Joomla! SEO part 1
Joomla!day United Kingdom
Maidstone, Kent
Wilco Jansen
13/14 March 2009
What are we going to do?
SEO Basic/Workshop part 1• What is SEO?• Why would i need it?• How does it work?
SEO Workshop part 2• How to apply SEO on joomla?
What is SEO?
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It’s all about finding your site!
You are the SEO expert…
Why would I need it?
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Unless your site is top secret…
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You want to be listed when people are searching…
Why optimize for search?
More visits = more revenue
How does it work?
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Why optimize for search?
Is SEO like Voodoo?
Topics to cover
Become the Google bot …
…by understanding how it works
What does the bot look for?
• Page ranks
• Content
• Back link
• Keywords
• Meta tags
• Dead links
• RSS feeds
• Nofollow
• Sitemap
• Permalinks
• …
What a visitor sees
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What does Google see?
Imagine search engine spider's behavior as like someone reading through the
pages of a document.
A well-structured, validated XHTML page should be laid out with logical, ordered
headings and paragraphs that describes the content to the 'reader', and therefore helps it to understand the information.
Search engines love to crawl semantic mark-up
Things to look after
It’s all about the content!• Make a content plan; who, what, when, target audience etc.
• When you blog, write like you are directly speaking with that person, visualize him/her
• Use words, phrases that people search for
• Like a librarian:– Books needs labeling correctly (correct title, category and meta
tagging).
– Duplicate content is annoying.
– Put the right content in the right spot of you site.
• Learn from your visitors: use Google Analytics and Webmaster console
• Get links
1. Keep it simple
2. Structure and meaning first, presentation later
3. Know all HTML elements and attributes
4. Validate, validate, validate
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Basic rules for valid XHTML
• Each document should have a logical heading structure that starts at level 1 and doesn’t skip any levels
• Anything that visually looks like a heading should be marked up as a real heading
• The title of the document’s main content should be a level 1 heading
• There should be only one level 1 heading in each document
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Requirements for a good document structure
Title tag<head><title>Site title</title></head>
Header tags (H1/2/3)<h1>Content of biggest importance</h1>
<h2>Less important content</h2>
<h3>Least important content</h3>
Strong<strong>Bold typeface</strong>
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It’s all about the content
Images<img src=“image.png” alt=“keyword” />
Hyperlinks<a href=http://moovum.com title=“Title for this link”>Keyword in anchor text</a>
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It’s all about the content
Proper markup makes 20%-30%
of your site optimization!
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A big percentage also comes from off-site marketing
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1. Title Tags (which should be document titles or title elements, since it’s the text between the opening and closing title tags that is important, not the actual tags)
2. Keyword Density
3. Site Structure
4. Internal Links
5. Links and PageRank
6. Page Reputation
7. Anchor Text
8. Link Popularity31
Essential search engine marketing techniques
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End if SEO Part 1
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Links
• Guidelines for creating better markup http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200704/guidelines_for_creating_better_markup
• Headings, heading hierarchy, and document outlines http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200901/headings_heading_hierarchy_and_document_outlines
• Official Google Webmaster blog http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/
• Top-10 Joomla! SEO tips http://www.alledia.com/blog/joomla-1.5/top-ten-joomla-seo-improvements/
• Anthony Ferrera’s performance grader http://www.joomlaperformance.com/component/option,com_performance/Itemid,52/
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Links
Joomla! SEO part 2
Joomla!day United Kingdom
Maidstone, Kent
Wilco Jansen
13/14 March 2009
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How to apply SEO to Joomla?
A simple guide
• Basic setup• Semantic Template• Content optimization• Site optimization
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Setup SEO within Joomla!
1. SEO settings configuration
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Basic Setup
2. Turn global keyword and global site description off, Google bot does not like double content
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Semantic template
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Semantic template
Content optimization
Content
• Article title
• Article keywords
• Article description
• Article alias
• Menu title
• Menu alias
• Menu page title
Potential problems• URLs• Metadata• To many pages
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Content optimization
URLs
• Preferable human readable
• The bot searches the URL for keywords
• Try to prevent multiple URLs for the same page (use http://www.jfoobar.org/tiny-123 to prevent multiple aliases)
• Use the SEO option in Joomla
• If Joomla URLs are not enough, consider extensions who do the job (examples: sh404SEF, ArtioSEF and SEF Advanced)
• Never change URLs once published(redirect with a 301 if possible after change, see also http://www.jfoobar.org/tiny-186)
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Content optimization
Meta data
• Use them, they are there for a reason!
• Page titles are crucial…and default this is missing: some SEF extensions solve that, there are also plugins available
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To many pages
• Readmore links get indexed, worse a calendar extension could very easy also to pages indexed till the year 4000 ;-)
• Special attention– Calendars
– Photo galeries
– Ordered lists in extensions
• Check your site using the site option of Google:
site: jfoobar.org
• Prevent indexing using robots.txt
Disallow: /photogaleryDisallow: /plannerDisallow: /*.pdf$
• Google webmaster toolDashboard->Tools->Remove URL
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Content optimization]
• Speed is important, test it!
• RSS feeds generate traffic, but also link back to your site
• When using internal links, create a page per link
• Use meaningfull 404 pages
• Submit a sitemap to Google
• Configure your extensions (be aware of the indexing problem with some)
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Site optimization
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End if SEO Part 2