7 Major SEO Mistakes You Can Make On Your Drupal Site

If your website's ranking is dropping or staying the same, you know that something is wrong with SEO. You might be taking some actions related to improving your Drupal SEO, but you have to go deeper and do more if you really want to be on that first page.

Drupal CMS, fortunately, already is famously SEO-friendly. It provides a great and seamless user experience and you can boost your SEO even before you start adding content to the site. All of its features will make this infinitely easier for you.

Here are some mistakes you can make on your way and some simple solutions to fix them.

1. Not using metadata

One of the biggest mistakes you can make on your website is not using the most important on-page ranking factors. Those are page title, description, tags etc. Search engines to determine where your pages belong and how relevant they are to the search query use these. Your tags help search engines find keywords and if they are being requested.

“This also allows users to have some preview of what's on your page before they click on it and it helps them make a decision which link to choose”, - explains Richard Washington, a SEO Manager at Academized and Study Demic writer.

You can use Meta Tags module by installing it, enabling and installing modules like Meta Tags, CTools, and Token. Meta tags module comes with already configured settings.

2. Not optimizing your page speed

Speed is important — to both Google and your users. Speed is one of the factors that affect where you appear on the search results and it's a known fact that users don't like waiting for more than a few seconds for a page to load no matter how good your content is.

You can use various tools to compress all CSS and JS files and deliver a smooth and seamless experience to your users.

Disable unnecessary modules, optimize your theme, use cache modules like Memcache to optimize your speed easily.

3. Using duplicate content

If you are using duplicate content, you are harming your own SEO ranking. Google will realize this and your ranking will drop. To avoid this, use tools to create original and distinctive content.

• StateofWriting and UK Writings are content writing tools that can help you create quality posts.
• AcademAdvisor is a content editing tool to help you remove all of the redundancies.
• Boom Essays and My Writing Way are plagiarism guides to help you track if your content is plagiarized or similar to other content out there.
• Essay Roo is a formatting tool that can help you format your content to be readable and easy to scan. It was recommended by Best Australian Writers.

4. Not using headings and sub-headings

H1, H2 and H3 give hierarchy to your page, which is important for your SEO. It lets the search engines know the importance of topics on your page and it's also a great place to include keywords as they usually hold the information on what is the page about.

Use HTML mode in the Content Creation Kit to do this.

5. Not using Robots.txt

Another mistake you can make is not using Robots.txt. This is used by websites to communicate with web robots and crawlers and inform them which pages should be indexed and which shouldn't. Luckily, Drupal already provides Robot.txt and it rarely has to be manually changed.

6. Not using analytics

This is not directly related to your SEO but in long term it is. You need to analyze your results before you can make decisions on your next steps. This way you'll know everything that you need to know to make an informed decision that can actually improve your business and improve your rankings. Drupal doesn't have its own analytics tool but it makes it pretty easy for you to integrate Google Analytics – one of the best analytics tools out there – with your page.

7. Not using structured and unique URLs

One of the worst mistakes you can make is using URLs that are hard to decipher. A clean and easy-to-read structure of URL is one of the best ways to optimize for SEO and SERP and also provides a link that's easy to use for your visitors.

If your URL is easy to read, it can also be a good way to provide your users with some insight into what's on the page. You can use tools like Via Writing or Paper Fellows to generate unique URLs. You can also utilize the Path auto module to define various patterns for your pages.

Takeaway

Search engines are still on the lookout for original and quality content that people find useful and they put those websites on the top of their ranking charts, there are still some things that you can do and benefits you can get from your CMS. Your SERP can increase likewise if you have taken the best steps towards having a great SEO-friendly Drupal website and avoided these mistakes.

Freddie Tubbs is an SEO analyst at Big Assignments. He regularly participates in SEO conferences and webinars and contributes guides and tips to Australian help and Ox Essays blogs.