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


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


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


Search Engine Friendly URLs

Global Configuration > SEO Settings

SEF URLs give a much clearer signal about the page subject than non-SEF URLs.



http://www.example.org/index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=101

vs.

http://www.example.org/index.php/pagename



“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


Use URL rewriting


Use 'Save as' in Notepad as Windows won't allow a file name to start with a dot.

Use URL rewriting


http://www.example.org/index.php/pagename

vs.

http://www.example.org/pagename

Add Suffix to URL


Add Suffix to URL


http://www.example.org/pagename.html

vs.

http://www.example.org/pagename

Add Suffix to URL


“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


“[...] 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


Unicode Aliases


http://www.example.org/Πώς-θα-έρθετε

vs.

http://www.example.org/getting-here

Unicode Aliases


Copy-pasting unicode aliases can be troublesome.

Include Site Name In Page Titles




Source: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#ranking-factors



Unless seeing your brand name will increase CTR, place it in the back of your title.


Site Meta Description

Global Configuration > Metadata Settings



Try keeping the length of your meta description between 150-160 characters.



Meta description

Words in the title tag and meta description are bolded based on the search query.



“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.”


Source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

Site Meta Keywords


Site Meta Keywords



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


Content Rights


Put your content rights visually on your website, so human visitors see them as well.

Content Rights


“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


Show Title Meta Tag


Don't use the title meta tag, use the actual title tag instead.

Show Author Meta Tag


Show Author Meta Tag


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


Source: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/title-tag

Menu Title


Menu Title

Try to keep your page titles below 70 characters to prevent them from being cut off.


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.


Page Heading

Page Heading is displayed as an H1 heading when it is set.


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 protected]

@finishjoomla

Technology

Joomla 1.6 Core SEO and Best Practices