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Patrick Jackson www.kpsystems.com.au Twitter @partic b | Events | IT Support | Hosting | Communications | S

SEO In Joomla - Patrick Jackson (JoomlaDay Melbourne & Sydney 2010)

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Presentation from Joomla!Day Melbourne 2010 and Joomla!Day Sydney 2010 on using SEF and implementing SEO in Joomla

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Page 1: SEO In Joomla - Patrick Jackson (JoomlaDay Melbourne & Sydney 2010)

Patrick Jacksonwww.kpsystems.com.au

Twitter @partic

Web | Events | IT Support | Hosting | Communications | SEO

Page 2: SEO In Joomla - Patrick Jackson (JoomlaDay Melbourne & Sydney 2010)

SEF

•62 SEF definitions•Space Experiment Facility•staphylococcal enterotoxin F•Scanning Electron Fractograph

•Search Engine Friendly

Page 3: SEO In Joomla - Patrick Jackson (JoomlaDay Melbourne & Sydney 2010)

SEF

IngredientsHow to turn on SEF URLSUse AliasesEnter Meta Data3rd Party ComponentsThe Black Hat

Page 4: SEO In Joomla - Patrick Jackson (JoomlaDay Melbourne & Sydney 2010)

10.75% of expenditure produces 89.47% of results

Page 6: SEO In Joomla - Patrick Jackson (JoomlaDay Melbourne & Sydney 2010)

IngredientsA few assumptions I’m going to make…•Joomla site is up to date - 1.5.15 currently•You can access your files on your server using FTP, cPanel File Manager, eXtplorer, NinjaXplorer•You’ve got sufficient access privileges on your site to access the backend and Global Configuration

Page 7: SEO In Joomla - Patrick Jackson (JoomlaDay Melbourne & Sydney 2010)

Turning on SEF in Joomla• Joomla! Out of the box has dynamic URLs like index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=5&id=10

• For J1.5, you can quickly make your URLS more Search Engine Friendly

• J1.5 creates a SEF URL from the alias tags• This creates a URL like 1-about-joomla.html

• You turn on Joomla SEF URLs in Global Configuration• You can improve the default further by using .htaccess

Page 8: SEO In Joomla - Patrick Jackson (JoomlaDay Melbourne & Sydney 2010)
Page 9: SEO In Joomla - Patrick Jackson (JoomlaDay Melbourne & Sydney 2010)

Changing the SEF URL• So once you have your SEF URLs turned on, Joomla is generating them based on the Alias

Tag

• When you create a menu item or article, if you leave the alias blank, Joomla will automatically

populate it based on the Title of the item.• For standard Joomla SEF, this all happens

dynamically.

Page 10: SEO In Joomla - Patrick Jackson (JoomlaDay Melbourne & Sydney 2010)

Aliases• The alias tags in Joomla are the key to good SEF URLS• Joomla will automatically generate them from the article title, menu name or other component features such as Contact’s Name for com_contact

• Auto Generated ones can be lengthy if your title’s long• By customising your Alias tags, you’ll end up with cleaner and often shorter URLS.

• You can also focus keywords into URLS by customising your alias tags – but don’t go overboard!

• My strategy: make the URLs HUMAN friendly – and then they’re also search engine friendly.

Page 11: SEO In Joomla - Patrick Jackson (JoomlaDay Melbourne & Sydney 2010)

• When Joomla is installed, your site is instantly displaying metadata• Metadata Description– Default Joomla description• Metadata Keywords – Default list of Joomla keywords

• Change the default global values by going to Global Configuration

• Make your metadata unique for each article• Keep your keywords to around 10 – 15 maximum• Make the description and keywords for an article relate and target the article’s contents

Metadata

Page 12: SEO In Joomla - Patrick Jackson (JoomlaDay Melbourne & Sydney 2010)

3rd Party Extensions

• Components are still handy though for a few things

• sh404SEF & RSSEO let’s you improve your META tags, tidy up the URL and have multiple alias URLS.

• Xmap & RSSEO creates a dynamic Google site map

• Several other extensions are available from extensions.joomla.org

• Do your homework on them before you install them!

Page 13: SEO In Joomla - Patrick Jackson (JoomlaDay Melbourne & Sydney 2010)

Components• So you’ll then find that for a simple joomla site, you’ll now have SEF URLs up and running!

• But not everything starts working straight away!• Components will generate a SEF URL, but if the URL is not based on a component that has a SEF extension, the URL may not be as readable as it could be

• Virtuemart, Fireboard, Community Builder, SOBI, all have SEF plugins to allow their URLs to be converted, and work best with an additional 3rd Party Component

• sh404SEF Extensions on JED• sh404SEF Extensions List

Page 14: SEO In Joomla - Patrick Jackson (JoomlaDay Melbourne & Sydney 2010)

Non-www to www• Joomla or non-joomla site, people should be able to reach your site via either www.mysite.com or mysite.com

• Accessing both is fine, but Google used to treat them as 2 sites, so if you are interested in pagerank, it could have been effected.

• On your site, you can add a few simple lines to your .htaccess file that will intercept the non-www and send it off to the www

• RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite\.com$ [NC]RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

• Also use Google Webmaster Tools and set your preferred domain

• More info on the concept is at Compass Designs

Page 15: SEO In Joomla - Patrick Jackson (JoomlaDay Melbourne & Sydney 2010)

Sitelinks

•Sitelinks are automatically generated when Google thinks your site is useful.•Generates fairly easily when there’s a combination of SEF, Site map, traffic and search traffic for the site.

Page 16: SEO In Joomla - Patrick Jackson (JoomlaDay Melbourne & Sydney 2010)

Migration• When migrating an old site to Joomla, you want to keep the existing URL’s in tact, especially ones indexed on Google and other search engines.• Easily done!• Setup your SEF & sh404SEF• Create your initial SEF URL’s in sh404SEF• Go to View / Edit SEF URL’s to see the list• Click on the automatically generated URL• In the Alias list, type the old URL• Save the record• Test that URL

Page 17: SEO In Joomla - Patrick Jackson (JoomlaDay Melbourne & Sydney 2010)

Warning: Black Hat• Some extensions include backlinks to other sites, or other black hat SEO techniques!

• This can infringe on Google’s policies, and may lead to your site being blocked in Google’s search results.

• The example below is how Artio JoomSEF inserts backlinks into the Joomla Generator Tag.