Joomla SEO Blog by Pathos-Seo.com

Looking at the latest Release Candidate of Joomla, version 1.5 RC3 you will find some Differences as it comes to the SEO functions.

First off, the difference in Options in RC2

The SEO Settings in Joomla RC3

So what are the results of this settings:

With the Suffix Active

As you might notice, the last new option attach’s a .html to the URL

The URL itself is build on the basis of the menu type used:

• section-blog
• section-table
• categoryblog
• category-table

After that you will find the /section-name/ID-Number-Categorie/ID-Number-Article-Title

There is no option to reduce the length of the URL to (my favorite) /category-name/article-title.html

So there will still be a need to have an SEF Component like sh404SEF for 1.5

The Feed Option 

An Other thing that changed is the Feed option, which was placed below the SEO Options in the Global Configuration screen.
Is is know part of the Site settings.

But although there is a small text below the Syndication module, the Feed is still only the Frontpage but the Layout is better now, not just the Text without HTML.

One thing that has radically changed in Joomla 1.5 is the place where you set your standard Content Options…
It is now in the Article Management control panel under preferences.
Here you can also set if you want to publish Full text feeds, or only intros.

But what I find most troublesome, is that I can’t seem to edit the Language File anymore from within Joomla itself.
There is no edit option… so I cannot change some of the standard text that have been translated.

As for the Read More option, which is now a Plugin, there is no parameter to change the way is might read differently.

Guess we have to wait until the Stable release will be ready for download, or will there be an RC4 before that…

I still would like to have more options and parameters for SEO, but that might just be me :-)

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If you have read this Blog for a Longer period of time (or have gone through the Sitemap..:-)) you might have read about the DS Syndication Component in my post Overcoming the Joomla RSS Feed Problem

Well, there is a new version of this component since August of this year and I must say it is better then before!
Putting in multiple categories in to one Feed.
Not limited to the Frontpage any more.. choose to show HTML, Images or not in your Feed, using your special images.

You can create multiple feeds with different categories and different images for the feeds.
There is also a module that can show each of these feed images to subscribe to or just the ones you selected

Running your Feeds through Feedburner

I always like to run my Feeds via Feedburner, because they have some great options!
So for my new website a used the DS Syndication component to get two separate Feeds

And I have written a Tutorial for you on how to use the DS Syndication Component and where to find it!
You can find it on Improve you Joomla RSS Feed and if you don’t know why you should have Feeds?
Read Why Every website should have a Feed

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I was reading a post from Brain Clark on Copyblogger about the “Click Here problem” and I just had to think about Joomla.

You know the famous “Read more” line that comes up if you split your articles into an Introduction and the main part of the Article.

Reading some of the results in the post got me to change that Text on my Joomla websites..

“Here are the results:

• “Click to continue”: 8.53%
• “Continue to article”: 3.3%
• “Read more”: (-)1.8% “

Change the “Read More..” text

To have another text on your own Joomla site is not that difficult.
First Login to your Joomla Administrator Panel and select the Joomla language manager.

Then open the English file and use your Browser function “Edit” and “Search” function to find the “Read more…” line.

Now change the line to the Immortal words.. Click here to continue…, save the file and wait to see if visitors will really read more pages on your website.

Since it is a small change, it could be worth your Time to try it…

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So, your are working hard on your Titles and improving them with relevant keywords and making them attractive for users… but do you have the Internal linking also down? 

One of the lesser used options on the Joomla SEO Configuration is the option to use Dynamic Page Titles.
But using this option can also increase your Search Engine Positions, because of the fact that your link to your pages with a link filled with Keywords, that is your article title!

If your use the read more option and show your articles on the Frontpage, you should use this option, it is a simple option to activate.
Just got to your Global Configuration (make sure your configuration.php is writable at this time and set it to unwritable afterwords) and go to the SEO Tab, there your find the two Options.

The Drawbacks of using Dynamic Page Titles

When you activate this option, you might be in for a suprise… and not always a pleasant one..
Your website, and especially the front page looks very different than before!

So how did this happen? and how can you fix it?

Well, it is a difficult one to give you a simple solution, but it is easy to explain.
If you activate the option the way the page titles are used is different because it call another class from your Template CSS file, so you have to check your Template CSS and probable find a class like a.contentpagetitle that is the one to look for if you want to change the way your Titles look of they are active.

If your don’t see any change, you could have a Template that already has corrected this to match the “normal” title or your template does not use a CSS class for the Title presentation.

