Top 10 Joomla SEO Tips
Written by Andrew
Thursday, 20 January 2011 07:51
SEO Search Engine Optimization may sound complicated and expensive, but there are a
number of things you can do to improve your search engine ranking that won’t have you
spending a dime or tearing your hair out.
Here are 10 easy, cheap ways to improve your SEO with Joomla.
Don't install any sample data when you set up a Joomla site.
When you launch your Joomla! Site, it’s very easy to forget to delete all the demo articles that
come with it. That will give you pages, links and newsfeeds that are irrelevant to your sites topic.
Delete your sample data and don't forget to empty your trash as well!
Your Joomla Site Name should be your site’s name!!!!!!!!!!!
There can be a temptation to cram as many keywords as possible into the "Site
Name" field. It doesn't help and when users register at your site, they get an email saying
"Welcome to Computers, Buy Computers, Cheap Computers, Bargain Computers!"
You don't want that.
Turn off your PDF links.
When I analyze Joomla! Sites, I often find PDFs ranking higher than the original pages.
Because PDF pages have no menu links, they're a dead-end. Users can't move from the PDF
to the rest of your site. So turn off those links.
Don't waste your site's link juice with lots of social bookmarking links.
Lets face it, Your visitors appreciate clean, uncluttered pages -- and so do search engines.
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Top 10 Joomla SEO Tips
Written by Andrew
Thursday, 20 January 2011 07:51
A neat trick but this can only be done on a Linux LAMP web server for those of you using
Microsoft IIS there are other solutions but we are not covering these here....
Redirect the www and non-www versions including any other domains you have that
point to your site to all point to the same place . ie. http:pcsolutions.cc redirects to
http://www.pcsolutions.cc and http://prestigecomputersolutions.com also points to
http://www.pcsolutions.cc this is also known as a
301 redirect
.
All you need to do is add this little piece of code to your .htaccess file.
Note: Replace MyDomain below with your domain name and .com with your domain
extension.
## the following Can be commented out if it causes errors.
Options FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On << you probably already have this just leave it and ad the other stuff..
# Begin 301 Redirect
## The following two lines will add the www to any MyDomain.com URL that does not have
the www already. RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^MyDomain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.MyDomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
## the following two commands are tricky and will redirect any domain that is not
MyDomain.com to www.MyDomain.com RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^.*MyDomain.com
[NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.MyDomain.com/$1 [R=301,L] # End 301 Redirect
Turn on your cache.
Search in Google and you'll see a size for each site. Smaller, faster sites are more popular
with visitors and with Google. One easy way to make your site act small and load faster is to
turn on your cache in Global Configuration.
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Top 10 Joomla SEO Tips
Written by Andrew
Thursday, 20 January 2011 07:51
Enter a full description for all your sections and categories.
These pages are great for organizing your site... and for improving Page Rank. If you organize
your sections and categories carefully, your site becomes very easy for both people and
search-engine spiders to navigate.
Less is often more
Having thousands of Joomla! pages indexed in Google isn't always a good thing, especially if
those pages don't bring value. Some components, for example, can produce lots of extra pages
that are completely worthless. One easy way to check if your site is putting garbage on Google
is to search for site:YourDomain.com. If you find pages that don't have good content, you might
want to remove them.
Empty your global configuration metadata.
I'm sure you're all big fans of Joomla!, but I'm equally sure that "Joomla! - the dynamic
portal engine and content management system" doesn't describe your site. Take it out.
Be confident.
Joomla CMS is fantastic software that allows you to easily create lots of high quality pages
that are great for your SEO. If you keep a close eye on your site and take the time to learn how
Joomla works, there's no reason why you shouldn't have top-flight search engine rankings!
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