Seo for Joomla - Making Joomla Search Engine Optimized

I wrote some time ago that OpenSEF development has been taken over by new maintainers.

Because I don’t know yet how and when a new release is planned I thought I would start looking at alternatives to some of the most used features in OpenSEF.
Now, don’t take this the wrong way, OpenSEF is still a great component that has many great features and you can still Download OpenSEF

So here is a short list of the items you could work with to get the best options for Joomla SEO in Place:

• sh404SEF - The best free SEF Component at this moment
  I even provides a function to edit you 404 page and give you a proper Joomla 404 Header!
• iJoomla Metatag Generator - Getting an overview of the Fields you still have to fill with Metatag Descriptions and Keywords (you can even do it automatically.. not recommend for best results)
• Sef Service Map , this was the hardest one.. because you can give Google, Yahoo, Ask and Live a sitemap file to make sure they can find all the content on your website.
  OpenSEF has a great part in it that creates a sitemap.xml file with the SEF URL in it…
  I tried Joomap and encountered the same problems as Joemar and tried the new version of Sef Service Map, and that worked out fine!
  It even updates the file automatically after the cache time, so this on it a set and forget it… an improvement over OpenSEF.

You can use these separate components and get even better SEO work done, but the installation and configuration takes a little more time, but that is well worth the effort!!

As you might know, the most important factor for Search Engine Optimization (besides content..) is the Title Tag.

In Joomla the Title of your page is the first part of your Content screen.

Writing good titles is essential if you want to get found on the keywords you are targeting.
But you also want to keep the titles on your pages short, to make sure you don’t clutter your page with long title headers.

Long Titles can all so be a problem if you use a SEF Component that rewrites your titles in to URLs.

But there is help on the way… with the new Joomla Content Title Plugin!

You just install the Plugin and start rewriting just your Title Alias to get better Keyword targeted titles that show up tin the Search Results Pages.

There are some things you need to be aware off if your use the alias as a rewrite option in your SEF Component, you can read more about that on my Pathos SEO Blog post: Improve the Joomla nr One SEO Factor 

If you want to read more about the use of Joomla Titles you can read What Title to use in Joomla

I know, some shameless self promotion, but I hope you find even more interesting information on Joomla SEO there that might benefit you in your search on improving your website.

This post is just to explain two components in Joomla, both are related to RSS Feeds.

Joomla News Feeds Component 

The First one goes under the component name “News Feeds” and it can be used to integrate RSS Feed content of Other websites into your pages.
So lets say you want the content of this Blog to appear in you Joomla website.., just as a service to your visitors.
In that case you would use the “News Feeds” Component.

I know, there are better ones out there, but you can find those on the extensions site of Joomla.org

Joomla Syndicate Component 

The second one ”Syndicate” was the topic of my previous post.
This kind of components, like the Joomla Syndicate and the third party components like the RSS Feed manager and DS-Syndicate are not meant to integrate content into your Joomla website.

No, these components are there to bring the content of Your website articles to people who use feed readers to stay in touch with what is happening on you site!!

So instead of pulling content in, you are sending content out!! into the big world of Feed readers and Search Engines…
Yes, search engines as well, as you have read already.
Feeds can be a nice assets to your Search Engine marketing and part of your Joomla SEO efforts.

Because RSS Feeds, and the information in it will travel…. and comes back with visitors to your website.

So, now you know the difference and do with RSS Feeds in Joomla.
Use the News feeds wisely to complete your content and use the Syndication components to bring your information into the Internet world…

Most people I guess are still wondering if the should go for Hypens - or Underscores _ in their URL rewrite.

Please don’t wonder any more, because there is a clear statement in guest blog post on Matt Cutss (Google Engineer) Blog by Vanessa Fox (Also from Google) Organic Site review session

” And speaking of putting a dash in URLs, hyphens are often better than underscores [Ed. Note: bolded by Matt ]. african-elephants.html is seen as two words: “African” and “elephants”. african_elephants is seen as one word: african_elephant. It’s doubtful many people will be searching for that. “

Now with that out of the way, how does this work on a standard Joomla installation?
Answer… It doesn’t..

You need a Sef Component to do that, and you must know by reading the other posts, that I really like the Open-Sef, and guess what…. it does this already, standard in the installation.

Now there are some more Joomla SEF Components.
Like SEF Advanced (Commercial) in which it is an option that you have to make sure you use it.

Remosef is an other one, which you can use for Mambo as well.
To let Remosef use the - instead of the _ you have to edit the sef.custom.php and change the line $_SEF_SPACE = “_”;    to   $_SEF_SPACE = “-”;  

If you look at the other options in that file, you can see there are more things you can do in rewriting your URL, also for third party modules that don’t have a sef_ext.php file.

