I'm planning to use Joomla to develop my site. But I have concerns on SEO in Joomla. I don't know much about Joomla. Can someome tell me some good things and bad things about SEO in Joomla? Does it provide all the features required for on-page optimization, i.e. Meta tags, naming URL, alt tags, etc?
SEO in Joomla is not as difficult as many people think. Joomla has in version 1.5.x the possibility to use SEF URLs, Metatags like description and keywords functions are also build-in. Alt tags can also be used for images, but that is on every system, depending on your editor. Using the SEF patch from Joomlatwork.com you can even have your HTML Title different form the Article title and form the URL. Using a good optimized template is key to you website SEO, choose own that is coded with xhtml and css instead of tables...
There are some great components you can use. I think it's called jPromoter, one that I did some work on for a client recently and it really helps with SEO.
But, as Hummerbie says, SEO'ing Joomla isn't *that* bad but there's still room for improvement. Using SEFpatch will help. If you're just going for single-page articles then Joomla is absolutely fine, especially 1.5.x, although my knowledge of it is fairly limited as I'm mostly an old 1.0.x user and just having a 1.5.x site developed But one of the problems you may find in Joomla is an issue with multiple-page articles; as yet Joomla does not have the option to allow title & meta for individual pages so you could end up with duplicate meta and dupe titles - this *may* hamper your rankings (Google webmaster tools will pick up and report this in the content analysis of the diagnostics tool). I know this title/meta issue is being looked at but whether it comes out as a future core enhancement or an extension remains to be seen.
I have used SH404SEF, it is the best SE(O/F) component for Joomla out there and the free support for it is pretty good.
Artio Joomsef is my most used SEF component, I also alter my content component so all my page titles have h1 tags, or h2 tags if I've made my header title h1 in the template - like in the FBI site in my sig.
Joomla is really good if you really need a dyanamic database driven sites. SEO is inegrated in 1.5 and you can specify keywords right when you are creating new content.
I used to use ARTIO SEF but now use SH404SEF, it is a much better system and much easier to configure. It also comes with a handy MetaKeywords Mambot that takes some getting used to but is very good once you have.
i'm using SH404SEF too. It's also has been choosen as 'editor pick' component at extensions.joomla.org
Sef patch will help you my advice is you need extensions so here is a link of google to get you started. http://www.google.co.za/search?hl=e...=X&oi=revisions_inline&ct=unquoted-query-link
i believe u can use site name mapping in Joomla to keep your existing file names as it is, if you already have a website.
Don't forget SefAdvance from sakic.net, I tried this from 3 years in some of my joomla sites and give excellents results. It's some expensive but work really fine.
im using sh404SEF which i was not able to make work before a couple of head hitting. so far doing great on the renaming webpage titles. not so sure about the SEO though.
@ Alunsina what problems are you having - been using it a while now so maybe able to give you some pointers...
In version 1.1.15 ... In the Global Configuration you have and SEO tab that you can use for your meta tags. Also set it for dynamic titles. Also, on each article in the content section, there is a tab for meta tags for descriptions and keywords. I've found that neither google nor MSN cares THAT much about SEF URLs. But that may just be me.
Had problems with the initial installation renderring my site inaccesible to users. Renaming htaccess turned my site into a 404. Now thats fixed and everythings seems to be okay except for it not working with AdsManager Component. The SEO part Im not able to tell the result because my site is barely a month old and its not even apperaring on google yet. Damn! Maybe I need to write a couple of articles and paste it all over the net. Really a novice when it comes to SEO. I just dont understand where to insert those metatags and PR things.
Thanks everybody for the valuable comments. I think different add-on components allow the webmaster to modify the meta tags. But can you manipulate the order of the code to make the important keywords get scanned by the Googlebot first? People always say important keywords should stay to the top of the code as much as possible. In addition, can anyone name any sites which are doing well in SERP?
The order of the code is handled primarily by the templates. Try JoomlaShack and RockeTheme for SEO optimized templates. I've accidently ranked high just by using certain templates and doing articles and content. I didnt even use SEF Urls. (When I say "accidenlty" I mean I hadn't started any SEO activity.)