We have defined the top list of the most important SEO-modules for Drupal 7, which are vital for SEO-optimization of most web-sites. In this blog, we enumerate these modules and explain why they are so important.
Drupal 7 SEO Modules
There are a lot of SEO-modules for Drupal on drupal.org. Some are out-of-date already, some are only in the process of web development, some are just useless. Our Drupal developers picked up and tested all the possible modules and defined the top list of the most necessary modules for Drupal 7:
- Pathauto
- Transliteration
- Globalredirect
- Metatag
- XML sitemap
- RobotsTxt
- Menu Breadcrumb
Let's analyze each of them
Pathauto - is a very important module which helps to generate SEO-friendly URLs for any website pages and under certain templates. It means that while using this module you will get yourwebsite/content/news-sport instead of yourwebsite/node/12
After module installation, go to «Settings» tab and click those checkboxes which are necessary for your website (see the example of the recommended settings on the following image):
Let's check out these settings in details:
It is recommended to put «-» in «Separator» line. This sign separates words in title. In other words signs of punctuation and spacing.
Click «Change to lower case» radiobutton.
Maximum alias length and maximum component length is 100 symbols (usually it is enough).
Click «Create a new alias. Delete the old alias» in line «Update action». It should be done in order to avoid content duplication and not to confuse yourself.
Click «Transliterate prior to creating alias» in «Reduce strings to letters and numbers».
After saving configuration, go to «Pattern» and set the necessary aliases.
Then go to «Delete aliases» and click «All alias» and delete all alias. After that, open «Bulk update», choose the way without aliases and save the configuration.
After saving configuration instead of this:
we get nice SEO-friendly URLs:
Transliteration - is a necessary seo-module for non-latin titles on a site. If you’ve installed Pathauto module already, you would need Transliteration module as while creating new material with non-latin titles appear in line of SEO-friendly URLs. Transliteration module transforms other letters into Latin letters. For example, instead of URL your-site/последние-новости-в-Украине-и-мире we get your-site/poslednie-novosti-v-Ukraine-i-mire.
GlobalRedirect - is an important module which helps to avoid pages duplication. It puts 301 redirect from incorrect URLs into correct ones automatically: from the pages with «/» - into the pages without «/»; after «clean URL» - it redirects to clean URL (without ?q=).
Metatag - is a very useful module. Here you can tune in title, meta description and meta keywords.
With the help of patterns, it is possible to make these tags relevant and unique for each page automatically.
XML sitemap - is a very useful module which helps to tune in XML sitemap and indicate the desired indexation for all page types. After creating the sitemap, it is necessary to tune it in.
It is recommended to put the minimum sitemap lifetime 1 day. For homepage, it is recommended to set the highest priority, but for the rest pages 0.5 (normal) is enough. After saving configuration, regenerate the map and that’s it!
RobotsTxt - is a module for robots.txt file creation where you can allow or close access for search engines to the certain pages of your site. This file has directories with slash at the end of the line by default:
…
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /misc/
Disallow: /modules/
...
Sometimes the index of search engine catches such links as .../includes , .../misc , .../modules (without «/»), that's why it is necessary to clear all slashes at the end of each directory. Put «host» with domain without http:// and indicate «sitemap».
Note: User-agent * is used mostly for important bots (YandexBot, Googlebot) which come to your website.
Menu Breadcrumb - is a module which adds breadcrumbs to menu lines of any rank and type. You can see the recommended settings of the module on the following image:
So, in this article we've described all the modules which our website development services company considers to be useful and helpful for the website SEO. For sure, soon this list will grow because a lot of modules are in the state of development right now, and we are improving as well. BTW, we are preparing a new blog about those SEO-modules which are not that necessary for your site but definitely will make it better. Follow our blogs and let the SERP be with you :)