Search Engine Optimisation for Joomla Websites
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Chris Diprose June 13, 2007
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Chris Diprose |
My name is Chris Diprose and I am the Manager of Web Design Melbourne
firm Kanga Internet. I have been an active member of the Joomla
Community for several years and have an established business based upon
Joomla Development in Melbourne, Australia. |
Chris Diprose
has written 1 articles for WebKnowHow. |
View all articles by Chris Diprose... |
My name is Chris Diprose and I am the Manager of Web Design Melbourne
firm Kanga Internet. I have been an active member of the Joomla
Community for several years and have an established business based upon
Joomla Development in Melbourne, Australia. My main focus is Search
Engine Optimisation for Joomla Content Management System.
This article focuses on the first few steps in the Web Development
and Design of a decent search optimised website in Joomla. Okay lets
get into it. Once I have setup the standard Joomla installation there
are a few component types that are mandatory to install and I believe
these to be:- a sitemap component and a SEF URL changing component.
These are by far the most important components to have on any Joomla
Installation.
What is a SEF URL changing component and how does it relate to Web
Design in Joomla? SEF stands for Search Engine Friendly and a normal
installation of Joomla has a URL like this:
index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5&Itemid=6
When it comes to search engines they are really smart in many ways
but the normal Joomla URL describes nothing about the web page and its
contents and so they really do dislike it in many ways. It is what I
call, Search Optimisation Stunted (SOS). I like this term because it
describes exactly what it needs; some help! This is where a SEF URL
changing component comes into play. These types of components take the
normal Joomla URL and change it into something more meaningful to both
us and the search engines. eg: buy-blue-widgets-here.html
From my Web Design & Development experience this is the single
most important component installation you can make on a Joomla Website.
I want to detail my personal best picks. There are a few available to
us but I believe the JoomSEF component to be the best of the best when
it comes to Search Engine Friendly URL's. There is only one drawback to
choosing this component and that is a hidden advert in the code from
the original makers. Given I use this component all the time I have
taken the time to remove this component and make the whole new Patched
SEF component available for download on my web site - Joomla SEO.
So if you want to use this component then please do visit this link and
grab the latest version with these hidden adverts removed - for free of
course! Looking at the "best of the rest" of the SEF components we find
a new component (May 2007) called sh404SEF, if you search on the Joomla
extensions website you will find this one. I believe it to be strongly
based on JoomSEF; in both look, feel and functionality I have noticed
this. Another SEF friendly component for Joomla is OpenSEF. When it was
release about a year ago it was great. Since that time there have been
no updates and the project has lagged way behind. Having said that it
still does a reasonable job of converting all Joomla URL's to look nice
and friendly.
Which ever one you choose, download the component and then using the
Joomla Administration interface install the component. Then go to
Site->Global Configuration->SEO (tab) and ensure "Search Engine
Friendly URL's" is set to yes. Ensure your htaccess.txt file in the
root directory of the Joomla installation is changed to .htaccess and
follow the directives in the file in how to turn on "mod_rewrite" -
this is straight forward. Then just go to the JoomSEF component and
configuration and turn it on. Once this is done you should be
generating friendly URL's on the front end interface so you should go
and check. It's as easy as that!!
Okay so lets move on to what I consider the next most important
thing to do to your Joomla installation once the SEF component is
installed and working a Sitemap.
In my books there is really only one legitimate and decent sitemap
component and it is called Joomap. Again the standard version of this
component does not output decent XML files so I have enhanced the
Joomap component so that it produces greater XML output. You can find
the enhanced version on my website using this link Joomla SEO - Sitemap.
The installation of this component is the same as before, through the
Joomla Administration interface. With no other config after
installation we can just go straight to the component and select it.
Now we just choose the menu's we want to include in our sitemap.
Generally these are main menu and top menu. Now we just create a new
menu item and select the component to link to it, being Joomap and the
rest takes care of itself. Easy!!
One other advantage of Joomap is that it allows you to hook in to
Google Sitemaps. On the admin interface these is a Google Sitemap URL
given. All we need to do to generate a dynamic google sitemap is to
copy paste this URL into google webmaster interface and now whenever
google wants to download your whole website sitemap it gets a dynamic
version - which is significantly better than just hoping google will
find all of your pages! With this sitemap it tells google all of your
pages and where they are so it can scan them more affectively.
Okay now I have covered off the first two steps in Search Engine
Optimisation for the Joomla Content Management System. These are the
first two steps every Web Designer and Developer should take when they
want to Search Optimise Joomla. Until the next article you can gain
more Web Design hints and tips on my website.
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