Optimization

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.

Web and Search – How to Optimize your pages

Filed Under: SEO

I wrote my last post some weeks ago here, and know its time to get back to speed with the articles about Search Engines and future and current search options through all engines.

Search Engine Ranking factors

Here is a short recap of the things that you should have in place for your current Search Engine Optimization, it really is just a recap of the Search Engine factors by SEOmoz (if you haven't read that one? GO There! now? Please…?)

Keyword use in Title Tag
Anchor text of inbound links
Global link popularity of the site
Age of site
Link Popularity within the Site's Internal Link Structure
Topical relevance of inbound links
Links popularity of site in Topical community
Keyword use in body text
Global Link Popularity of Linking Site
Topical Relationship of Linking Page

There are some more factors to consider, which you can read from the link above.

My most recent website building project however showed my that the “Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords (Topic Analysis)”

was one of the most valid actions done to get very good rankings for the keywords targeted….

One page was already in a top position with an 8.5 million competition on Google after just two Weeks, point here was that the page did not have any content yet…..
It was in the right place and had a good Title tag and Metadescription…thats was it…
The site however was build with Joomla and I build it with the How Joomla helps with LSI in mind.

Which however shows very clearly that you should build a website with Search Engine Optimization and a relevant site Structure for helping your visitors in place.
That means that you really should have your keywords research done before even thinking about starting to build the new site!

Finding Your Niche Competitors and Authority Sites

Filed Under: Joomla Seo, Search Engine, SEO Optimization

Last time you could read about finding related keywords to incorporate in your website, know there is a nice tool to find the websites to link to…

Why Links out? Because it shows the search engines where to position your website in the large scheme of topics on the Internet.
As Matt Cutts stated several times, also on the paid-links discussions, Links should be as relevant as possible and should be off benefit to your visitors.

Learning from Problogger

Reading the post from Problogger about “Graphing your Blog Connections” is tried the Tool myself.
You have to read the Getting started on the website off http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html to get it to work, but it was a pretty straight forward experience.. works great!

But as I tried some queries to see how is linking to my sites, it suddenly hit me…. this is great!
If you out in the keyword your are planning your niche in, you instantly get the mayor players in that field!

For instance I tried “Joomla SEO” (go figure..) and this is what came up.

Notice the Big Rounds, those are the Mayor players in this field!

Linking out to those site right in the middel of the biggest cirkels shows Google that your website is related to that topic.

On the site off TouchGraph your can read the following: “The TouchGraph Google Browser reveals the network of connectivity between websites, as reported by Google's database of related sites.”

And I guess this Blog is doing oke on the Topic its setup for..

Now go and try it yourself for your Keywords and find out who to link to !!
And look at there site to learn…

Working with Feedburner options to Brand your Feed

Filed Under: Optimization, Search Engine, SEO

You might have seen the test post…

Did not work out the way I planned, sorry.
I hope this one does, you see if it works once you get the feed of this post.

Some time ago I did a post on the evil part of Feed scraper sites.

So I thought I would check out some features of Feedburner to see if there was a way to post a standard image with each post, just to let people see where the post really came from.

Turns out that there is an option to include something just like that!
Under the optimize tag of your Feedburner Feed there is this thing called “Feed Image burner”.
Standard there is the Feedburner image, which makes sense, they want to promote them selfs of course, so because I am doing that already here.. I will use it for myself…

Seriously, you can link to your own image, give it Metatag description en point it to you own Blog, so I did.
I created an image 144px width and pasted the text URL to this Blog on it.
Set up the parameters, and hope it will work.

Spamming the spam sites

What I always like are favicon.ico files… did you know that every time a browser opens a URL it also looks for a favicon.ico file? Don't believe me? Check your error logs…
If you don't have one, I suggest you create one and upload it to your root directory.
Don't know how? Use this link to create a favicon from an image.
And then tell Feedburner you have one on the “~~Optimize~~” “Publicize” tab and the option “Buzzboost”.

So I am hoping that will work as well..

And I am looking for the payout of this feature on those scraper site, or will the ban my feed if it does?

P.s. is this spamming the spam-sites ?

Joomla or WordPress? Which one to Choose?

Filed Under: Joomla, Joomla Seo, Optimization, SEO, Webdesign, WordPress

Update! This post will tell you how to use WordPress and Joomla together for better SEO results. If you are looking for some ideas on how to choose between the two, you could read the Page How to choose between WordPress and Joomla!

If you look at these Opensource Content management systems, then people use them for Blogging and Building websites.

Joomla
Now Joomla with al its extensions is great for building a good solid website with all the features you want. And you can bring it to high rankings in the search eninges as well, if you start with the proper technical improvements.

Templates in Joomla make it easy to get a good layout for the site, and you can find lots of good free Joomla templates. For a good business website I suggest you look for a good commercial template based on a Table less design with external css files.

WordPress
For Blogging you cannot beat WordPress, especially if you do the right setup, making the permalinks work right the .htaccess file and set the options to /%postname%/. Creating posts and giving it the special keyword tags is really easy.