If you want to use the JoomSef Component, there is also an option in which you can set the blanks replacement. The standard value for JoomSef is also the Hypen  -.

So if you don’t want to use OpenSef for some reason, then please, please !!! use one of the other Joomla SEF Components to rewrite your URLs to User and Search Engine Friendly.

You now know what to choose from the options to replace the blanks :-), and you can succeed one step further in making you Joomla site Search Engine Optimized.

Just a short update from my other private blog….

I have made an e-Book of 22 pages covering the same aspects of making Joomla Search Engine optimized.

This is my first e-Book, and I don’t think I will make another one pretty soon
I have to translate it into dutch also, but here is the release post.
The Little Joomla SEO Book Ready

P.s. This doesn’t mean I will stop posting here!!
There is to much to tell besides a Static Piece of work on this topic!

Last time I promised you to tell you about this great Search Engine Optimization component for Joomla.

Now I will give you the download URL in a minute….

First off, this component wasn’t made for Joomla SEO, it was made to bring your information to your visitors in a Directory kind of way.
Thus it gives your visitors (including Spiders) a great overview with excerpts from the beginning of the pages and all the titles of the pages….

Great internal linking with lots of keywords…

Here is the description of the website:
“AlphaContent is a directory of Yahoo style with an alphabetical research for item.
This directory is built with a tree structure similar to yahoo and the other major directories starting from the sections and categories of Mambo/Joomla.
Many parameters for the presentation and selection possible of the sections/categories to be or not published.
This component will be appropriate more particularly for all those which use the articles like system of cards, or those which need a classification of their items alphabetically or in the form of directory.”

Like said, it was not build to perform on Search Engine Optimization, but it has had a great effect on bringing search results to my Joomla websites.

Download and Install
Now here is the link where you can download Joomla AlphaContent 
Download the file and install it like a normal component.

The Configuration has a lot of features, I like to set my Sef component and Limit the List  Intro style to Text and 250 Characters (Keeping SEO in mind)

If you want some extra’s of this component, you can download some additional Modules, bringing further indexes.

How does it look like?
You can see the Component live, here on my Dutch site ItMentor Index or my English Joomla SEO Index

So besides giving your visitors a great kind of Sitemap / Index of Articles it brings your also good spider food…!

Next time I will look with you at bringing structure in your website that Search Engines love.

You know about Google and his sitemap function?
Yes? Then skip the first part and go to the making of….
No? Then read the first part:

Google Sitemaps

If You go over to http://www.google.com/webmasters/ there is a section called Webmaster Tools.

This is a section that will bring you lots of information about how Google has indexed your site and what you can do to improve on being found by Google.
And as I am writing this, the same kind of sitemap files are going to apply to Yahoo and live.com (msn)

To be able to submit your Joomla sitemap for Google you have to Login with your Google Account or your Gmail account.
If you don’t have a Google account yet you are able to get it as you click on the webmaster tools.

If you have your account and login, you give the url to your website and follow the procedures that confirms to Google that you are the owner of that domain.

Now you are ready for:

Create a Google Sitemap in Joomla

I told you about the Open-Sef component and hope you have this component installed and working now.

In the administration panel of Open-Sef there is a function for making the Google sitemap.
But to be able to run this great utillty, you got to have some things put in place and configure the tool.

First: create an empty file on you computer called sitemap.xml for windows user, you can do this by opening Notepad and save the file as sitemap.xml , done

Second: Upload the file you created via FTP to the root of your Joomla installation and change the permissions to 707 = read and write access for Owner and Public.

Third: Go to the administration panel of Open-Sef and configure the Google sitemap function.
In the first field put in “sitemap” without any file extension.
In the second field there should be the url of your site already in place, now empty the second field to make sure the sitemap.xml is found in the root.

Fourth: Create the sitemap via The sidebar function “Generate XML” if al is done correctly you should see the content of the XML file without any errors, now click save in the uppor right corner.
You then get a screen that states that the sitemap.xml is generated and on the bottom of that screen there is a litle line that states “Submit to Google sitemaps” don’t click this one until you told Google where to find the sitemap.

Fifth: Call you sitemap in the adress bar, do this in a separete browser window. Just use http://www.example.org/sitemap.xml (replace www.example.org with your own domain url) and you see the file that was just created.
Copy the url and place tell Google via the webmaster panel where they can find the file.

Six: Go back to your Joomla Opensef component Google sitemap and now Click ”Submit to Google sitemaps“

Now go back to you Joomla site and do whatever you want to do….
Relax and go back to the Google webmaster information panel in about 15 minutes.
You will find information of the status of your sitemap, mostly its oke, otherwise check the error it will provide the line number and the error.

