A List of the Best Drupal SEO & Social Media Modules

There are many lists for the best Drupal SEO modules if you search Google. However, many of these lists do not cover modules that are used for increasing internal page relevance, strength, and even user-generated actions. In the list below I'll describe a few Drupal SEO modules that we've used that will not only enhance your site for search engines but for your valued users. We've also included a great list of social media modules to spice up your Drupal website. Enjoy!

The Most Common Drupal SEO Modules

1. Page Title Module - The page title is the one found in the HTML head inside the <title> tag. It is also used on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) and can greatly enhance your websites SEO. This is perhaps the most under-utilized aspect to web page creation, as the creator does not add valuable keywords to the <title> tag.
2. Nodewords - This SEO modules allows you to add meta tags to Drupal pages, both manually and automatically based on various settings. Paying attention to meta tags, such as keywords, description and canonical URL, may help obtain better search engine positioning.
3. Nodewords Page Title - This modules lets you leverage the power of nodewords custom pages to set the page title using wildcard paths and global tokens. Great for tough-to-reach page titles in Views, Panels, and other non-node paths. This module marries the best features of nodewords and page_title modules.
4. Related Content - This nifty SEO module enables site maintainers to easily select on a per-node basis what nodes should be displayed along with it. Nodes that are available for selection are provided by one or more views, provided by the Views module. How the nodes are displayed is configurable, as well as themeable. The module also provide a small but powerful API for advanced users.
5. Pathauto - The Pathauto module automatically generates path aliases (search engine friendly URLs) for various kinds of content (nodes, categories, users) without requiring the user to manually specify the path alias. This allows you to get aliases like /category/my-node-title.html instead of /node/123. The aliases are based upon a "pattern" system which the administrator can control.
6. Sitemap - This module provides a site map that gives visitors an overview of your site. It can also display the RSS feeds for all blogs and categories. Drupal generates the RSS feeds automatically but few seems to be aware that they exist. The site map can display the following items: A message to be displayed above the site map, the latest blogs, any books, any menus that will be displayed fully expanded, any categories, i.e vocabulary, with all the terms expanded. Optionally with node counts and RSS feeds.
7. Path Redirect - This module allows you to specify a redirect from one path to another path or an external URL, using any HTTP redirect status. This redirect module is great for 301 redirects, 302 (temporary redirects), and several other types of redirects when you may need to remove or move pages within your Drupal site.
8. Google Analytics Module - Adds the Google Analytics web statistics tracking system to your website. This module allows you to add Google's rich statistics features to your Drupal site.
9. XML Sitemap - The XML sitemap module creates a sitemap that conforms to the sitemaps.org specification. This helps search engines to more intelligently crawl a website and keep their results up to date. The sitemap created by the module can be automatically submitted to Ask, Google, Bing (formerly Windows Live Search), and Yahoo! search engines. The module also comes with several submodules that can add sitemap links for content, menu items, taxonomy terms, and user profiles.

Other Very Useful Drupal SEO Modules

The SEO modules above are definitely recommended if you're wanting to get the most optimization out of your Drupal website. However, there are many other SEO and content modules that can really improve your Drupal site. Some of these are listed below.

1. Content Optimizer - This module enables a quick SEO analyzer that provides instant analysis of any site content as a quick and easy guide to assure SEO best practices are consistently followed. The analysis displays vital content statistics and recommendations for improving search engine rankings.
2. Glossify Internal Links Auto SEO - What does it do for SEO? This module generates internal node links and on a per node base external http links (crosslinks) automatically - ideal for SEO of your site's pages and partner pages. It is currently node-based and looks for node titles in node bodies and makes them to links. There are plans to extend it to taxonomy terms, too.
3. Scribe SEO - Scribe SEO is an search engine optimization software service for Drupal and other CMS platforms - think of it as a content optimization assistant - that analyzes web pages, blog posts, and online press releases at the click of a button. Scribe then tells web writers of any kind how to tweak their content to get more search engine traffic, all while maintaining quality reader-focused copy.
4. SEO Watcher - SEO Watcher is a module that searches specified keywords with major search engines and checks the rank of your site and competitive sites once a day and creates the reports.
5. QA Checklist - This module provides a checklist of good Drupal QA (Quality Assurance) best practices. It provides a checklist that helps you keep track of what QA tasks need to be done. First, it will look to see what modules you already have installed. Then, all you have to do is go down the list of unchecked items and do them.
6. SEO Friend - SEO Friend shows a summary of all available reports and a list of Drupal SEO-related modules and if they have been installed and enabled, such as Meta Tags (nodes), Meta Tags (path), Page Title report, and Referrer Report - shows a summary of referrers to your site.
7. Related Block - This does a search for nodes that are closely related to the title and content of the current node. It provides for display only on specific node types. Words in the title are given a slightly heavier weight than those in the content. Strips out highly used words (currently only for English), and ignores words under 3 characters.
8. Similar by Terms - This Drupal module attempts to provide context for content items by displaying a block with links to other similar content. Similarity is based on the taxonomy terms assigned to content. Blocks are available based on similarity within each of the defined vocabularies for a site as well as a block for similarity within all vocabularies.