Templates for WordPress are also very easy to obtain and to implement. Besides that…Google loves WordPress Blogs

My advice?

Use them both!!
Setup your main site in Joomla! and start working on the content, create good quality content.
In a sub directory, or a subdomain, install WordPress and start blogging, using the keywords you also use for your website.

WordPress with its create SEF functions and categories will bring you traffic, this traffic reflects to your main domain.

And with the content on your main website, you work to keep your visitors captured and make them come back.

Yes, I know there is a great Component to integrate WordPress in Joomla from j-prosolution.com (Site is no longer available, but a great Premium replacement that can be Found on corePHP) and I use it also on my website www.pathos-seo.com And if that is not enough, they even use it for the news via blogs on http://www.joomla.org/ !!

Still I like the separate installation better, because there are more features I can use for Search Engine Marketing and Viral marketing.

In my short experience with combining them that the combination of Joomla and WordPress are a killer combination for getting High Search Engine Ranking!

Joomla Templates for SEO

Filed Under: Joomla Templates, Seo Basics

Search Engine Optimized Joomla Templates

If your are looking for Joomla templates that are already build with Search Engine Optimization in mind, this website of http://www.joomlashack.com/ is one of the best places to start.

And a good Search Engine Optimized Template is really one of the key factors in your quest for Good Ranking in the Search Engines.
If the site is ready to be read by search engines without any difficulties, your are already half way there.
Don't forget the other technical stuff you need to do, but that is on another part of this website.

SEO Optimized Templates

Here is one I really like Element Template which has some CSS style options already build in:

Optimized for Search Engines
Display Font Changes for Bigger or smaller text
Possible Fixed or Fluid width change
RSS Feed icon instead of the Old RSS Syndication images
Validation for W3C XHTML 1.0
Validation for W3C CSS

Why Validation matters

The last two may sound a bit strange to you, but for the best performance in loading time of your website W3C validation makes the pages load faster.
This is because of the fact that Spiders like Googlebot and Inktomi slurp can read the code faster and can easily find the Real Content on your page.

But that is from my point of view, as I focus on real SEO for Joomla sites.

The templates you will find at Joomlashack also stand out because of there easy customization and visitors appeal.
And that is also Important…..

Visitors Appeal

The longer visitors stay and read and roam your site…. because if they really like your website and its layout, the better you will rank in Google.

Google also tracks the time and number of pages you visit after a search.
The longer you stay on that site, the more relevant it must be for you!
That is one of the factors Google takes into account in his ranking.

So You should try to do is build a website that is, af course loaded with good content, but with a Search Engine Optimized Template that is attractive to visitors.

If you want visitors, build your site and check out the Joomla Templates over on http://www.joomlashack.com/

P.S.

If your want a Special Custom Build Joomla Template or Your old website Layout converted for your own very special website, they can do that for you as well.

P.P.S

They have some fine Joomla tutorials also!

What is the right term? optimisation, optimization, optimalization or optimalisation

Filed Under: Joomla Optimization, Joomla Seo, Search Engines

I was at a conference a few days ago, and as a follow-up you could visit a website with the presentations in a pdf format.
For me it is a lot easier to handle digital formats to store, than paperwork, so I went and downloaded them.

But as I was reading one of them concerning SEO, I read a definition of SEO that stated it means “Search Engine Optimalisation”
This one was new to me……..
The speaker is a well informed Search Engine Optimizer him self and is very good at it.
But now he got me more then a little curious.

What is the right term for what a Search Engine Optimizer does?

I did some soul searching but in the end I did run some Google queries. [Read more…] about What is the right term? optimisation, optimization, optimalization or optimalisation

Search Engine Optimization is Simple

Filed Under: Joomla, Joomla Seo, Optimization

Search Engine Optimization

What is this SEO all about?

Well, you and some other hundreds of thousands of people are wondering about the same thing.

But actually doing search engine optimization its not that difficult, it is about getting your website into the so called “organic search” results of the Search Engines, that's it!

You can have long discussions on how to do it, but the final results will be the same, getting ranked among the Top 10 Results of the keyword search you think your public will look for and then find the information you are providing!

Ok, let's read that again….
Results? That means the Search Engine Results Page.
Top 10? Most people who use Search Engines won't go further than the first page….

Silly people…they should know that you are on page 1267 of Google, so want don't they just look there?

The Most Important Part of Search Engine Optimization

Keyword you think?
This is actually the most important and hardest part of Search Engine Optimization…
Get into the mindset of the audience you want to get to your site, think like them, dress like them, eat like them, work like them, live like them, and finally Search Like Them!

If you can only manage the last part, you are on the right track!

Find those keywords that your potential visitors are looking for via Keyword tools like Google's Keyword Planner Tool. Once you found them get started by targeting them in your search engine optimization and content plan.

And If you are wondering if a Content Management System like Joomla or WordPress can do this?
I can tell you now, right here, YES they can!

