ReviewHostingASP.NET – Drupal is a highly optimizable CMS for creating search engine friendly websites. Luckily, you can use some SEO Modules to optimize your Drupal Website. The Drupal Modules listed in this article provide the most basic functionality regarding Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Most of them guarantee your website is indexed by the most important search engines and your content will be displayed properly in the search results. The Drupal Modules listed below also provide you the most basic functionality required to grow your search result impressions or clicks and to improve the ranking of your content.
1. Drupal Page Title
Title is undeniably among the most important factor of your SEO plan. The Drupal default title is automatically given by the node. Page Title allows you to take control of the node, and creates whatever title name you want. By setting different patterns for the title, you can create unique and relevant title for the content. You can also set different patterns if you choose page title as automatically being generated. Page Title is one of the single most important elements in a successful SEO campaign and a vital module on your Drupal Website.
2. Metatag
The Metatag module allows you to automatically provide structured metadata – a.k.a “meta tags” – about your website. In the context of search engine optimization, when people refer to meta tags they are usually referring to the meta description tag and the meta keywords tag that may help improve the rankings and display of your site in search engine results. The keyword meta tag is not really important anymore. However, the title and description tags are. If you operate locally, maybe even the geo tag can be useful to you. With the Meta Tags module you can automatically create these meta tags for your nodes based on set criteria. For instance, you can have your node summary act as your description tag and the page title as the title tag. Cool, right?
3. Metatags Quick
Meta tags implementation based on Fields API. Every meta tag (keywords, description, copyright) is treated as a separate field. Meta tag fields are then attached to registered entities (content types, taxonomy vocabularies), and appear in the entity edit form.You already use the module metatag, so why to use another meta tag module? We added this module because it offers a very easy and convenient way to add path-based meta tags i.e. meta tags related to URLs. This is very useful if you have URLs that are neither nodes, individual views or panels (for example an URL that shows different blocks or taxonomy terms without specific views).
4. Pathauto
This module is one of the most downloaded module in Drupal. The Pathauto module automatically generates URL/path aliases for various kinds of content (nodes, taxonomy terms, users) without requiring the user to manually specify the path alias. Proper URLs are potentially important in many ways (display Google search result, ranking, etc.). The module Pathauto helps you to automatically generate suitable URLs based on so called tokens (example: node: title for the title of a node). Here is the minimum probably that you configure the different elements such as nodes or taxonomy terms to use the title or term name as basis for the URL. In Drupal, Pathauto is well known as the URL aliasing options that you can find in core.
5. XML Sitemap
The XML sitemap module creates a sitemap that conforms to the sitemaps.org specification. This helps search engines to more intelligently crawl a website and keep their results up to date. The sitemap created by the module can be automatically submitted to Ask, Google, Bing (formerly Windows Live Search), and Yahoo! search engines. The module also comes with several sub-modules that can add sitemap links for content, menu items, taxonomy terms, and user profiles. This module also generates an XML site map and transmits it periodically to the most important search engines. Within the sitemap you can define which sites/menu items/taxonomy terms should be transmitted with different priority.
6. Global Redirect
Once enabled, an alias provides a nice clean URL for a path on a site. However Drupal does not remove the old path (eg node/1234). The problem is that you now have two URLs representing the same content. This is dangerous territory for duplicate pages which can get you sandboxed by the search engines. GlobalRedirect is a simple module which provides you all the functionality to avoid such problems. Here you can just install and enable the default as this ensures the minimum functionality. This module fixes this problem by automatically creating 301 (permanent) redirects from the old node path to the aliased one. Now you can see how Drupal starts to become invincible.
7. Search 404
404 page can be a negative sign to the visitors. When they see there are no results on the page, they can escape your site. Instead of showing a standard “404 Page not found”, this module performs a search on the keywords in the URL, e.g. if a user goes to http://example.com/does/not/exist, this module will do a search for “does not exist” and shows the result of the search instead of the 404 page. Search 404 will help you to retain visitors coming in from wrong or old URLs linked from other sites or from search indices. This functionality is particularly important if you occasionally actively or passively (because you enabled autopath the URL might be changed automatically upon a change of title) change URLs.
8. Redirect
Same as its name, Redirect performs redirects from one URL to another. Common API is used for loading, saving, and deleting redirects. Case-insensitive redirect matching with a hook to allow other modules to narrow-down the candidate redirects. Redirect counter and last used timestamp comes with automatic cleanup of inactive redirects. This module works together with the above module Search 404. It allows you to see a ranking list of the URLs that have not been found and to redirect them to the correct URL or to another related URL (function “fix 404 pages”). With Redirect Module, you can set to create automatically redirects from the old path to the new one after it was changed. It’s good for the users and for the search engines.
9. Drupal SEO Checklist
If you need a helper for the installation of the above modules and more advanced tools, we recommend you the installation of the module SEO Checklist. The Drupal SEO Checklist uses Drupal SEO best practices to check your website for proper search engine optimization. It eliminates guesswork by creating a functional to-do list of modules and tasks that remain. The module doesn’t take any action with your site. It only informs a comprehensive SEO tasks you need to do. Once a task is completed, you’ll see a mark off. Updated regularly with the latest techniques, it makes on-page Drupal search engine optimization hassle-free.
SEO Related to Web Hosting
SEO plays an important role in terms of rank and traffic that can make a difference to your website. In fact you will be surprised to know, it is also related to your Web hosting. Choosing the right Web hosting is critical to the success of your Website. Uptime and reliability are two of the most important factors that you must consider when looking for a host. And now, with the latest buzz from Google about site speed also becoming a factor in search engine optimization (SEO).
Web hosting plays a minor role in the grand scheme of PageRank and SEO. Some web hosting providers offer additional features as part of their hosting packages like business directory submissions and other integrated marketing tools that can help your site climb up in the rankings. Your Web hosting provider can also play a part when it comes to site speed. The information superhighway acts a lot like a real highway. Traffic builds up and slow your Website down. However, if your Web hosting has multiple connections to the Internet backbone, they can re-route you to a less crowded connection. If they have access to a cloud infrastructure, the highway is never too crowded. The cloud servers simply add processing capacity as traffic builds. Cloud infrastructures allow Web hosts to keep your traffic flowing and your site speed up. Therefore, your Web hosting is one of many factors that affect SEO and site speed.
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Happily, there are several reliable and recommended Web hosting out there that can help you get a handle on site speed and work to increase your Drupal web rank. We are here to recommend you HostForLIFE.eu.
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