Joomla SEO Explained

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. SEO-Generator plugin automatically generates keywords and description by pulling text from the title and the content to help with SEO. It also gives you the ability to set different title configurations.

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. People know that SEO has something to do with improving your business but no one knows how it actually works to achieve this goal. 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.