Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is probably the biggest industry buzzword when it comes to online marketing today, and with good reason. Having the proper SEO on your website makes it so that internet users going through one of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing) can easily find you when they’re searching for products and services related to your industry. That said, it makes sense when building or revamping your website, to use a content management system that facilitates good SEO practices. Enter Drupal, the most SEO friendly, open-source CMS currently available.
Having a Drupal site does not automatically guarantee that search engines will have an easier time finding you and indexing your content. Drupal is SEO friendly in the sense that it is a very flexible CMS that allows for a high level of control and customization. Because it comes equipped, right out of the box, with search engine friendly modules and other useful features, Drupal makes it very easy to implement good SEO practices on your website. With Drupal, search engine optimization is not a hassle, but an easy-to-integrate part of your web design.
Clean URLs
Clean URLs are easier for search engines (and people) to read. They allow you to insert descriptive keywords that can be picked up and indexed by search engine crawlers. So instead of your pages’ URLs showing up as default system URLs that look something like “yourwebsite.com/node/576”, you get something that looks more like, “yourwebsite.com/shop/camping-gear”. Drupal comes already equipped with the ability to give your URLs these descriptive aliases, which from an SEO standpoint, is an invaluable advantage that makes the process of optimizing your website a whole lot easier.
Global Redirect
Drupal’s global redirect feature, as the name implies, lets you set up permanent redirects to your clean URL aliases, so that, in the eyes of the major search engines, the two URLs are viewed one and the same. This is crucial, because having two separate URLs that go to the same page can pose a few problems if they’re not combined using the global redirect feature. The first of these problems is the fact that Google and other major search engines will penalize websites for having duplicate content, which means your search engine rankings can go down as a result. Also, some sites will be linking to one URL while other sites will be linking to the other one, which splits the link authority between two different duplicate pages. However, with its global redirect feature, Drupal solves these issues by redirecting all non search engine friendly URLs to the search engine friendly versions.
Page Title Module
The page title module on Drupal lets you have greater control over the content of your web pages’ title tags. In SEO terms, title tags are key elements in determining each individual page’s ranking on the major internet search engines.
Meta Tags
Though their importance in obtaining higher search engine rankings has been underplayed in recent years, especially as social media marketing grows in prominence and major search engine ranking systems continue to evolve, Meta tags are still a key component of any site. Drupal’s Meta tags module gives you input-ready fields so that you can generate Meta data quickly and without hassle whenever you upload new content to your website. Combined with the page title module, Meta tags make it easy to follow good SEO practices on every section of your site.
Site Maps
A site map is an incredibly important part of any website, big or small, in terms of SEO. A good site map should make it easy for search engine spiders to crawl through every page in your domain and gather important keywords and details about the different topics nestled in various sections of your site. The site map module on Drupal lets you create complete, dynamic site maps for your web site that contain clear links and pathways for search engine crawlers to follow. This means you’ll spend less time waiting for your content to show up on the major internet search engines.
Analytics
The analytics module lets you install Google Analytics on your site. All that’s needed is to plug in your unique tracking code into the module and that’s it. While the implementation of web analytics tracking software on your site does not directly impact SEO, it does let you see which search engine marketing strategies are working and which ones are not, which ultimately dictates the way in which you deploy SEO and SEM campaigns on your site.
To find out more about how you can benefit from having Drupal as your CMS, give Best Rank a call today or fill out our contact form.
