Along with the growth of Drupal, the marketing landscape is vastly different now than it was 20 years ago. The same techniques once used to make the top of the search engine no longer work, so you need to understand the powerful role Drupal can play in building a successful SEO strategy. Drupal 9 is created with responsive design capabilities built-in, so you can begin to address many problems immediately. Here are the 10 essential Drupal 9 SEO modules that you must not miss out on.

1. SEO Checklist

The Drupal SEO Checklist uses best practices to check your website for proper search engine optimization. It eliminates guesswork by creating a functional to-do list of modules and tasks that remain. It breaks the tasks down into functional needs like Title Tags, Paths, Content and much more. This Drupal 9 module also keeps track of what has already been done and provides a simple report that you can share with others showing what's been done. 

For more details: https://www.drupal.org/project/seo_checklist 

2. Metatag

The Metatag module maintained by Damien McKenna allows you to automatically provide structured metadata, aka "meta tags", about a website. In addition, the module provides support for meta tags that allow control of how content appears when shared on social networks. It supports a large number of commonly used meta tags, including the page title, canonical URL, description, etc, and for Facebook's Open Graph, Twitter Cards and Dublin Core via included submodules. Mediacurrent is sponsoring the ongoing development while Lullabot, Palantir.net and Acquia supported the initial development of this Drupal 9 SEO module.

For more details visit: https://www.drupal.org/project/metatag 
Documentation: Metatag 8.x and Metatag 7.x

3. Schema Metatag

This SEO module extends Drupal's Metatag module to display structured data as JSON LD in the head of web pages. Since the Schema.org list is huge, and growing, this module only provides a subset of those values. But it is designed to be extensible. Using the override system in Metatag module you can define default structured data values for all content types, override the global content defaults for a particular content type, or even override everything else on an individual node to provide specific values for that node. Lullabot and Cascade Public Media are the supporting organizations for this module.

For more details visit: https://www.drupal.org/project/schema_metatag
Documentation: Schema Metatag 8.x-1 to 8.x-2 and Schema Metatag 7.x-1

4. Simple XML Sitemap

The Drupal 9 module generates multilingual sitemaps for entities, views and custom links. The module's API allows creating and publishing of custom sitemaps with arbitrary content, as well as submitting those sitemaps to search engines like Google. Sitemaps generated by Simple XML Sitemap module adhere to the new Google standard regarding multilingual content by creating hreflang sitemaps and image sitemaps. Sitemap generation can be altered through custom URL & sitemap generator plugins and hooks.

For more details visit: https://www.drupal.org/project/simple_sitemap 
Documentation: Simple XML Sitemap

5. Redirect

This Drupal 9 SEO module provides the ability to create manual redirects and maintain a canonical URL for all content, redirecting all other requests to that path. The module redirects counter and last used timestamp, with automatic cleanup of inactive redirects, offers complete individual redirect access API, integrates with Drupal's page cache to optimize redirects and performance and much more. Lullabot, MD Systems and Acquia are the organizations supporting this module.

For more details visit: https://www.drupal.org/project/redirect

6. Search 404

Page not found aka 404 is a common issue that every website faces, especially when there are a lot of backlinks. Search404 is there for your help to offer a better user experience for your visitors. This module does a keyword search with the terms in the URL instead of showing the standard 'Page Not Found if the URL is not available on the website. This will help you retain the visitors that come to your website via old or external links. This module is maintained by Zyxware Technologies.

For more details visit: https://www.drupal.org/project/search404 
Documentation: Search 404

7. External Links

External Links module is used to differentiate between internal and external links. Using jQuery, it will find all external links on a page and add an external icon indicating it will take you offsite. Lullabot and Ramsalt Lab support his SEO module.

For more details visit: https://www.drupal.org/project/extlink

8. Editoria11y Accessibility Checker

Editoria11y ("editorial accessibility") is a user-friendly checker that runs functions like spell check automatically and focuses exclusively on content issues: things page editors can easily understand and easily fix. The Drupal 9 module runs in context. Views, Layout Builder, Media and all the other modules Drupal uses to assemble a complex page means checkers that run on individual fields cannot "see" errors that appear on render.

For more details: https://www.drupal.org/project/editoria11y
Video Tour:

 

9. Easy Breadcrumb

The Easy Breadcrumb module updates the core Breadcrumb block to include the current page title in the breadcrumb. The Drupal 9 SEO module comes with additional settings that are common features needed in breadcrumbs. It uses the current URL (path alias) and the current page title to build the crumbs. It is designed to work out of the box with no adjustments, and it comes with settings to customize the crumbs. Ramsalt Lab is responsible for the Drupal 8/9 maintenance and development of this module.

For more details visit: https://www.drupal.org/project/easy_breadcrumb  
Documentation: Easy Breadcrumb

10. Real-time SEO for Drupal

This module helps you optimize content around keywords in a fast, natural, non-spam way. This Drupal 9 SEO module checks things you're bound to forget. It checks whether your posts are long enough, if you've written a meta description and if that metadata contains your focus keyword, if you've used any subheadings within your post, etc.

For more details: https://www.drupal.org/project/yoast_seo 

These according to us are the most essential Drupal 9 SEO modules, which one of these are you currently using?

Note: This is a compilation of modules picked by our editorial team from drupal.org