So you just finished building an awesome new website on Drupal, but now you’ve run into a new dilemma. How do optimize the site for search engines? Search engine optimization, or SEO, can be overwhelming, but don’t let that cause you to ignore certain things you can do to help drive traffic to your website. There’s nothing worse than spending countless hours to develop a web application, only to find out that users aren’t able to find your site. This can be extremely frustrating, as well as devastating if your company or business heavily relies on organic traffic.

Now there are countless philosophies of SEO, many of which are well-educated assumptions of what Google is looking for. The reality is that no one knows exactly how Google’s algorithm is calculated, and it doesn’t help when their algorithm is constantly being updated. Luckily, there are a few best practices that are accepted across the board, most of which have been confirmed by Google as being a contributing factor to search engine ranking. This blog is going to focus on a few of those best practices and which modules we have found to be helpful in both our Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 projects.

So, without further ado, here is our list of Drupal modules you should consider using on your site to help improve your SEO:

###XML Sitemap Module

As the name suggests, XML Sitemap allows you to effortlessly generate a sitemap for your website. A sitemap allows for Google and other search engines like Bing and Yahoo, to be able to easily find and crawl pages on your site. Is a sitemap necessary? No. But if it helps the pages of your site to become easily discoverable, then why not reduce the risk of not having pages of your site indexed? This is especially important if you have a large site with thousands or even hundreds of pages. Having a sitemap also provides search engines with some valuable information, such as how often the page is updated and the level of significance compared to other pages on your site.

XML Sitemap allows you to generate a sitemap with a click of a button, and best of all you can configure it to periodically generate a new sitemap which will add any new pages you’ve published on your Drupal site. Once your website has a sitemap, it is recommended to submit that sitemap on Google Search Console, and if you haven’t claimed your website on Google Search Console yet, I would highly advise doing so as it will provide you with helpful insight such as indexing information, critical issues, and more.

###Metatag Module

The next Drupal module is one that can really help boost your search engine ranking and visibility. Metatag is a powerful module that gives you the ability to update a large number of various meta tags on your site. A meta tag is an HTML tag which contains valuable information that search engines use to determine the relevance of a page when determining search ranking. The more information available to search engines such as Google, the better your chances will be that your pages will rank well. The Metatag module allows you to easily update some of the more popular tags, such as meta description, meta content type, title tag, viewport, and more.

Adding and/or updating your meta tags is the first step of best SEO practice. I’ve come across many sites who pay little to no attention to their meta tags. Luckily, the Metatag module for Drupal can help you easily boost your SEO, and even if you don’t have time to go through and update your meta tags manually (which is recommend), the module also has a feature to have your tags automatically generated.

###Real-Time SEO for Drupal Module

The Real-Time SEO for Drupal module is a powerful tool on its own, but it is even better when paired with the Metatag module which we just finished discussing. This module takes into account many SEO best practices and gives you a real-time analysis, ensuring that your content is best optimized for search engines. It will inform you if your content is too short, how readable your posts are, and also provides you a snapshot of how your page will appear in Google. The other helpful information it provides is regarding missing or potentially weak tags, which is why I mentioned that this module and the Metatag module work extremely well together. Real-Time SEO for Drupal can let you know how to better improve your meta tags and by using the Metatags module, you can quickly update your tags and watch in real-time how the changes affect your SEO.

The Real-Time SEO for Drupal module is a simple, yet incredibly useful tool in helping you see the SEO health of your pages. If you are just getting into SEO, this is a great place to start, and even if you’re a seasoned pro this is a nice tool to have to remind you of any meta tags or keyword optimization opportunities you may be missing.

###Google Analytics Module

The final module is the Google Analytics module. Google Analytics is by far the most widely used analytics platform. The invaluable information it provides, the numerous tools available, and the integrations it allows, make it a requirement for anyone looking to improve the SEO of their Drupal website. This Drupal module is extremely convenient, as it does not require a developer to have to mess with any of the site's code. After installing the module all you have to do is enter the web property ID that is provided to you after you setup your account on Google Analytics.
From the Google Analytics module UI, you have a number of helpful options, such as what domains to track, which pages to exclude, adjusting page roles, tracking clicks and downloads, and more. The Google Analytics module for Drupal is another great tool to add to your tool belt when trying to best improve your SEO.

###Final Thoughts

This list of helpful SEO modules for your Drupal 7 or 8 site could easily have been much longer, but these are a few key modules to help you get started. SEO is something that should not be ignored, as I mentioned in the beginning of the blog, it’s a shame to build a site only to find that no one is actually visiting it, but using these modules properly can definitely help prevent this issue. if you would like to learn of other great modules to help your SEO, please leave a comment below and I'll write a follow-up blog.