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Basic SEO Settings in Joomla 3.x

Filed Under: Joomla Seo

With the new Joomla 3.x version, you get a completely different Administration panel with basic SEO Settings.

Joomla! 3.x Global Configuration
Joomla! 3.x Global Configuration

Once you are logged in, go to the Global Configuration. It will open with the Site tab on which you can manage the main site setting. You will also find the SEO settings and the Metadate settings on this Tab.

Joomla Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Settings

Joomla! 3.x Search Engine Optimization Settings
Joomla! 3.x Search Engine Optimization Settings

As you can see there are no checkboxes but slider buttons. This makes it clear to what option is active and what's not.

You should always use the Search Engine Friendly URLs, so set that to on.

If you want to use URL rewriting, make sure you are on a hosting server that supports .htaccess. With that option on, you get the best results.

If you are unclear about an option and need more information, hover over the text in front of the slider buttons and you will see direct help information.

Joomla URL Rewriting Explained
Joomla URL Rewriting Explained

With the add suffix option on your get a URL suffix .html as ending part of your URL.

The last option is for getting your site title into the Page HTML title. Either Use No or After. You want the article title as the first part of your HTML title for best results, use the after option for branding purposes.

Joomla! 3.x Metadata Settings

Joomla! 3.x Metadata Settings
Joomla! 3.x Metadata Settings

The Metadate settings are also on this Site Tab.  Site Meta Description and Site Meta Keywords in a global setting has always been a point of discussion for me, I don't like it.

You are better off writing the Meta description on content items and not fill in the same date for every article from this setting. Clean it! Meta Keywords are no longer used by several Search Engines like Google.

The Author Meta Tag is good so set that to yes. Showing the Joomla! version will only help Hackers and Crackers, so set that option to No. As an administrator, you can see the version you are running once logged in.

Joomla 3.x Cache Settings

Using a Cache can really make a difference in your page load. For SEO you want your pages to load as fast as possible as it is a measurement that is used by Google.

It also gives a better visitor experience. Your page load time can determine if a visitor will open and stay on your site or not.

You can find the Cache Settings on the System Tab

Joomla! Cache Progressive Settings
Joomla! Cache Progressive Settings

You get to choose from

  • OFF – Caching disabled
  • ON – Conservative caching
  • ON – Progressive caching

Check with your hosting provider if they have a caching component active on their server. If so you want to keep this caching off as it might interfere with the server caching component.

If you run into trouble with the Progressive caching try the Conservative option. Check your speed via http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ and run some tests with different settings.
The Cache Handler is set to File, which is basic. There used to be a Database option, but that doesn't make sense.

Cache Time is something you need to think about. If you have a news based website where you post several times a day, keep it limited to your standard posting timeframe.

For me, a 24 hour period works just fine so time is set to 1440 / 60 = 24 Hours. After that, the cache is cleared and with a new visitor rebuild again.

So these are the basic SEO settings you need to get into place in Joomla 3.x. Next time: How to SEO your menu and content items.

Do It Yourself Search Engine Optimization for Your Website

Filed Under: Seo Basics

If you want your website to perform well in the search engine results, you have two options:

  • Pay a high fee to a professional search engine optimizer
  • Learn how to do it yourself for free

As you might have seen by the domain name and title, this is where you will find information for the second option, do it yourself!

I am not going to tell you that it is easy or that it is not going to cost you any money. I will tell you that if you do it the right way, you will see the benefits and with every step, you take it will get easier.

So what topics this site going to target?

SEO Topics covered

  • Basic SEO like onsite improvements,
  • SEO Tips that you can use directly on your site,
  • SEO tools that help you to take that extra step,
  • Cms information to improve their SEO capabilities,
  • SEO News if there are interesting developments,
  • and SEO Articles to give you more in-depth knowledge about certain topics.

Topics NOT covered:

  • Google Adwords because we are targeting organic results here,
  • Search engine marketing because it is such a broad subject that it would divert you from your primary focus,
  • Social networks, although we will point you to some of them when the time is ripe to do so,
  • Link Directories and Link Exchange programs, because I think they don't work for SEO anymore like they used to.

