SEO / SEF for Joomla

Article Audience: Webmasters

The default Joomla installation comes with SEF (Search Engine Friendly) capabilities however these are not enabled. Both search engines (and probably users too) hate dynamic pages with lots of parameters example

http://www.yourcompany.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=6&Itemid=43

In this tutorial we describe specific Joomla techniques to conver the above example to this

http://www.yourcompany.com/section/category/title.html

Core SEF

Joomla default installation allows you to implement basic SEF addresses. This can be done by doing the following:

1. Using an FTP client or otherwise rename the htaccess.txt file in the root folder of the installation to .htaccess.
2. Switch on SEF urls in the Global Configuration > SEO
3. Switch on dynamic page titles, for your titles to reflect the title of your current content item.

This changes your original parameterized URLs to something like http://www.yourcompany.com/content/view/20/31/. This is much better than we had previously however, we are still quite a long way from our ideal scenario.

The sh404SEF component

The sh404SEF component is a great component for converting dynamic addresses to look like static addresses.

1. Download the component from the above page.
2. Install the component as per standard procedure via the admin backend (Installers > Components > and choose the component zip file.
3. Change your .htaccess file such that 3rd party SEF components are enabled:

########## Begin - Joomla! core SEF Section
############# Use this section if using ONLY Joomla! core SEF
## ALL (RewriteCond) lines in this section are only required if you actually
## have directories named 'content' or 'component' on your server
## If you do not have directories with these names, comment them out.
#
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(/component/option,com) [NC,OR]         ##optional - see notes##
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (/|\.htm|\.php|\.html|/[^.]*)$  [NC]
#RewriteRule ^(content/|component/) index.php
#
########## End - Joomla! core SEF Section

########## Begin - 3rd Party SEF Section
############# Use this section if you are using a 3rd party (Non Joomla! core) SEF extension - e.g. OpenSEF, 404_SEF, 404SEFx, SEF Advance, etc
#
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(/component/option,com) [NC,OR]         ##optional - see notes##
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (/|\.htm|\.php|\.html|/[^.]*)$  [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule (.*) index.php
#
########## End - 3rd Party SEF Section

1. As can be seen in the above code the core SEF have been remarked (#), and the 3rd Party SEF have been enabled.
2. Click on Components > sh404SEF > sh404SEF Configuration in the backed and enable the component. The rest of the options by default are mostly correct unless you have done any particular changes. You can investigate and set to your liking.
3. Save the configuration and browse through all pages in the your website. On each access of a non-friendly url, the component creates a new friendly URL.
4. If you don't like the addresses which have been created you can go to Components > sh404SEF > View / Edit SEF URLs and change them to your liking.
5. Always remember that you do not have to include your home URL in any of the friendly URLs. The component will do it automatically.

Joomla SiteMap

Site maps are great, once again both for users and for crawler's. The Joomap component is great component which allows you to create a Joomla site map quickly and easily from your menus. Installation and setting up only takes a couple of minutes and you get a great looking sitemap. Install the component via the normal installation, go to Components > Joomap > choose the menus which you want to get populated by the site map, you can tweak the CSS settings used to display and a number of other configurations and you're good to go. Just add a link to the component in one of your menus or anywhere you like for that matter.

Using headers H1, H2 for Titles

By default the core installation of Joomla shows the page / section / category / content item as a <td> with a CSS style for contentheading. This is not the ideal scenario for search engines. Search engines would rather see H1s, H2s etc, and the difference to the user is invisible. Therefore, to override this we have to hide each Page Title. Instead of displaying the page title, copy the title to the editor, and change the stlye to H1. And now you have an HTML header as the title. This has a drawback that your titles become static, because they are actually embedded in the content, however I think this is a small trade-off for the SEO advantage that we gain.

Comments

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Ian Buhagiar IP:88.203.97.98 | 2007-06-08 16:42:47 hi dart, Great job in putting up this website. It groups up a number of technical issues together, which when implimented correctly make all the difference in having a professional joomla site. thanks!

Maik Kaune - Great info, that did support m IP:85.179.230.140 | 2007-07-04 18:00:18 Great info, that did "support" my first guess on creating my content... The bad thing, i did this H1-H3 at the first time, and thought it was the wrong way, cause joomla had this two special Title/Alias fields and other extensions used this entries... mmh. Then i changed the whole content to this method. Bad idea ;-) Now i have to change them all over again... phew! The good thing: Now i am sure, i am doing it right. CU!!!

René - Great info. However..... IP:82.74.90.132 | 2007-07-08 21:05:29 Some of the tips in this article can be done by a mambot. This mambot changes the title that your browser shows to reflect the content on the page. It also ads content related keywords and description in your metatags. AND!!! Your titles will use H2,H3 tags :-o I know this sounds to good to be true but I have installed it on my site and it works great!!! You can check it out for yourself... www.joomladesign.info Go to a content page (one of the tutorials for example) and look at the page title :o) Btw... the mambot is called JoomSEO. I love it!!! René webmaster www.joomladesign.info

Maik Kaune - JoomSEO IP:85.179.224.221 | 2007-07-18 06:40:22 -> René Many thanks for this great info. Though i am digging deep on the extensions directory... i missed this piece of gold! I changed my current projects contents, before i read your comment... On the next project , i will set it up for sure. TIA! CU

DART Creations - JoomSEO IP:85.232.196.46 | 2007-07-18 11:14:30 Yes, it does do some of the tips mentioned in this article. But it also seems to litter the title with a whole host of keywords. Search engines (especially Google), will consider that to be keyword spamming and you might be penalised. Be careful when you use it. Remember that the best way of optimizing your site for search engines is quality content and incoming links! Other tweaks which can be done mostly manually are nowadays given little importance by search engines.

Marwen - Thanks and other tricks IP:199.243.239.6 | 2007-12-14 12:39:42 Great infos ! Thanks to all. In my case i am using ARTIOjoomsef, it can offer the same result as sh404SEF. You can change either the order of the page of the site and page name : " It is good SEO practice to put the page title first in your title tags, and then your site name. Unfortunately, by default, Joomla places the site name first before the page title. To change this, grab a copy of the file /includes/joomla.php Around line number 507, replace this: $this->_head['title'] = $title ? $GLOBALS['mosConfig_sitename'] . ' - '. $title : $GLOBALS['mosConfig_sitename']; With this: $this->_head['title'] = $title ? $title .' - '. $GLOBALS['mosConfig_sitename'] : $GLOBALS['mosConfig_sitename']; From www.chette.com http://www.chette.com/main/content/view/107/ " Thanks to all. Marwen

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