Drupal Pathauto module, How Pathauto module helps SEO

Pathauto is a Drupal module that automatically generates URL aliases for content, taxonomy terms, and other types of entities. It uses a pattern-based system to generate URLs, which can be customized to suit your site's needs. With Pathauto, you can create more user-friendly and SEO-friendly URLs for your site, rather than relying on the default system-generated URLs.

Here are the steps to set up and use :

Download and install the Pathauto module from the Drupal website.

Enable the module by going to the "Extend" page in the Drupal administration menu.

Configure the Pathauto module by going to the "Configuration" page in the Drupal administration menu, under "Search and metadata" > "URL aliases"

Click on "Add pattern" button to create your custom URL pattern, you can use tokens (placeholder) to create the pattern.

You can set the pattern to be used for specific content types, taxonomies, or other entities.

Once you have configured the patterns, you can use the "Bulk update" tab to update the existing URLs to match the new patterns.

Make sure to test your installation and configuration to ensure that everything is working as expected.

With Pathauto, you can create more user-friendly and SEO-friendly URLs for your site, rather than relying on the default system-generated URLs.

Drupal Pathauto module helps SEO?

URLs can play a role in SEO, as they provide information about the content of a page and can signal to search engines the structure and hierarchy of a website. Drupal Pathauto module can help with SEO in Drupal. By creating user-friendly and descriptive URLs for your site's content, the Pathauto module can improve the visibility of your site in search engines.

Here are a few ways in which Pathauto can help with SEO:

Descriptive URLs:

Descriptive URLs that accurately reflect the content of a page can help search engines better understand the topic of the page and match it with relevant search queries. This can improve the chances of the page ranking for those queries.

Descriptive URLs make it clear to both users and search engines what the content of the page is about. This can improve the click-through rate (CTR) of the links, which is an important ranking factor.

Descriptive URLs can help users understand the structure and hierarchy of a website, making it easier for them to navigate the site. This can improve user experience, which is an important ranking factor.

Descriptive URLs can include keywords relevant to the content of the page, which can help search engines understand the topic of the page and improve the chances of the page ranking for those keywords.

Descriptive URLs can include the name of the website, which can help establish brand recognition and increase the chances of users clicking through to the site.

Pathauto generates URLs that are more descriptive of the content they represent.

Keyword-rich URLs:

Keyword-rich URLs that include relevant keywords can help search engines understand the topic of the page and match it with relevant search queries. This can improve the chances of the page ranking for those queries.

Keyword-rich URLs make it clear to both users and search engines what the content of the page is about, which can improve the click-through rate (CTR) of the links, which is an important ranking factor.

Keyword-rich URLs can help users understand the structure and hierarchy of a website, making it easier for them to navigate the site. This can improve user experience, which is an important ranking factor.

Keyword-rich URLs can also include long-tail keywords, which can help increase the chances of the page ranking for more specific and less competitive search queries.

Pathauto can include keywords in the URLs.

Consistency:

Pathauto ensures that URLs are consistent across your site, which can help search engines understand the structure of your site and improve its visibility.

Canonical URLs:

Canonical URLs can help improve search engine optimization (SEO) by addressing issues related to duplicate content. A canonical URL is a way for website owners to indicate to search engines which version of a webpage should be considered the original or "canonical" version. This is done by adding a "rel=canonical" link to the HTML of the pages that have duplicate or similar content.

By using canonical URLs, website owners can tell search engines which version of the content they want to be indexed and shown in search results. This can prevent search engines from penalizing the site for having multiple pages with identical content, which can hurt the site's search rankings.

Canonical URLs also help to consolidate link equity and pass it to the original page, which can help improve the ranking of the original page in search results.

Pathauto can help prevent duplicate content by ensuring that all URLs for the same content point to a single, canonical URL.

Dynamic auto-generated URLs:

Dynamic URLs can include keywords related to the content on the page, making it more likely to rank well in search results for those keywords.

Dynamic URLs can make it easier for search engines to crawl and index the site. By providing a clear and logical structure for URLs, search engines can understand the content of the page and index it accordingly.

Dynamic URLs can help prevent duplicate content issues by creating unique URLs for similar content. This can prevent search engines from penalizing the site for having multiple pages with identical content.

Dynamic URLs can be more user-friendly, making it easier for visitors to understand the content of the page, and providing a better user experience.

Pathauto can auto-generate the URLs based on the entity's title, which can be more SEO friendly than using the default system-generated URLs.