[Drupal SEO] How to manage content using stories and pages on a Drupal site
What webmasters can do for making their site visible to intended audience? Identifying effective ways for managing content using stories and pages on a Drupal site can really make your website stand out from others. Here are a few tips for Drupal webmasters who would like to make their website unique, valuable and reliable.
1. Set a time context for any story that goes live
A 'story' is an article that has a time context. Ensure you have a context set for the 'story' in the content and title so that users will not mistake old articles for live content. A 'story' once published will have to remain published. So ensure that this context is made clear in the title and the first paragraph.
2. Maintain a proper URL Architecture
Maintain a proper URL architecture and make sure a page will have a URL that complies with the URL architecture of the site. The URLs used for pages should be hierarchical so that content is neatly classified into meaningful 'directories' and 'sub-directories' in the URL.
Eg: careers/internships/mba-internships, careers/internships/mca-internships
3. Create a new revision while editing stories
Whenever content on a page or story is edited, always create a new revision and add a revision log describing the changes you made in the page or story. In a page it is ok to not mention edit history in the content explicitly but in stories it might be good to add a new section with "{date} Edit: Description about the edit" added to the footer of the story so that people will know the edits done in the story. Do note that in some cases this edit note can be explicitly avoided as in the case when you are correcting bloopers.
4. NEVER take down a 'story' once it goes live
You never un-publish a 'story' once it gets published because there could be links coming to the 'story' from other sites or even from other stories. It is also VERY bad for SEO Eg: A 'story' about 'Summer internship programs at Zyxware for Summer 2013'. A 'story' should have an automatic URL that is defined by pathauto and all story URLs would follow a similar pattern.
Eg: articles/3013/summer-internship-positions-open-for-summer-2013
A 'page' is something that has information that does not have a time context or has a longer time context. You can update content in a 'page'. A 'page' is typically used to present static information to the user - eg: A page about 'Summer Internship Programs at Zyxware and application procedures'. This page would not be about specific summer internship programs for a given year but would be about summer internship programs in general. You can also link to current stories from a given page - eg: the link to the current years summer internship program.