Submit the sitemap every time you made changes to the content of your website.

Check in on a regular base into Google webmaster central and look at the status of you website.

Next time: A Website sitemap in Joomla to get indexed better

Now that we have the basic Joomla SEO working, it is time for you to take the next step..

Installing a Component that makes even better URL’s, the ones that read like http://www.pathos-seo.com/seo-for-your-website/ibp-seo-search-engine-optimization-software.html 
Or just http://www.pathos-seo.com/seo-for-your-website/ .

Now that is what I call user and search engine friendly, it is easy to read en has most of the keywords in the URL itself.

But how do You get your Joomla pages to read like that?
By using a Joomla SEF Component that will do that for you.
But wich one? I can name three withour going to the Joomla extension site:

• SEF Advanced (Commercial)
• ArtioSEF (Free)
• Remosef (Free)
• Open-Sef (Free)

My Choice? I tested them all, but “There can be only one” (Quote Highlander) and for me that is Open-Sef.

How to install?
Simpel, just a few easy steps:
Download Open-Sef Joomla SEF Component
Install it like a normal Component via your Administrator Panel.
Go to the component section and configure it the way You want it to work.

Change you .htaccess to work with a Third party component, it then would look probably like this:
—————————————————————————–

#  mod_rewrite in use

RewriteEngine On

#  Uncomment following line if your webserver’s URL
#  is not directly related to physical file paths.
#  Update Your Joomla/MamboDirectory (just / for root)

# RewriteBase / 

########## Begin - 3rd Party SEF Section
############# Use this section if you are using a 3rd party (Non Joomla! core) SEF extension - e.g. OpenSEF, 404_SEF, 404SEFx, SEF Advance, etc
#
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(/component/option,com) [NC,OR]   ##optional - see notes##
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (/|\.htm|\.php|\.html|/[^.]*)$  [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule (.*) index.php
#
########## End - 3rd Party SEF Section

########## Begin - Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits
## If you experience problems on your site block out the operations listed below
## This attempts to block the most common type of exploit `attempts` to Joomla!
#                             
# Block out any script trying to set a mosConfig value through the URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} mosConfig_[a-zA-Z_]{1,21}(=|\%3D) [OR]
# Block out any script trying to base64_encode crap to send via URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} base64_encode.*\(.*\) [OR]
# Block out any script that includes a <script> tag in URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (\<|%3C).*script.*(\>|%3E) [NC,OR]
# Block out any script trying to set a PHP GLOBALS variable via URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} GLOBALS(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR]
# Block out any script trying to modify a _REQUEST variable via URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _REQUEST(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})
# Send all blocked request to homepage with 403 Forbidden error!
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [F,L]
#
########## End - Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits

You can put this in a htaccess.txt, save the file upload it via FTP. and then rename is to .htaccess again.

If you have Joomla installed in a subdirectory, don’t forget to Uncomment and change the RewriteBase!

Now You are ready to Activate The Open-Sef component.

Tip! In the SEF Configuration part of Open-Sef Choose the Content URL Structure: /Category/Title/ 
This will give you a URL for Search Engines that is no more then Three clicks deep

If You get 500 or 404 Errors after activation of Open-Sef, check you .htaccess !! most of the problems are related to that file….

Next Time: Sitemaps in Joomla, how to make them and to Submit them to Google.

If we are going to make Joomla Search Engine Friendly there are some things to take into account.

Joomla Basic SEF Needs
First of all, lets see if your hosting providers runs an Apache web server, since this is the most used web server application, changes are your oké.
To find out, just look at your Joomla Administrators Menu for “System” and choose “system information” and then “PHP Info” a few lines down is says “Server API” that should say Apache.

Just stay in this screen and scroll down, to check the next thing you need, which is an active “mod_rewrite”.
You will find a section called “Apache” and there is a field in that table “Loaded Modules” the “mod_rewrite” should be there.
If not, please mail your provider to ask for activation.

This Apache module takes care of transforming you cryptic URL’s to clean URL’s.
On making this work it uses a file called .htaccess

.Htaccess and Standard Joomla SEF
In you Joomla! root directory you will find a file called htaccess.txt, this has to be renamed to .htaccess
This file and the configuration option “Search Engine friendly URLs, on the SEO tab in your global configuration is the standard SEF for Joomla!

It will give you URLs like www.example.com/1/2/25/ instead of www.example.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=1&Itemid=2

You need to get this working first before we can make the next step on our way to good Search Engine Optimization.