So, now we have that clear, lets start…

Do It Yourself Site Search Engine Optimization

Why Joomla, WordPress and Drupal all Fail at Search Engine Optimization

Filed Under: SEO

Yes, that is right, they all fail at Search Engine Optimization…

I have been reading several new posts about how well WordPress is doing SEO compared to Joomla! and how good Drupal is in SEO compared to WordPress and….well, you get the general idea.

it seems that every time people are defending their choice to use a certian Content management system. Which is a good thing, you can show people the reasons why you love the system(s) that you use.

We all do, we all like the system of our choice, whether it is WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, Modx, Typo3, etc,etc. They are all great open source content management systems.

The Big Three, WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal.

I have written before how Search Engine Friendly WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal can be, but they don't do SEO…, YOU do SEO…

That is right, they don't do anything else then giving you the tools to get your website ready for higher rankings and better performance in the search engines!

You are the deciding factor in how well search engine optimization is done. You and the webmaster and content writers of your website.

None of the content management systems will come up to you and say, here is a great keyword rich title for your post. None of them will provide you with the keyword rich quality content that attracts visitors and back-links.

That is all up to you.

None of these content management systems will give you the right structure and internal linking ideas for the content of your site based on relevant keywords and none of them will do that keyword research for you.

They are just what they say the are, content management systems. You can use them for building websites, for building blogs, for building community's, but they still remain content management systems.

They are the engines that drive your website and/or Blog, but you have to work with them to get a really search engine optimized website.

The deciding factor for great search engine optimization

It is up to you to get the most out of the system of your choice and you will see that you can do it!

Either with WordPress, Joomla! or Drupal, or any other system, you have the knowledge and the ideas to get better rankings for you site.

You know your system of choice and you are the engineer that knows how to fire up that engine to drive it up to the best possible spot in the search engine results pages!

So don't blame or praise a website building engine for getting search engine optimization done right, praise yourself for doing a job well done.

Building Websites with Joomla! Hagen Graf

Filed Under: Building a Joomla website, Seo Basics

I have had the pleasure of reading Hagen Graf's book, Building Websites with Joomla 1.5, no the first version of the book, which was for the RC1, but the latest one based on the Final 1.5 Joomla! release.

Note, Joomla is now on 3.6 and you can get that book from Amazon here. Joomla! 3.0 in 10 Easy Steps

As you might have guessed, I am not new to Joomla, and I have also worked with Joomla 1.5 as well.
But if you want a manual to go with Joomla 1.5 you should really get this book.

If you look at the chapters in the book, you will see a clear path to where you want to go, getting your Joomla 1,5 site installed and ready.

A Short Chapter overview

The book starts with a Chapter called Terms, Concepts, and Deliberations, and here you will read some things about the History and Changes if the different versions of Joomla!.
For me a chapter that you might want to skip though as it will bring you some knowledge on Joomla development, but does it really bring you something in terms of building knowledge? No, don't think so.
The examples on the last pages are nice to look at, just to see how different Joomla sites can evolve.

In Chapter Two you get the basic installation with XAMPP on your local pc if you want to, and some tips on how to install it on a hosting platform of your choice.

(You might want to consider using basic hosting on (l)Unix servers instead of Windows servers)
Joomla installation is not that hard, and what is described with screenshots as well pretty much covers what you need to know to get your Joomla site running.

I think it is also a good idea to put more information in this chapter on how to check and solve Read and Write access if you are on a hosting platform.


TIP. if you are done with your site, Check your System menu and you will find a Tab there that will show you what you still have to change.

In Chapters 3 till 12 that is where the real meat is!
Ranging from A tour, through Customizing Joomla, Configuration and Administration you go to the chapters that can help you best.

Chapters

  • 6 – Site Menu
  • 7 – Menus Menu
  • 8 – Content Menu (including article writing and categories)
  • 9 – Components Menu.
  • 10 – Extensions Menu
  • 11 – Tools
  • 12 – More on Extensions (with some great components and how to install and use them)
  •  

In all these chapters you get clear information on how to get more out of Joomla! site in a well written and easy to understand way.

As for his advice on SEO setting in the Global Configuration for Meta descriptions and keywords, I suggest you might want to read more on this site because here I don't agree with Hagen…

In Chapter 8 he writes about the robots field in your article, here he does not understand the field, as he mentioned you should enter the words for robots, but those go into the keywords field.

In the robots field, there should be values like, follow, index or nofollow, noindex or any other option you would like the Search Engine Robot to do with your article.

