Optimizing Joomla Websites
Posted on Wednesday, Sep 22, 2010 in "SEO / SEM"
Joomla is one of the most popular content management systems available on the internet. It is a vast system with a large amount of information such as, content, images, audio and video clips. As a result, it is important to optimize websites created in and for Joomla. There are five specific tips for optimizing a Joomla website including:
- Joomla sh404SEF
- Enable Joomla Search Engine Friendly URL’s
- Duplicate content issue
- Practice proper content writing
- Insert H1 tags
The first tip is to download and install the Joomla sh404SEF plug-in. This allows you to create your own URL’s and set meta tags and title tags. Additionally, the plug-in adds enhanced security features to protect each page. This is widely considered the best plug-in available for Joomla because it makes website extremely search engine optimized.
The second tip is to enable Joomla search engine friendly URL’s. Joomla allows its users to have advanced customization to create the website of your dreams. When using the system, keep in mind that search engine friendly URL’s are not enabled by default. You must turn them on to optimize properly. This is important for those that generate pages automatically. These usually contain a ‘?’ which is overlooked by search engine indexes.
The third tip is the duplicate content issue which is automatically generated by Joomla .PDF pages. The sh404SEF plug-in alleviates some this issue but not all. Duplicate content occurs due to print icons on every .PDF webpage. Search engines index these and recognize they are the same across many sites. The best method is to not publish these in the Joomla.
The fourth tip is to utilize proper content writing when creating a Joomla site. After enabling the search engine friendly URL’s, Joomla will create clean URL names that humans and machines can easily find. The final tip is to insert H1 tags throughout the website. This will improve the searchability, especially in Google.
Once you get these tips down pat, creating a searchable Joomla website will be a breeze. Fully implementing these tactics does take a bit of practice and finesse however. Joomla continues to be one of the top content management systems available due to the customization, functionality and scalability of the features and thus each website. Hopefully in the future they will be able to fix some of the minor issues that plague content creators.
