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Drupal is a nice open source CMS (content management system), but it needs a few tweaks to have good SEO (search engine optimization).

If you already have Drupal installed, the easiest way to upgrade Drupal to be SEO friendly is this…

1. Download the ‘Pathauto’ module for Drupal. Choose the stable version (make sure you match it to your Drupal version)

2. Download the ‘Token’ module for Drupal.

3. Expand both files (might require expanding twice)

4. Use your FTP program to upload both folders into your ‘modules’ folder of your Drupal installation.

5. Login to your Drupal admin site and (if using Drupal version 6.x) click Administer > Site building > Modules

6. Scroll down and make sure ‘Path’ is checked, then scroll all the way down and check ‘Pathauto’ and ‘Tokenactions’, and make sure ‘Token’ is checked, if not already.

7. Login to your Drupal admin site and (if using Drupal version 6.x) click Administer > Site building > URL aliases

8. At the top, click ‘Automated alias settings’

9. Expand ‘General settings’ and select ‘Create a new alias. Leave the existing alias functioning.’ Because you want to update the old links to be SEO friendly, but not to break the existing links you’ve had. Select ‘Reduce strings to letters and numbers from ASCII-96′ as well.

10. Expand ‘Node path settings’ and in the first default path pattern field, change it to:

[title-raw]-[nid]

The above results in: www.domain.com/keyword-phrase-1

If the node number or another path isn’t included, it may be more vulnerable to hackers, so the code above adds the node # at the end. Refer to this site for a tutorial. In this same section, check ‘Bulk generate aliases for nodes that are not aliased’.

11. Expand ‘Taxonomy term path settings’ and check ‘Bulk generate aliases for terms that are not aliased’. You may also open the user path and forum path settings and likewise choose to bulk generate new aliases.

12. CLICK ‘SAVE CONFIGURATION’ !

13. Now you can log out and test your new SEO friendly URLs.

Here’s a basic example: Toastmasters website

This is a Photoshop-manipulated image that won 1st in a ‘creative’ category of a local photography club contest for January. It was made by duplicating the layer, applying a directional blur on the top layer (creating diagonal lines which suggest movement), then softly erasing the blur to reveal the faces behind. View the original.