Joomla 1.6 Core SEO and Best Practices

Theo van der Zee (@theovdzee) CEO & Co-founder, FinishJoomla (@finishjoomla) Joomla!Day Greece, May 2011 Joomla 1.6 Core SEO and Best Practices

Theo van der Zee Follow me on Twitter: @theovdzee and @finishjoomla

Source: http://gs.statcounter.com/

Global Configuration Joomla 1.6 SEO Article Manager Menu Manager

Global Configuration With default ACL settings only Super Users can access Global Configuration.

Site Name Global Configuration > Site Settings Use a descriptive Site Name rather than one focussed on keywords.

Site Name Global Configuration > Site Settings When your site is offline, the Site Name will be the first thing visitors will see.

Global Configuration

Search Engine Friendly URLs Global Configuration > SEO Settings SEF URLs give a much clearer signal about the page subject than non-SEF URLs.

Search Engine Friendly URLs Global Configuration > SEO Settings http://www.example.org/index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=101 vs. http://www.example.org/index.php/pagename

Search Engine Friendly URLs Global Configuration > Site Settings “ Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Cras ornare, neque in egestas aliquam, dolor tortor vehicula enim, nec vulputate metus risus sit amet urna. Morbi turpis neque http://www.example.org/index.php/pagename vel donec sapien leo. Porttitor hendrerit consectetur quis, bibendum nec ipsum. Aliquam nec est quis neque varius ultricies.” SEF URLs create better links when the full URL is used as anchor text.

Use URL rewriting Global Configuration > SEO Settings

Use URL rewriting Global Configuration > SEO Settings Use 'Save as' in Notepad as Windows won't allow a file name to start with a dot.

Use URL rewriting Global Configuration > SEO Settings http://www.example.org/index.php/pagename vs. http://www.example.org/pagename

Add Suffix to URL Global Configuration > SEO Settings

Add Suffix to URL Global Configuration > SEO Settings http://www.example.org/pagename.html vs. http://www.example.org/pagename

Add Suffix to URL Global Configuration > SEO Settings “ We’re happy to crawl all of these file extensions. It doesn’t matter what you choose between any of those.” -- Head of Google’s Webspam team Matt Cutts Source: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dont-end-your-urls-with-exe/

Add Suffix to URL Global Configuration > SEO Settings “ [...] You may not be using HTML for that page in 20 years time, but you might want today's links to it to still be valid. The canonical way of making links to the W3C site doesn't use the extension.” Source: http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html

Unicode Aliases Global Configuration > SEO Settings

Unicode Aliases Global Configuration > SEO Settings http://www.example.org/Πώς-θα-έρθετε vs. http://www.example.org/getting-here

Unicode Aliases Global Configuration > SEO Settings Copy-pasting unicode aliases can be troublesome.

Include Site Name In Page Titles Global Configuration > SEO Settings

Include Site Name In Page Titles Global Configuration > SEO Settings Source: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#ranking-factors

Include Site Name In Page Titles Global Configuration > SEO Settings Unless seeing your brand name will increase CTR, place it in the back of your title.

Global Configuration

Site Meta Description Global Configuration > Metadata Settings

Site Meta Description Global Configuration > Metadata Settings Try keeping the length of your meta description between 150-160 characters.

Site Meta Description Global Configuration > Metadata Settings Meta description Words in the title tag and meta description are bolded based on the search query.

Site Meta Description Global Configuration > Metadata Settings “ Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don't use the description meta tag in our ranking.” -- Head of Google’s Webspam team Matt Cutts Source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

Site Meta Keywords Global Configuration > Metadata Settings

Site Meta Keywords Global Configuration > Metadata Settings -- Head of Google’s Webspam team Matt Cutts Source: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/keywords-meta-tag-in-web-search/ “ I hope this clarifies that the keywords meta tag is not something that you need to worry about, or at least not in Google.” “ [...] Google does not use the keywords meta tag in our web search”

Content Rights Global Configuration > Metadata Settings

Content Rights Global Configuration > Metadata Settings Put your content rights visually on your website, so human visitors see them as well.

Content Rights Global Configuration > Metadata Settings “ Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Cras ornare, neque in egestas aliquam, dolor tortor vehicula enim, nec vulputate metus risus sit amet urna. Morbi turpis neque http://www.example.org/pagename vel donec sapien leo. Porttitor hendrerit consectetur quis, bibendum nec ipsum. Aliquam nec est quis neque varius ultricies.” HTML is often stripped by crawlers, use absolute URLs instead to get more links.

Show Title Meta Tag Global Configuration > Metadata Settings

Show Title Meta Tag Global Configuration > Metadata Settings Don't use the title meta tag, use the actual title tag instead.

Show Author Meta Tag Global Configuration > Metadata Settings

Show Author Meta Tag Global Configuration > Metadata Settings Put the name of the author visually on your website, so human visitors see it as well.

Menu Manager

Menu Manager > Menu Items > Details The Menu Manager allows you to set a unique title per menu item. Menu Title

Menu Manager > Menu Items > Details Source: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/title-tag Menu Title

Menu Manager > Menu Items > Details Menu Title Try to keep your page titles below 70 characters to prevent them from being cut off.

Menu Manager > Menu Items > Details To regenerate the Alias after it was generated, simply clear the field and save. Alias

Menu Manager

Menu Manager > Menu Items > Page Display Options Browser Page Title Browser Page Title overrides the Menu Title as title in the browser when it is set.

Menu Manager > Menu Items > Page Display Options Page Heading Page Heading is displayed as an H1 heading when it is set.

Menu Manager > Menu Items > Page Display Options Page Heading Source: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#ranking-factors

Article Manager

Article Manager > Articles Items > Edit Article Use the article Title to make unique titles for each of your articles individually. Title

Article Manager

Article Manager > Articles Items > Metadata Options Make sure every article has an unique Meta Description. Meta Description

Questions?

@theovdzee Theo van der Zee [email_address] @finishjoomla

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Joomla 1.6 Core SEO and Best Practices

by FinishJoomla on May 31, 2011

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