Optimize performance and mobile experience

Well-written and optimized content is critical for both search engines and your visitors. This page walks the content optimization group of the SEO checklist (breadcrumbs, link attributes, and a human-readable sitemap) and the mobile-friendliness check, since a mobile-friendly site ranks better in many search engines.

Goal

The navigation aids that help visitors and search engines understand your site’s structure reviewed, and your site’s responsiveness verified.

Prerequisites

• The SEO checklist opened and saved once; see Work through the SEO checklist.

Steps

Open the checklist at Configuration → Search and metadata → SEO Checklist/admin/config/search/seo-checklist and work down the optimizing content group.

Review breadcrumbs

Drupal CMS includes and installs the Easy Breadcrumb module, so this item is already complete. It generates breadcrumbs automatically from the URL and page titles. Breadcrumbs are a navigation aid showing the visitor’s path to the current page, such as Home → Blog → Top 10 Reasons to Visit Wine Country This Spring. They help both users and search engines understand and navigate your site’s structure.

1. Go to Content and select an item to view how the breadcrumbs display.
2. Use the item’s Configure link to review and modify the settings so they meet your site’s navigational needs.
3. Use the Configure permissions link to verify which roles can administer the module’s settings.

Enable advanced link attributes

The Editor Advanced Link module lets content editors add special attributes to links in CKEditor. It suits sites that need advanced link customization: titles, classes, and targets.

1. Download and install the Editor Advanced Link module.
2. Use the checklist item’s Configure link, which opens Configuration → Content authoring → Text formats and editors. For the Content text format, select Configure under Operations.
3. Scroll down to the CKEditor 5 plugin settings and select Advanced links.
4. Toggle on each attribute you want available while editing content.
5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Save configuration.

Add an HTML sitemap

The Sitemap module provides a user-friendly sitemap page for site navigation and overview, with optional RSS feed displays. This page is for people; it is distinct from the XML sitemap, which is optimized for search engines. Drupal CMS does not include it, so add it if your site benefits from an overview page.

1. Download and install the Sitemap module.
2. Use the checklist item’s Configure link, or go to Configuration → Search and metadata → Sitemap/admin/config/search/sitemap, to review the settings. The defaults work for most sites.
3. Use the Configure permissions link to review who can see and administer the sitemap.

Turn 404 pages into search results

The Search 404 module replaces the standard “404 Page not found” response with search results based on the missing page’s keywords. That can help visitors find the content they were looking for, or encourage exploration when the results are relevant. The HTTP status stays 404, so you can still identify broken links.

Caution

No stable release of Search 404 is currently compatible with Drupal CMS. Check the project page for a stable release compatible with Drupal 11. This item suits advanced users who are comfortable installing pre-release modules and configuring internal site search.

If you do install it, use the item’s Configure link to define how the module interacts with visitors and integrates with your site’s search.

Verify your site is responsive

A mobile-friendly website ranks better in many search engines, including Google, and gives visitors a good viewing experience on every device. Whether your site is responsive depends on your theme. Test it with Google’s PageSpeed tool (pagespeed.web.dev).

Verify

• View any content item: a breadcrumb trail appears above the content.
• The PageSpeed test reports your site as mobile-friendly.
• The optimizing content group of the checklist shows your completed items saved with a date.

Related

• Previous in the checklist: On-page SEO. Next: Security and performance checks.
• Work through the SEO checklist anchors this sequence.