In Chapters 13 and 14, there is a lot of information on how to create your own Joomla template and how to make your site better for more visually challenged visitors.

For these and chapter 15, on Your own Components, Modules, and Plugins you really need to have some experience with HTML and PHP to go through the process described.
They are nice introductions to the subject and might interest you in reading more on these subjects.

A Website with Joomla!

In Chapter 16, Hagen takes you on a trip from Idea to realization of the website for the Winery for the Bertrand family.

Here you can read more about the whole process of building the site from a non- to a semi-technical way of getting started with a Joomla website.

This is fun reading! You see how the site grows and what decisions are to be made in the process.

Chapter 17 is just a short introduction on other templates and the appendixes are also more technical.
Appendix E, Forgot the Admin Password shows you how to fix that on a MySQL Database level.
Appendix F gives you some information on how to migrate from 1.0.x to Joomla! 1.5.x

Conclusion

This book Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5 is great for getting to know Joomla 1.5 from the ground up.
It is more than a Beginners guide, some webmasters that are used to Joomla 1.0.x will find more detailed information on the differences between Joomla 1.5 and 1.0.

Is it worth the money? I think so, you can read it as it is, or you use it as a base reference.
For me? It is definitely a book I keep close at hand for reference and on my desktop as I develop more Joomla! 1.5 websites.

Title: Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5
Author: Hagen Graf
ISBN: 978-1-847195-30-2
Publisher: Packt Publishing

Theming a Joomla site for SEO

Filed Under: Joomla Seo, Seo Basics

Theming? You mean Joomla SEO Template, right?

Wrong, I really mean Theming your Joomla site. Theming here is about the way you structure your website to show the real main topic of your website.
You do have the main topic, don't you…

Joomla SEO Theming

So let's see what you can do to improve the “Theme” of your website.

It all starts with finding the right keywords for your website, do some research on finding related topics for your main content.

Write those keywords done on a piece of paper, or in a spreadsheet.

I tend more to using a spreadsheet since I can then just copy and paste my keywords into columns an sort them very easy.

 But for other people, the choice for paper is a more valid one, since you can easily draw lines between related items.

 Theming your website is also called LSI and Joomla with it's so-called inflexible content structure is actually great for theming your site.

 Joomla SEO Structure Theming

 Theming with keywords is simple, just look at the subject of your website and think about what the main subjects of your topic are.

For example, take a look at WordPress, a free blogging platform and a simple CMS system.

For WordPress, there are three main topics, WordPress usage, WordPress Themes (templates), WordPress Plugins and WordPress widgets.

 Once you know these main subjects, you can see that a website about WordPress will need at least four menu items that will reflect the main topic.

If you go to a website about WordPress that ranks well for “WordPress” you will see the first once of course be wordpress.com and wordpress.org.

Tip: Do a search in Google for your main keyword and look at the bottom of your search results page, Google shows you “Searches related to”. Write those searches down, since those are the keywords that Google thinks are Topic related!!

 The other sites you can find on that topic do have more to do about WordPress themes since these are the most linked to site via promo-links and because most people will search that first, just like most people will search for Joomla Templates.

 Content and Menu structure

 If you have found the keywords you want to use, create a section in Joomla that will hold the categories with that topic.

For WordPress, you could create a section “WordPress” and then put categories in there like “WordPress Themes”, “WordPress Plugins”, “WordPress Widgets” and “WordPress manual”.

 You can then create a menu “WordPress” and create menu items that will show you the category content. Name those menu items just like the categories.

You are now ready to start putting content into those categories and build your website.

Search engines will recognize the structure and put you into the WordPress search results pages and other terms.

How well you will do is, of course, depending on how well you write and how competitive your market is.

But with the right Theming setup, you will notice that ranking well is much easier to do than without Joomla SEO Theming.

Setting up a Joomla 1.5 website The Case Study

Filed Under: Featured

I am currently in the process of building a new website for my own pleasure, and I thought I would tell you about to process involved in setting up a search engine optimized website with Joomla 1.5.x

You might thinks, well that should not take long… just grab a copy of the new Joomla version, install it en you are ready to got, that easy.

