Joomla 1.6 is stable and very good to start a new website on, but for Search Engine Optimization you have to set some basic parameters for optimal results.

So here is a short overview of basic Joomla 1.6 Do’and Don’t for Search Engine Optimization. Let’s start with the Do’s…

Global Configuration SEO Settings

Like the SEO Setting that you can reach via -> Global Configuration -> SEO Settings.

Joomla 1.6 SEO Settings

For Search Engene Friendly URLs should always be active to convert your article title to a clean URL.
The big difference with previous versions is that this will work even without .htaccess by adding /index.php/ into the URL!

If you don’t want that you should activate the second option Use  URL Rewriting and follow the advice given in the Exclamation mark! That means you have to change some settings on server level or start using .htaccess on an Apache Based hosting program (Most of the hosting providers use Apache)

Adds Suffix to URL means that the extension .html is added to the URL. So instead of http://www.example.org/using-joomla you get http://www.example.org/using-joomla.html

This is a small change but it gives you the benefit that people will see that this is a content page and not a category directory, so it creates a real clear endpoint.

Metadata Settings

In the Global Configuration you can also set some basic Metadescription and Keywords, but I never use that option. But keep the last two options active!

Joomla 1.6 Metadata Settings

As I mentioned you have to keep the last two options active because you want to see the following options in you articles writing panel.

Joomla 1.6 Article Metadata Settings

Use the Metadescription on every page for the best results, just write a short excerpt of the page with the keywords you want to target and make it like a small advertisment for you page. Google and other search engines can use these text just under the Title of your page and it can give you a better click through rate from the search page.

Keywords is debated because Google and Yahoo won’t use them. I do put in some main keywords, but never more than five, you don’t want to stuff that field! Stuffing will get you worse rankings…

Joomla 1.6. SEO Don’ts

With Joomla 1.6 you don’t have the previous unclear function’s like Section’s and Categories in those sections. Instead you can now have nested categories.

Joomla 1.6 Category Nesting

And although it is a good thing to have a better user experience and people can create content a lot easier, there is also a drawback.

You can now have a category in a category in a category in a category… and that can make the URL for you article very, very long as every category name will be in that URL.

For example http://demo16.cloudaccess.net/index.php/using-joomla/extensions/components/content-component

Don’t go overboard with this feature! Just do like you did before, make a small number of main categories with only one level deep extra categories so your URLs stay short! Also keep the naming off this categories short..

Keep these thing in mind and your basic is set for SEO, all that is left now is for you to create Quality Content that Google and your visitors will like :-)

Want to read more? Check out Joomla & SEO Blog.

If you have read several topics on Search Engine Optimization, you will find that the term “Keywords” is used to indicate several different items of SEO.

Like:

• Metatag keywords
• Search keywords
• Targeted keywords

And the latter is what I am going to give you some extra inside information on, and it will show you how easy it is if you really want to boost your sites ranking for your mayor keyword that you are targetting.

Optimizing your site structure

First things first… do your keyword research and find the topics related to your website main topic.

Then reorganize your site structure to reflect that relations.

So if you would create a website about, well lets say eheh… Joomla! then you know it will be very difficult to rank for the search term Joomla! itself.
But there are a lot of keywords related to Joomla, like Templates, Components, Modules, Plugins, Mambots.
See how these terms kan create a cluster of keywords?

Here is an image of elliance infographics that shows it all:

And the best part is… Joomla will actually force you in to structure it the right way, if you do you keywords research!

You see, where may people think of the rigid structure of Joomla for placing content is a bad thing, it is actually a great thing for SEO.
In Joomla you have to set up a structure in Section, Categories and Items which is pretty simple as you can read on Understanding the Joomla structure

But clustering you keywords in categories within the a section is the best keyword cluster you can create!

In a more diffecult term this is called LSI, Latent Semantical Indexing which is covered in Joomla and LSI for SEO

So if you really want your site to rock in the search engines, get your keywords together, create categories for them and start writing your content items accordingly…

Oh, one more thing… if you are going to restructure you Joomla site, make sure you 301 redirect your old URLs to the new ones!

Placing your Keywords in Joomla!

To get your keywords into your Joomla! articles you need to open the Metatags section on the left of you article writing screen:

You will most likely see a screen with lesser options, as this screen is taken from a website that allready has the Joomlatwork.com SEF Patch installed, which I highly recommend.

You will have a field called Meta Tag Keywords and that is where you place your keywords. Make sure those keywords are also in the text of the article and keep them limited to a maximum of 10.
Also be aware the Google doesn’t use these Meta keywords to index your pages but other search engines still use them.

There is a place for Keywords in your Global configuration screen, my advice… don’t use that option…

Joomla! will use that data on every article where you don’t use the Meta Data fields in your articles and thus giving the search engines the same values over and over again.

You can check if this happens with your website by searching Google with the term “site:www.example.com” ( without the ” ” and replace example.com with your own domain name)

Want to read more? Check out Joomla & SEO Blog.