links to new urls for SEO benefit

Posted by nzrobert on March 21, 2013 at 9:55pm
nzrobert's picture

This may have been mentioned in a previous comment, but where URLs can not be maintained from a previous version of the website, requesting changes to URLs from website owners who have websites which link to yours will help with SEO. In cases where this is not possible, permanent 301 redirects will help you get most of the link benefit passed through.

E-Koncept - SEO, NZ - Specialists in SEO and and digital marketing strategies.

Thank you

Posted by huythuan on February 4, 2014 at 7:54pm
huythuan's picture

Thank you

Thuan Nguyen

Interesting Stuff Here

Posted by Premnath321 on February 5, 2014 at 11:12am
Premnath321's picture

Hello All,

I found very useful stuff here related with the Drupal site marketing strategy.

Thanks for a nice collection.

Premnath321

Hi All

Posted by WebbyWorker on June 16, 2014 at 5:51am
WebbyWorker's picture

This is great, just what I was looking for.

Thank you,

www.data-scribe.com

Extremely useful post

Posted by Haimingj on April 17, 2016 at 11:15am
Haimingj's picture

The checklist is very useful for us who is using Drupal. Not many of us are familiar with using this CMS to our advantage and this post is extremely helpful to those who have little to no knowledge about it.

Thanks for the info!

Haiming Aplus