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.

Please make sure that You use your Metatag Description the right way.

Looking at Metatags, lots of people think that the metatags aren’t that important anymore, so they tend to ignore them.
Now it is a fact that, due to spamming the keyword metatag in earlier website ages, this has lost a lot off relevance for your position in the search engines.

But, and this is really a big but, this is not true for the Description Metatag!!
In fact this description tag is one of the most valuable assets you have on your page, just after the pagetitle.

Why you should use the Description Metatag 

Why indeed? Because if you look at the Search Engine Results pages, there is almost every time the Description tag content of the page displayed.
Google does sometimes give you a part of the page which it thinks is more relevant, but otherwise you get the content of the Metatag Description.

Try it yourself first, just search on your keyword and be aware of your natural selection process.
What brings you to favour your click to the page of your choice?
Most people read the title, and the content just below to see what fits their need.

Improve the Content of your Descriptions 

So what does it mean for you?
In fact it brings you some kind of free ads in the SERPs… well not really of course, but you should be able to work this.
Fill your description tags with a good description of the page, use your keyword in it.
Most off all, you should write it like a little advert, try to write it so that people who read it, are attracted to your page instead of your competitors.

Make sure however that there is the content you promised on the page you “advertised”.
You don’t want user to have a bad experience, they should be wanting to read more on your website.

P.s. You can write your Description always directly after the article, it than takes about two or three minutes to come up with a good description.
The content of the article is then still fresh in your mind…
And I still put in five to ten keywords in the Keywords Metatag that are in the page content.

Tools to check your descriptions in Joomla pages

If you have your Joomla site all ready and filled with lots of content, it is a pain to check every page for the description tag.

But help is here…. If youd use the OpenSef component, then there is a Metatag Generator build in within the SEO assistant.

If you work with an other SEF Component, you can also download the Free Metatag Generator from www.ijoomla.com

Both Component work similar, they show you the page, and the keyword and description field for thet page.
So you can see very easy where you have soem work to do.
And You can change it from within that overview as well.

Both can generate the content of the fields for you…. please don’t use this feature if you are truly working on getting the best out of your Joomla! website….
But give it a try, just to see what comes out, then you will see what I mean, it is not that bad, but you should aim for the best. 

There is even a Commercial product from JoomlaEquipment that works on the Metatags, and more.
But I am Dutch, so I always check out the free once first to see if they fit my needs

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.