How we teach SEO and optimize Drupal-powered websites

Daria Bochkareva, head of the website promotion and content support department at Initlab, delivered the “SEO Fundamentals, schema.org markup” lecture to students of the Kuban State University. Daria covered the main SEO aspects and tools and gave examples of the structured markup compliant with schema.org. The students will apply the acquired knowledge when doing the web dev tasks given to them at the website development course they attend at the Faculty of Computer Technology and Applied Mathematics of KubSU.

Daria has been promoting websites for over 10 years. At Initlab, we specialize in maintaining sites working on Drupal. Dasha's primary job is to manage SEO efforts for Drupal-powered websites, including online stores. We are well-versed in promoting online stores in foreign markets. Our team of professional Drupal developers fulfills all Dasha's recommendations using the standard Drupal features and the SEO modules and patches we developed in-house.

Example:

• patch for Drupal 7 and module for Drupal 8enabling correct return of the Last Modified header, which improves indexing by search engines;
• Drupal 7 modules outputting catalog filter parameters to Views Exposed Filters and Search API Facets tokens with support for word forms to automate creation of dynamic headers and metatags in online stores.

Amateur or "jack of all trades" web dev specialists often harm Drupal-powered websites when optimizing them: they introduce hacks into the core, put content into templates, break the basic Drupal web development rules. As a result, such sites become difficult and expensive to support and develop: even the simplest alterations are challenging. Often, we have to refactor such websites when their owners turn to us for support. Therefore, it is better to entrust the promotion and support of your Drupal sites to a well-coordinated team of professionals. And when developing a new website, it is best to work with the SEO team from the outset, thus eliminating the future need for code adjustments for optimization purposes.