7 Essential SEO Tips For Joomla |
Jul 20
2010
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Joomla is widely used Content Management System (CMS). With its popularity it becomes important to optimize sites created in Joomla. Recently, Joomla has become a popular tool for those looking to develop a website or blog. Unfortunately, Joomla isn’t very search engine friendly, and users will need to optimize their sites in order to attract the attention for search engine spiders.
While it is true that all websites need to put some effort into their search engine optimization, it is especially true of Joomla sites. Following are a few basic tips to start optimizing pages created in Joomla:
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Create a URL that is search engine friendly: Joomla’s URL’s simply are not search engine friendly. You can make yours more friendly several different ways. Joomla has a plugin designed to assist you – the SEF plugin. This plugin is not active by default but can be easily activated on the global configuration page. There are several ‘paid’ functions that can be purchased to assist you with your URL. Finally, many choose to hire a consultant to ensure their URL is properly configured.
- Titles and headings matter: Titles and headings do more than help create an easy to understand flow for your website. In fact, spiders often turn to them to ensure your website is actually about the keywords you are using. Use your H1 tag for your title tag.
- Create unique page titles: Joomla has default titles for their pages – titles like ‘home’ are never going to attract search engine spiders. Use your menu manager to edit your page tittles. Be sure your titles include keywords but are still attractive to human readers.
- Meta Data: Meta information is still valuable, especially now that Google has preformed it’s “May Day” update. Create Meta tags that are descriptive – this is the information that people will see on the search engine results page. Each page should have its own Meta data.
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Duplicate Content Issue: Joomla creates duplicate content issues (like many other CMS). The sh404SEF plugin alleviates some of these issues, but not all. A primary case of duplicate content in Joomla is when you publish PDF or print icons on pages. Search engines will index the PDF and print icons link as well and what you don't want is your PDFs ranking above your page content (PDFs are like dead ends which won't drive any traffic to the homepage). The best option here is not to publish.
- Link building is important: just like traditional SEO, Joomla SEO should include a link-building component. There are actually several different programs out there that can help you ensure your links are valid. A large list of valid and relevant links is a great step towards improving your visibility.
- The Joomla sh404SEF: Download and install the Joomla sh4040SEF plugin (component). You can set up your own custom URLs if you don't like the automatic ones with the help of this plugin. Meta tags, title tags can all be manually set as well. It also provides advanced security functions.
sh404SEF is the best Joomla SEO plugin. You can make Joomla SEO friendly with this easy to install and use plugin.
Other components that work with traditional SEO should not be ignored either. Be sure to include a site map on your website. A great one is the samSiteMap. It will help you to create the somewhat complex trees that search engines look at to understand how your website works.
Learning a few tips on using Joomla SEO can help you to create a website that is valuable to you in several ways. First, it will increase your overall visibility on the web and will result in higher search engine rankings. Second, Joomla SEO will actually make your site more attractive to human readers as well. Don’t assume that a Joomla page works like other web pages. Be sure to focus your optimization efforts on areas that are specific to Joomla SEO.
Comments (9)
Add a static text in the
Open the file: libraries/joomla/document/html/renderer/head.php
Search for the next piece of code:
$strHtml .= $tab.''.htmlspecialchars($document->getTitle()).''.$lnEnd;
Add your statict text for example:
$strHtml .= $tab.' All about Canada - '.htmlspecialchars($document->getTitle()).''.$lnEnd;
The text into the tag is very important for the search engines.
If you need obtain a great search results for the word "All about Canada" I recommend your put the static text before of the $document->getTitle();
Other important thing, is don't use symbols like ":", "-", "$", etc for the title.
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Add heading tags in the titles for more relevance
I you want put a "H" tag to joomla 1.5 you need edit some files:
Override components/com_content/views/category/tmpl/blog.php
search for this piece of code (Line 5):
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Utilize RSS Feeds for Search Engines
In Joomla! 1.5.3: If you are not using sections and categories for your static pages, create a generic section for these static pages, such as "website content". Create separate categories for each static page. Change your menu items from, for instance, Article Layout to Category Blog Layout. Under the advanced parameters for the menu item, make sure that the show a feed link item is set to show. Make sure the syndicate module is published. If it isn't go to the Extensions Menu, select Module Manager, select the new icon, select Syndicate and publish the module in the desired position. You can then view the site and copy the URLs for each feed to submit to each search engine.
NOTE: You should have SEF enabled for this to work well.
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Dynamic MetaDesc in a list of articles by category
For this we need open the file: includes/application.php
Search for this piece of code in the function &getParams:
$params->def( 'page_title' , $title ); $params->def( 'page_description', $description );
Add this code before:
if (strcasecmp($_GET['view'],'category')==0) { $description = $database->GetOne("SELECT description FROM jos_categories WHERE id={$_GET['id']}"); }
It's ok, now the metadescription is more dynamic when you view a list of articles by category.
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Change default article SEF suffix from .html to .htm
Index: includes/router.php
=======================================================
============
--- includes/router.php (revision 13023)
+++ includes/router.php (working copy)
@@ -57,8 +57,13 @@
{
if($suffix = pathinfo($path, PATHINFO_EXTENSION))
{
- $path = str_replace('.'.$suffix, , $path);
- $vars['format'] = $suffix;
+ if ($suffix == 'htm') {
+ $path = str_replace('.'.$suffix, , $path);
+ $vars['format'] = 'html';
+ } else {
+ $path = str_replace('.'.$suffix, , $path);
+ $vars['format'] = $suffix;
+ }
}
}
}
@@ -93,7 +98,8 @@
{
if($format = $uri->getVar('format', 'html'))
{
- $route .= '.'.$format;
+ //$route .= '.'.$format;
+ $route .= '.htm';
$uri->delVar('format');
}
}
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Web Development India
www.seosoftwareservices.com/web_development
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