Yoast SEO, known for its powerful features as a must-have Wordpress plugin, has released a Drupal module. This move has surprised many in the industry, but for Drupal users it is wonderful news.

As Softpedia.com observed: "...the Drupal module will be a complete rewrite of the WordPress plugin, molding on the fine edges that make the Drupal CMS so powerful, and will also feature Yoast's Real-time Content Analysis platform."

Here are a few others reasons why this is such good news for Drupal users:

Yoast is Very Good at Simplifying SEO

Yoast earned a reputation for analyzing the tediously complex tasks of SEO and reducing them into simple steps for the website owner. It made life easier for everyone.

The Yoast SEO project page on Drupal.org sums up the new Yoast SEO module this way:

This module checks simple things you're bound to forget. It checks, for instance, whether your posts are long enough, if you've written a meta description and if that meta description contains your focus keyword, if you've used any subheadings within your post, etc. etc.

It ensures you've actually chosen a focus keyword for each article and ensures you're using it.

(Side-note: in the Drupal announcement linked above, it says Yoast makes sure you're "using [your focus keyword] everywhere." That shouldn't mean, however, that you should engage in keyword stuffing. That doesn't work anymore. The new Google algorithm knows when you're trying to stuff keywords and penalizes you for it. Remember, the name of the game is now Search Experience Optimization, not Search Engine Optimization. Write for the experience of the reader, not for the search engine robots. Don't make your posts awkward and hard to read by over-filling them with keywords.)

It's Coming Just in Time for Drupal 8

After the DrupalCon 2015 conference in Barcelona, Spain, the Yoast SEO module became available for Drupal 7.x. Hopefully this means that Yoast is already working on or at least planning its Drupal 8 version. That would be perfect timing for Drupal users: not only would they be getting a new Drupal version soon, but they would have a new world class SEO module to go with it.

It's Also Bringing GoalGorilla Into the Mix

Yoast has found a friend in GoalGorilla, an award-winning Dutch company that uses a variety of powerful design and analytic tools to help you learn more about your users. As their humorous landing page says in its English translation, "you've never been so close to your users." GoalGorilla was a #1 winner at the DIA (Dutch Interactive Awards). Their involvement in Yoast SEO for Drupal is definitely a good thing.

A Few Final Thoughts on the Benefits of Yoast SEO

If Yoast SEO for Drupal turns out as good as its Wordpress version, we can expect it to work similar feats of magic, such as these features:

• Handles pinging for you by sending up-to-date sitemaps to the search engines. This enables search engines to add your content more quickly.
• Allows you to write two headlines, one for search engines and one for your visitors, thus ensuring your articles are optimized for the user's search experience while also feeding search engines great keywords in the headline.
• Reminds you if you need to fix a post url, slug, or other element that's hurting your SEO.
• Allows you to add page redirects when old posts are getting a ton of traffic but you'd prefer the traffic goes to a newer, updated post.
• Fixes incorrect links from other sites. If someone mangles the URL for your page, Yoast has a way of fixing it and getting the visitor to clean permalinks.
• Hopefully the features listed above, and the many other perks of the popular Wordpress plugin, will find its way into Drupal.

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