Joomla SEO Blog by Pathos-Seo.com

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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As you might know, the number one factor for Search Engine Optimization is the Title Tag of you page.

But you want your page title to be short and strong, building it with one or two keywords to provide a good reference to the content of the page.
The Joomla Page title is show as the first part of your page.

The HTML Title Tag is something different, it is the text shown in your Browser Title bar and is indexed by Google and shown in the Search Results Pages.
It is contained within the titletag < title > Title description < /title > in the source code.

For Joomla this was standard the page title you provided… was… because now you have the opportunity to change just the HTML Title !!
This functionality as already a  feature of the paid SEF patch from Joomlatwork.

And now, there is a Plugin for Joomla that provides you with the following opportunity:

Change the Alias of the Title in your Joomla page and have it shown as the HTML Title…
Thus you can bring in more keywords or better crafted Titles to improve your rankings..

Here is an example Basic Optimization is the Joomla page title, but with the Plugin the Title now says “Basic Optimization for Joomla websites”.

I think you can find some pages on your website that can profit from this new Plugin JooFox Content Title

One word of caution, if you are using a SEF Component and have configured it to use the Title alias for URL rewrites, you better not use this one… because rewriting your Titles in that case changes your URL as well.
And that would be worse..

Also if you use the Paid SEF Patch (which has a great installer..) you don’t need this Plugin, as you already have that possibility.

For all Joomla websites, this should be a great opportunity to get more and better Titles for your pages, without have to change the content and URLs of you Joomla Page titles!

So here it is again, the JooFox Content Title Plugin from http://www.antoniodeluca.info/ go get it and start optimizing you Page titles…

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I found a module today bij http://www.joomlaworks.gr/ called “Ultimate Content Display” which is working great.

What is does? It can display content from sections or categories in a simple to place module position.
But the best part is, it can change the articles it shows by setting some parameters!

So why is this so exciting? Because you can now have ”fresh” content on for example your Frontpage simple by adding this module.
Think about it… you can show returning visitors articles they otherwise may have never seen.
But also you have fresh content on you homepage every time the Googlebot, Yahoo or Live robots visits…

You can have the content in a list form, or a slide / fader with time settings and many options more.
I will write an extended how-to use and copy the module on www.pathos-seo.com later next week.

You can see the module in action on the Frontpage (on the bottom of the page)  of www.pathos-seo.com where it says Random content.

The Module you can download from www.joomlaworks.gr

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If you have questions about Joomla with regards to Making Joomla Search Engine Friendly, and the next step, making it Search Engine Optimized, where can you go?

Well, you found this Blog and the website www.pathos-seo.com I hope…

But that is where you can rad all about it, with How-To’s and hopefully some great insights in improving your own website.

For getting answers to questions you might have with specific situations this is of course not a great solution.|
You want to post a question and get an answer as quick as possible…

Now you have several options to do that, main source of Joomla information is the forum at forum.joomla.org
If you have a more specific question related to SEF and SEO with Joomla your have recently got two extra specific forums to post your question:

The Joomla SEO Forum at Alledia
The Joomla SEO Forum at Joomlashack

Both Forums are great resources of getting more information in how to solve problems with your Search Engine Optimization for your Joomla website.

And yes, before you ask, I try to visit and answer Joomla SEO and SEF question on these Forums.

P.s. For the Dutch readers, you can go to SEO-SEF Google Forum on www.dutchjoomla.org

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If you run a site, you will at some point in time encounter a site outage.
That is not only with a Joomla site, it can also happen with WordPress or Drupal or any other Content Management System.

I am now talking about the fact that a complete server is down or that the Internet Connection of you Hosting Provider makes it impossible to reach your website.

No, the error I am talking about is that the connection to your database is lost…

In Joomla there is a special page that is presented to you visitors telling them there is something wrong, asking them to contact the administrator.

Now that is nice.. or isn’t it?
…ehhh how do I contact the System Administrator?

Change the Standard

Well in a standard installation you get these lines in your Global Configuration.
And most of use leave it as it is… of you take the site offline for maintenance it works just fine, so why change anything?

The second field in you Global Configuration is where you should make a little change.
Just ad a line with your email code in it like Hummerbie ( at ) Gmail (dot) com

Its even possible to change your entire offline page if you want to, but thats an whole other issue.

For now its really important that you know of your site outage before Google takes you out of the Index… and that can happen withing 48 hours if you have a really busy website.

Besides the contact information that you can easily edit into the Global configuration there is also an external service that can monitor your website for you.

Site24×7 gives you the opportunity to check you site one per hour and in case off a failed check you can get an email,sms or RSS alert.

Its free for up to 2 domains, but the paid service comes at a small price starting from $0,50 USD per month per domain..

Here is my configuration:

This is a check for the keywords in the error page.

And yes, there are reports with graphics and data to see the response times of the site.
Definitely worth a try , but just one warning… you might find out your have to talk to, or even change your hosting provider if you don’t like what you see… 

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I was looking at search-ranking-factors at SEOmoz.org and they not only have made a very good list to look for Search Engine Optimization factors.
They also have a list of negative factors and there is a top five of negative factors.

Here is the short list:

• Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots
• Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the Index
• External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites
• Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages
• Overuse of Targeted Keywords (Stuffing/Spamming)

Looking at these factors its easy to see where thing go wrong in a standard installation of Joomla (before version 1.5)

Duplicate Content 

First one is the Content similar to Duplicate or Existing in the Index:
This is because in a standard installation there are version in the standard HTML, PDF versions and print versions of each page of your website.

To prevent this, you should disable this functions in your Global Configuration under Content, disable the PDF and Print buttons.

Duplicate Title and or Meta Tags on Many Pages

All tough the Duplicate Title will not that easily happen, the Meta Tags can be a problem.  

If you use the standard Metadata fields in the Global configuration you could really have a problem with this.
These value’s are given to each page in your website…
Even if you use the separate Fields of each page to give a separate description and keywords!

You can simple check this if your site is indexed by Google, just do a search in Google like site:www.example.com and see what is in the description fields.. it might surprise you.

The best way to prevent this is to leave your Metadata fields empty and fill your page Descriptions and Keywords.
Even if you don’t wont to use that, leave all fields blank and let the search engines take the excerpts from your pages.

Overuse of Targeted Keywords (Stuffing/Spamming)

I wrote a post about this problem a while ago Joomla and Keyword stuffing and its of course related to the same problem as the one above.

The simple solution is to leave the Global Metadata fields blank.
Because Joomla will ADD the meta keywords to the list of keywords in your Global configuration.

You could install the free SEF patch from Joomlatwork.com to overcome some of these problems.

With the solutions used to prevent the above you can overcome some of the Negative Ranking Factors.
All it takes are some simple configuration changes and empty the Global Metadata fields,  so make sure you don’t let your website fall into the Top 5 factors… 

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