But that would be just a tiny little to simple… there is just more to do BEFORE you install Joomla (or any other CMS for that matter)

In the next weeks or so you can read here about how to get started once you have gotten an Idea to create a website about.
You will be reading about:

  • Domain name selection
  • Keyword research
  • Getting into the mind of your visitors
  • Setting Up a website structure that is easy to use, good for your visitors and search engines
  • Choosing a hosting company
  • Choosing your template and layout
  • Installing and fine-tuning Joomla SEO Components
  • Writing Content and what to write Search Engine Optimized content
  • Tracking visitors
  • Promoting your website

As you can see there is a lot to cover and at the end I (and maybe you to) should have a website that is doing well in the Search Engines and is also great for your visitors.

What I am nog going to tell you, is what the sites URL is, just to keep things clean in the process.
Some of the things I am going to tell you will see at the end of the serie, but by then it should not have a large effect on the visitors number.

Warning! Don't expect a high frequency of posts about this project, since some thing really taken time, however once a week I guess there should be an update on the project.

P.s. most of the things will also be applicable to a Joomla 1.0.x website.

How to Optimize your Joomla site with Keywords

Filed Under: Joomla Seo

If you have read several topics on Search Engine Optimization, you will find that the term “Keywords” is used to indicate several different items of SEO.

Like:

  • Metatag keywords
  • Search keywords
  • Targeted keywords

And the latter is what I am going to give you some extra inside information on, and it will show you how easy it is if you really want to boost your sites ranking for your mayor keyword that you are targetting.

Optimizing your site structure

First things first… do your keyword research and find the topics related to your website main topic.

Then reorganize your site structure to reflect that relations.

So if you would create a website about, well lets say eheh… Joomla! then you know it will be very difficult to rank for the search term Joomla! itself.
But there are a lot of keywords related to Joomla, like Templates, Components, Modules, Plugins, Mambots.
See how these terms kan create a cluster of keywords?

Here is an image of elliance infographics that shows it all:

keyword clustering for better rankings and SEO

And the best part is… Joomla will actually force you in to structure it the right way, if you do you keywords research!

You see, where may people think of the rigid structure of Joomla for placing content is a bad thing, it is actually a great thing for SEO.
In Joomla you have to set up a structure in Section, Categories and Items which is pretty simple as you can read on Understanding the Joomla structure

But clustering you keywords in categories within the a section is the best keyword cluster you can create!

In a more diffecult term this is called LSI, Latent Semantical Indexing which is covered in Joomla and LSI for SEO

So if you really want your site to rock in the search engines, get your keywords together, create categories for them and start writing your content items accordingly…

Oh, one more thing… if you are going to restructure you Joomla site, make sure you 301 redirect your old URLs to the new ones!

Placing your Keywords in Joomla!

To get your keywords into your Joomla! articles you need to open the Metatags section on the left of you article writing screen:

Placing Joomla Keywords

You will most likely see a screen with lesser options, as this screen is taken from a website that allready has the Joomlatwork.com SEF Patch installed, which I highly recommend.

You will have a field called Meta Tag Keywords and that is where you place your keywords. Make sure those keywords are also in the text of the article and keep them limited to a maximum of 10.
Also be aware the Google doesn't use these Meta keywords to index your pages but other search engines still use them.

There is a place for Keywords in your Global configuration screen, my advice… don't use that option…

Global Configuration Metadata Settings
Joomla! will use that data on every article where you don't use the Meta Data fields in your articles and thus giving the search engines the same values over and over again.

You can check if this happens with your website by searching Google with the term “site:www.example.com” ( without the ” ” and replace example.com with your own domain name)


So you want to know how your Joomla site is on SEO?

Filed Under: Joomla Seo

It has been a while since my latest post, but I really have been busy working on new website building projects.

So my time is already limited, because I do all this stuff on the Internet after my normal daytime job.

Why? because I like to share knowledge, get in touch with new idea's and try them to see what happens, and of course communicate with others about Joomla and SEO.(See the Blog-roll for my favorites!)

But today I found a little website that will gives you an impression on how well your are doing with your SEO efforts.

You do have some idea from your visitor counts I hope! But here is the URL to get a really nice overview of SEO Information like:

  • PageRank
  • Backlinks
  • Indexed Pages
  • Rankings
  • Social Bookmarking
  • RSS Feed counts and more

So go and check your own domain at http://www.xinureturns.com/

Below you can find a sample image of one of my websites.

Xinu Check page for SEO

O, and yes, I will try to post more with the coming weeks and months to come… most will be on Joomla 1.5 I think!