Making Joomla Websites Search Engine Friendly
There is a lot to learn about search engine optimization. Here are just a few plugins, which help you to improve your SEO. Before going through the steps, you need to install latest version of Joomla along with proper configuration.
Standard URL of Joomla does not explain anything related to the contents of the webpage. Enabling Joomla SEF URL plays a huge role in removing this discrepancy. It takes the standard URL and modifies it to become meaningful for a general viewer. You need to check that ‘Search Engine Friendly URLs’ and ‘Use Apache mod_rewrite’ are changed to ‘Yes’ in ‘Site->Global Configuration->SEO Settings’. It is also necessary to ensured that the file ‘htaccess.txt’ of the root directory during Joomla installation is renamed to .htaccess for turning the ‘mod_rewrite’ on. Less confusing URL’s can be generated automatically after this step.
There are a few popular SEF components like sh404SEF, ARTIO JoomSEF and SEF Advance that rewrites Joomla URL too. sh404SEF is a free component that rewrites Joomla URL to a more user-friendly format. It also manages title and meta tags and works with or without .htaccess file. Support many components natively but uses also sef_ext from OpenSEF/SEF Advanced. VirtueMart, Community Builder, Sobi2, Remository and more supported natively.
There are some good plugins that help improve Joomla SEO and content metadata. JoomSEO is a Search Engine Optimizing(SEO) plugin making Joomla content more Search Engine Friendly(SEF). JoomSEO dynamically creates meta keywords, meta descriptions, changes the title on the fly, adds heading tags to content titles and more. JoomSEO is highly customizable and saves the hassle and time of manually adjusting these settings, keeping all words and descriptions relevant for the search engines, improving ranking and accessibility.
If you’re not using automated metadata plugin describe above, then you need the Missing Metadata module. This module adds a panel to the Control Panel of the Joomla Administrator interface that lists any published articles that have empty meta description or meta keyword fields. Search engines use the meta description text as the summary text for site-listings displayed in search results. Any articles that fails to include this metadata will suffer in their web presence and search engine ranking. After installation, be sure to active the module in the Module Manager > Administrator modules pane and set the position to CPanel so the module will appear properly.
Nowadays, SEO is a commonly heard term in the world of internet marketing. Search Engine Optimization helps your website to getting exposure to millions of users around the world. Therefore, the usability and benefits of this activity cannot be denied. Whether you decide to pay a company to promote your website or you choose to learn SEO on your own, search engine optimization is not optional.