So for strange behavior check your template and template CSS files first!

Change the options so it matches your site, or gives you nice layout for the titles and see over a few weeks if it works out for your search engine positions, if you see no results and don’t like the layout, just uncheck the option.
Although I recommend leaving them on for a longer period, since it take a while for Google and other Search Engines to reindex your site based on your alterations.

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If you are like me, you like to have your Metatags like description and keywords filled with relevant content..

You could have Metatag generators for you website, or overviews of the content with a component like OpenSEF.
But what if you don’t use OpenSEF but sh404SEF?
In that case you could register and download the Joomla Metatag component form iJoomla.

But if you just want to see what pages still are in need of content for these Metatags.
In that case there is now a very simple but effective and easy to use modules, with two versions, one for the Joomla 1.0.x versions and for Joomla 1.5…

It is written by Dan Rahmel who also wrote two Books about Joomla!
and

And it is easy to install.

The module is installed as a normal module, but it is only for the administrator.
That is why is is listed under the Administrator part of the Modules and has to be published and positioned on the cPanel, which means that it will be visible on you administrator homepage (the first one after you login)

After publication you find the items without the Description and Keywords listed on a separate Tab on the Administrators page.

You can download the version you want from JoomlaJumpStart.com where you can even find more information on Joomla and the insights of Dan Rahmel.

There are people who will tell you that Metatags like the Description and Keywords are useless these days.. for Search Engine Optimization that is.

But try and work on writing good solid page descriptions and use just up to a maximum of 10 keywords in the keyword field.
Use the keywords you have used in the page, and in the Title and wait for the next index round of Google.

The Descriptions field mostly show up under you page title and should be written as a small advertisement to bring you the visitors you want.

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I have been running a test-site installation of the new Joomla 1.5 RC 1 to see what improvements there have been made for SEF and SEO.

There is a difference between SEF and SEO, you can read more about that on  Search Engine Friendly or already Search Engine Optimized but I will not go into that much more here, as the point of the exercise was the see what changed / improved.

First thing you notice is that the Basic URL without the SEO Option set is still the same as before.

Next  you go into your Global configuration and look up the Seo Settings…
That has changed a little, and has a new option, which is really great!

Did you see it? There is an option that says “Use mod_rewrite” ! and the best part is that is works!
So now if you don’t know how to, or can not use a .htaccess file because of provider restrictions, you can still have SEF URLs like this one..

You see there is now an index.php between your domain name and the SEF URL.

Full SEO Options

You can set both settings and use an .htaccess file to get ride of the index.php so that the full (SEF) URL looks like:

Hmm.. maybe they should call it SEF Settings? But it is a great improvement that you can use the SEF URLs without a special component.

Does that mean that we don’t have to use a SEF Component anymore?
No, they are still very valuable for several functions like URL rewrites… yes those still apply, because you want more control over the how the URL is formed.

The SEF function of RC 1 uses the Title Alias for the URL, so you can play a little with that, but that takes away a possible use of the alias for HTML Title rewrites…

Also you want to control the 404 Sef function and landing page, with Joomla 1.5 RC 1 there is good basic 404 page with the right headers, so old URLs will be removed form the search engines.

Also SEF component is able to prevent Rewriting URLs if a Components doesn’t support them and breaks with te standard URLs.

The Duplicate Metatag problem 

What you would see with the “Old” Joomla was that the Global Metadata was inserted into the HTML code together with the Article Metatags like description and keywords.

The problem seems now to be resolved, so if you now fill an article with The Metatags Description and Keywords (and you know you should) than ONLY those tags are in the source code!

From a Search Engine Optimization view, this is a very good thing… problem is that you still get the Global description on every page you don’t fill the parameters, so pleas leave the Globals empty and let the search Engines pick there own excerpts. 

You see, there is still a need for a nice Metatag generator if you have lots off pages or multiple editors.

Overall SEO conclusion for Joomla 1.5 RC 1

You have a better Content Management System than before from a Search Engine Friendly and Optimization point of view.
The basics are in Place to get any new website based on this Joomla 1.5 version to get better results, just by activating the SEO Settings on a bare minimum of SEF URLs.

Its a very big improvement that it can work without the .htaccess files that so many people are struggling with, so that every website can have nice URLs to work with, so set that configuration option to ON.

As I will do some more testing, expect more post on these and other items, but please be patient, as I want to Inform you based on experiences, and time is limited..

So if you want to be up-to-date, and you liked the post, use the RSS Feed to keep up..

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