Starting a Content Plan and Site Structure

Your site structure is one of the most important assets when it comes to ranking in the search engines. You site structure should reflect the topic of your website.

For example a website with WordPress as it's main topic should have at least these site topics:

WordPress Themes or WordPress Templates
WordPress Plugins
WordPress Tutorials
WordPress Blog and/or WordPress Website

For a site about Joomla! those topics could be:

Joomla Templates
Joomla Tutorials
How To Install Joomla
Joomla Components / Extensions

WordPress Website Structure

Setting those basic content structure in WordPress is done via Post Categories.

Got to Posts -> Categories and create the categories that you would like to write about on your site.

Once you have done that create a WordPress Menu (Apprearance -> Menu -> Create New menu) give your menu a name and save it. After saving you can add categories to it in a way you like and would help your visitors.

Once saved you can place is as one of the sites primary or secondary navigation menu or as a custom menu widget in your sidebar.

Joomla Website Structure

In Joomla you can do the same as mentioned before, create the categories structure for your website.

Because of the way Joomla is build it just takes more steps to have your topics menu.

Go to Content -> Category Manager -> Add New Category.

Once you set-up the categories you add them to a menu.

First create a New menu via the menu manager.

Add the categories in a way you want them to be shown on the site (Blog layout, List or Page with all categories of you choice listed).

Then publish the menu module on the location you want it to appear on the site. See blow for a finished menu example.

Creating Content for SEO

Now that you have your basic structure set-up start writing your content and keep your main topics in mind.

You can now easily place your articles in their respective categories. While creating your content also think about writing compelling articles titles and meta descriptions.

Your titles are you most powerful tools for attract visitors to you site as they will be shown in the search results pages. A good title will want the searcher to click on it to read the article you created.

A good meta description might help to get theme to read more… Just make sure you deliver or over-deliver on the topic that your articles is about.

Now you are set to grow your rankings based on your site structure and you can get some ideas for your website articles based on that structure.

Do you have any ideas on your own about the above mentioned SEO set-up? Let me know in the comments section below!

Making a faster Joomla website

Filed Under: Seo Basics

Make Your Joomla websites run faster

Any Joomla website can be made to run faster, or at least give your visitor that experience.

There are two features in Joomla that can speed up, or slow down your site.

Joomla cache!

First there is one feature in the Joomla Configuration Panel that is often overlooked and not used.
This feature is the cache mechanism that Joomla uses.

What is Cache?

Caching means that the pages that are generated by the server are stored in the cache folder.
When the page is called again, even by somebody else, the page is retrieved form this folder, without having to go to the making of the page again.
So this will provide a much faster loading of the page.
An other benefit of this is that your server load goes done, because the pages are already generated.
So what is the drawback? You need space on the server to do this.
Now it doesn't not take much space, but if you are already on your limit, don't use it.
Otherwise, test and see how much it takes, I think you will leave it on!

How to enable cache and what values to use.

The cache is enabled it the back-end configuration panel.
Just look for the cache Tab and set it to "enabled".
The time is given in seconds, standard this is 900 which corresponds to 15 minutes.

I personally think this is to limited for a standard website, for a news site its fine.
On Most of my sites I use 12 Hours, which is 43200 Seconds.

For a site that is not updated so much you can even set it to 24 hours that is 86400 second.

Enable the Module Cache

If you have the cache enabled you have turn on caching on the modules.
Go to the Modules section and then look at the published modules check if they have a caching ability and active it if they have, especially the Menu's.

Joomla Statistics

The statistics Joomla provides are very basic, but still they can slow down the loading of the pages, most certainly the first page somebody loads.
Mostly you provider will give you the opportunity to use the log files for you analyses, and this brings even more information that you need to analyse your website.

What information do you loose?
Well that is that you don't see what people what browsers they use, which Operating System and from what domains.
Also there are no statistics on the articles, but than again you probably don't have this set because it generates a lot of data.
If you need to see what people are searching for on your site, you can set this to on.
The standard setting is just for browser,OS and Domain.
So if You really need this information, leave it on.

Analyse Your Website

Filed Under: Analyse Your Website, Seo Basics

Website Statistics analysis

If you run a website, make sure you do your analysis.

Check your visitors, what they do on your website and where they come from.

This data you receive from programs like Statics counters or Log Analyzers are a Goldmine that you can reach into and make your website perform even better.

If you look at the statistics You will see the patterns that people use exploring your website.
From this, you can conclude if the structure is OK or that you should move some items around.
For instance, if you find that the visitors are always looking for contact information then you could decide to give this item a more prominent place.

If you find that your site is not found on the keywords that you optimized it for, then you know you have to go back and see what is wrong.
The other thing you might see is that people find your site on type errors in keywords.
You then should check that landing page and correct the Typo.

Another thing you should check on a regular base is the speed of the pages, many you made a mistake with an image, let's say a 2 MB BMP file instead of a 70 Kb JPG.
Also, make sure that you check your external hyperlinks from time to time if they are still working.

You have several on-line tools to check some of these things right here on this site.

Just take the time to do your analysis regularly.