How-to guideFor site builders, content editorsDrupal CMS 2

Configure SEO and social sharing fields

Structuring content for search engines and social platforms means better results with less per-page effort. Drupal CMS includes default configuration for commonly used meta tags; this page shows where those settings live and which fields to add to your content model.

Goal

Every content type carries the fields that search results and social previews draw from: meta title, meta description, an image, a clean URL, and Open Graph metadata.

Prerequisites

A running Drupal CMS site and an account that can edit content and content types.
A content model to build on; see Content modeling.

Steps

Set the SEO fields on Canvas pages

SEO settings for pages built with Canvas, Drupal’s visual page builder, live in the Page data tab. For each page, choose an image and write a description. By default, the page title becomes the meta title. To change that, replace the [canvas_page:title] text with your own title; the | [site:name] that follows automatically appends the site name from your global settings.

Set the SEO fields on CMS content

For CMS content, the title is automatically set as the default meta title, and the featured image and description map to the SEO image and meta description. To set an SEO image or description separately, expand the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Information tab and fill in those fields.

The same section provides an SEO analysis tool that analyzes the content against a focus keyword you select, so you can refine the content for the searches you are optimizing for.

Check the URL alias

When you create content, a clean URL alias is automatically created from the title, such as /wine-tours/napa-valley. To change it, open the URL alias section in the right sidebar. That section includes instructions both for overriding the generated alias and for setting up URL alias patterns per content type.

Structure headings in your content

Use logical heading levels: H1 for the title, H2 for sections. This matters most in the formatted text fields content editors write in, and it improves both accessibility and SEO.

Add fields that support structured data

Fields can feed schema.org structured data, which helps search engines understand the content:

Add a tour type field (such as “Private tour” or “Group tour”) to output as schema.org metadata.
Include fields for business information, such as price, availability, and location, for the schema.org TouristAttraction or Offer schema.

For a wine tour, the result might look like:

Title (H1): “Napa Valley Wine Tour: Explore the Best Wineries”
Meta title: “Napa Valley Wine Tour | Private and Group Tours”
Meta description: “Discover the top Napa Valley wine tours. Book private or group wine tastings in California’s most famous wine region.”
URL alias: /wine-tours/napa-valley
Image alternative text: “A group enjoying wine tasting in Napa Valley.”
Structured data: price, availability dates, region, and tour type, marked up with schema.org.

Optimize media for both SEO and social platforms:

Alternative text: when adding or editing an image in the media library, enter alternative text. It improves accessibility and gives search engines descriptive information.
Open Graph and Twitter Card tags: with SEO Tools, Drupal CMS generates these from the SEO title, description, and image fields, and falls back to the content’s title, description, and featured image. No extra fields are needed. Override them per item in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Information section, or change the defaults at Configuration → Search and metadata → Metatag/admin/config/search/metatag.

For example: an SEO title of “Experience the Best Napa Valley Wine Tours” becomes the headline when the item is shared, and the SEO image of a vineyard becomes its preview image.

Use taxonomy terms that match search phrases

Choose taxonomy terms for categories and regions that reflect common search phrases, such as a Wine region vocabulary (“Napa Valley”, “Sonoma”) and a Tour category vocabulary (“Weekend Tours”, “Luxury Tours”). These terms can appear in URLs, page titles, and filter options for added SEO benefit.

Connect content for internal linking

Use reference fields to encourage internal linking:

Relate tours to specific wineries, regions, or blog posts.
Use views to display “Related tours” or “Featured regions” dynamically on content pages; see Display content with views.

Verify

Open a published item, view the page source, and confirm the meta title and description match what you entered.
Visit the item’s clean URL alias, such as /wine-tours/napa-valley, and confirm it loads the page.
Run the SEO analysis tool on a CMS content item with a focus keyword and review its feedback.

Variations

Install the SEO tools add-on: it provides the SEO Checklist at Configuration → Search and metadata → SEO Checklist, which walks you through optimizing the whole site. See Install SEO tools and the SEO checklist.
Token-driven meta tags: generate page-specific meta tags with tokens, such as [node:title] | [site:name] for the title and [node:summary] for the description. See Meta tags.
Taxonomy landing pages: taxonomy term pages give you filterable, SEO-friendly landing pages such as /regions/napa-valley or /tour-types/weekend-tours. Give term pages their own URL pattern, because each alias points to exactly one page.
Media performance: serve appropriately sized images with responsive image styles, and compress images and videos; page speed is a ranking factor. See Optimize your site.

Content modeling is the concept behind these field decisions.
SEO essentials starts the full SEO track of this guide.
On-page SEO covers writing the content itself for search.

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