Drupal SEO - 5 Must Do Configurations

Some people say that system X is better than system Y for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. This may be true to some degree. But I've never seen a serious Web CMS project that expected to use the software without any configuration or modifications. This simply never happens.

What we see with Drupal (news, site) is that out of the box, so to speak, it's not great in terms of SEO. However, with the addition of a few contributed modules and after a some simple configurations are made, Drupal will stand alongside or even in front of the majority of web content management systems. Here's what you need to know to achieve this.

The practice of Search Engine Optimization is the means that website owners have for exercising control over how search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing access the content of their websites.

This article covers the basics of how to search engine optimize a Drupal 6 installation.

[Editor's Note: Check out our 2009 Open Source CMS Market Share report for details on the 20 most popular open source content management systems.]

1. Activate Drupal's Clean URLs Feature

Drupal’s default URLs look something like this:

http://www.example.com/index.php?q=node/1

This is not optimal for search engines, nor for humans. Fortunately, the system has a native feature called Clean URLs. This functionality relies upon the web server to perform URL rewriting on inbound requests. Once it is enabled, Drupal will generate internal URLs using this cleaner format.

The above URL rendered in a clean format looks like this:

http://www.example.com/node/1

This is an improvement as it no longer includes the '?' delimiter nor the 'q=node/1' name, value pair.

Enabling Clean URLs with Apache

In most cases, enabling this functionality with Apache is a no brainer. You may even be able to turn it on during the Drupal install process. As long as Apache's mod_rewrite module is loaded, you are in good shape.

Once you or a systems administrator have enabled or verified that mod_rewrite is enabled, you must simply copy the .htaccess file from your Drupal software archive into the root of your Drupal installation.

Once you have verified that the file exists and matches what came with your Drupal archive, access the Drupal admin system as an administrator, navigate to the Administer > Site configuration > Clean URLs area and enable the feature.

After you click to save the configuration changes, you are done with this process. Clean URLs should now be enabled for your website.

If the feature is still not working for you, you will need to perform advanced debugging. The best place to start is with the official Drupal documentation and related discussions.

Enabling Clean URLs with IIS

Out of the box Drupal 6 does not give you much help with IIS. The main issue is that URL rewriting can be enabled in different ways, depending on which version of IIS you are working with.

We're going to cheat here and only talk about IIS 7. The nice thing with IIS 7 is that Microsoft has released a free URL Rewrite add-on that plugs right into IIS. If you don't already have this installed, you can quickly install it by using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer.

IIS 7 with Microsoft's free URL Rewrite Add-on

After you've installed or verified that the URL Rewrite module is enabled in your IIS server, you can add the required rewrite rules to your Drupal server instance. To do this you must create or edit the web.config file in the root of your Drupal installation.

Place or merge the following rules into your web.config file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
  <system.webServer>
    <rewrite>
      <rules>
        <rule name="CleanURLs" stopProcessing="true">
          <match url="^(.*)$" />
          <conditions>
            <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" 
                  matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />
            <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" 
                  matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />
          </conditions>
          <action type="Rewrite" url="index.php?q={R:1}" />
        </rule>
    </rules>
  </rewrite>
</system.webServer>
</configuration>

After saving and exiting your web.config file, the critical rewrite rules will be in place and you should now be able to enable Clean URLs via the Drupal admin system.

Access the Drupal admin system as an administrator, navigate to the Administer > Site configuration > Clean URLs area and enable the feature.

After you click to save the configuration changes, you are done with this process. Clean URLs should now be enabled for your website.

If the feature is still not working for you, you will need to perform advanced debugging. The best place to start is with the official Drupal documentation and related discussions.

Drupal 6 — Enabling the Clean URLs Feature
 

2. Enable the Path Module

The Path module is a core module with Drupal 6, which means that it is part of the normal software release.

This module takes you beyond clean URLs by providing the ability to create arbitrary URLs for any Drupal content item. With the Path module enabled you are free to optimize these URLs both for humans and for search engines.

To take advantage of this module you just need to enable it via the Drupal admin system. This is done by logging into Drupal as an administrator, navigating to the Administer > Site building > Modules section.

Here you will see a list of installed modules. Scroll down to locate the Path module, check the box to enable it and then click to save the configuration changes at the bottom of the page.

After you have enabled the Path module, Drupal's content editing screens will have a new section where you can enter an alias for the content item. Keep in mind that content aliases are very flexible in terms of format, but that they must be unique in the system.

Drupal 6 — Entering a Content Alias (URL)

3. Install and Enable the Pathauto Module

The Pathauto module builds upon the aliasing capabilities of the Path module, but goes a step further by enabling the automatic creation of aliases.

Pathauto has extensive configuration options (beyond the scope of this article) which allow you to use various keywords or data — called tokens in the Drupal context — to construct URLs for different content types.

The first step is to download, install and enable the Pathauto module. Pathauto relies upon both the Path and Token modules. So you must install and/or enable both those modules before you will be able to enable the Pathauto module.

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Tags: drupal, open source, php cms, search enging optimization, seo, web cms, web optimization, web publishing

Some people say that system X is better than system Y for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. This may be true to some degree. But I've never seen a serious Web CMS project that expected to use the software without any configuration or modifications. This simply never happens.

What we see with Drupal (news, site) is that out of the box, so to speak, it's not great in terms of SEO. However, with the addition of a few contributed modules and after a some simple configurations are made, Drupal will stand alongside or even in front of the majority of web content management systems. Here's what you need to know to achieve this.