Joomla SEO 101 Workshop
(Part 1)
Iman Biock [email protected]
Vancouver Joomla User Group
www.VanJoomla.net
Agenda: 90% Fundamentals – 10% Technical
• How Search Engines Work
• Keyword research
• Title
• URL
• Questions and answers
How Search Engines Work
• Data gathering1. Web-crawlers (Bot, Slurp, spider, …)2. Index
• Algorithm 1. Rank for SERPs2. Page Rank VS. SERP Placement/Rank
• The most sustainable strategy:
Working on 5 elements of web pages
Search Engines Fundamentals
How to find out
Google changed its strategy over
____ Times
Last year!
Google changed its strategy over
____ Times
Last year!
500
1- Title (3%)
2- URL (3%)
3- Content (10%)
4- Meta tags (3%)
5- Links (25%)
The first 50% is
“Keyword Research”
The Other 6% includes tons of other stuff such as:
Sitemap no-follow URLs
Webpage speed Tagcloud
Age of your site
File propertise/summary Template
URL Descriptions Image alt text
404 302 robots.txt
*Index-caffeine image source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/** All figures are presenter’s personal opinion and is not considered as a professional advise, you have to work with your own SEO knowledge to get any result
Keyword Research
• Listing root brands and product/service names (Realtor, Chiropractors,…)
• Brainstorming variations of product and brand related keywords (e.g. Real estate company names, chiropractic centers,… )
• Talking to clients to determine what terms they use in search
• Studying competitors’ sites • Adding geographic variations (e.g. Vancouver realtor,
Richmond Chiropractor) • Adding descriptive variations (e.g. Cash flow property
real estates listings, Low back pain treatments) • Taking all the variations and entering them into the
Google AdWords Keyword Tool, which will suggest numerous other variations
Keyword research should be the first action in any online business
Best Keywords (To start)
Niche Market Keywords• Long tail keywords (Combination of 2-4 words)• Less competitors for exact keyword (Ideally under
20,000)• More than 10,000 searches per months• Watch out for your competitor anyhow• Check if there is any Adwords for that keyword
Is it a hard keyword or not?
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-difficulty/
High conversion, less competition
Title
Create your first workbook
Use the words economically
Do not over use your keywords
The best title has 80 characters
Use the title for PEOPLE not for Google
Use Variations to cover more keywords:
• Singular vs. plural • Synonyms and acronyms
• Alternate word order • Keyword modifiers
Uniform Resource Locators (URL)
Website VS. Webpage
www.example.com example.com
Acronyms are better than long URLs
The more understandable the better
Watch out for domain age
Search Engine Friendly URL (SEF URL)
http://www.joomlaseocompany.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&i
d=1&Itemid=3
VS.
http://www.joomlaseocompany.com/joomla-seo-tips.html
If you can’t understand this URL, how Google wants to understand
Contest:
How to have SEF URLs in Joomla?
• Change global configurations
• Choose Alias based on keyword research and avoid acronyms:
• Choose Alias for all Sections and Categories
Create your first workbook
Avoid creating duplicate content
URLs can cause duplicate content, avoid using URLs like:
example.com
example.com/index.html
example.com/index.php
www.example.com
www.example.com/index.html
www.example.com/index.php
Create your first workbook