Social Media and Social SEO Modules

Here is a list of some of our favorite Drupal social media and networking modules. Increasing brand, user-retention, customer support, and Twitter/Facebook or other followers should all be part of the bigger SEO picture!

1. Gigya Social Optimization - Gigya provides a single API that aggregates authentication and social APIs from Facebook Connect, MySpace ID, Twitter, and OpenID webmail providers including Google, Yahoo, and AOL.
2. Facebook Social Integration - Drupal integration of facebook social plugins http://developers.facebook.com/plugins. The following plugins are currently implemented: Like Button, Comments, Like box.
3. Twitter Module - This module provides API integration with the Twitter microblogging service and API-compatible alternatives like Identi.ca. Out of the box, it allow users to: 1. Associate one or more Twitter accounts with their Drupal user account. 2. Have their tweets displayed in a sidebar block or on their user profile, and; 3. Post to their own Twitter account or a site-wide Twitter account whenever they create new content.
4. Tweet Module - This module provides links to post pages to twitter in a new window or tab. The tweet will be in focus and will contain customizable text that can hold the relevant URL, title and anything else you need it to (like hashtags). The URL can be automatically abbreviated at the administrator's choice of service by integration with the Shorten URLs module.
5. Shorten URLs - This module provides an API to shorten URLs via almost any service (over 25 services are available by default), as well as a block and a page that provide an interface for easily shortening URLs, and a block that displays a shortened URL for the current page for easy copying.
6. ShURLy - This URL shortener is intended to be fast, clean, simple, self-contained, user-friendly, flexible, and easy to set up. New URLs are created by going to /shurly and entering the long URL and an optional custom short URL. Short URLs have ownership and each user can track click statistics for his/her URLs.
7. Tweetmeme - Provides third-party integration with the TweetMeme web service, used to track popular links on Twitter. As it it right now, this module just adds the TweetMeme button to nodes.
8. Twitter Tweet Button - Adds the Twitter Tweet Button to node teasers & pages. You can configure which types of nodes should use the button, and control the display differently for teasers and nodes.
9. Tweet Board - This module will integrate Tweetboard with your Drupal site without having to install any code (it'll do it for you).
10. Socialite - Add your favorite external networking sites to a block. Features: Clean, minimalist design! Uses native Drupal 6 API, supports drag and drop ordering, supports automatic favicons, favicon caching, outputs clean, CSS list.
11. Facebook Share - The Facebook Share module enables Drupal site administrators to add a Facebook Share button to selected content type nodes in their website(s). The motivation behind this module was the TweetMeme module which allows users to retweet about a given website node.
12. Service links - Service links allow to add links of social bookmarking sites, blog search engines, social networks and similiar, including Buzz Yahoo, del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, Furl, Google, IceRocket, LinkedIn, ma.gnolia.com, MySpace, Newsvine, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Twitter, Yahoo and many more.
13. ShareThis - Integration with the ShareThis social bookmarking utility on selected node types.
14. AddtoAny Share/Bookmark - AddToAny's Share/Bookmark widget helps readers share, bookmark, and email your pages and articles (stories) using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Digg, and over 100 more sharing and social bookmarking sites. Services are updated automatically.
15. SexyBookmarks - The SexyBookmarks module is a port of the WordPress plug-in by the same name. The goal was to stray away from the "in the box" thinking behind most social bookmarking plugins, and add a little flair that would entice your readers, rather than deterring them with microscopic icons that get lost in pages heavy laden with content.

We will add any more to the list above that users have found useful and beneficial for optimizing their Drupal websites. Please list your favorite in the comments or let us know why you love Drupal and the incredible SEO or social media modules that help us all make our Drupal sites better for users and search engines.