Hello,

I would like to write an article on SEO tips and tricks. I’m sure my SEO techniques work well enough, but if you can improve them, please let me know. Everyone knows that the real key to good SEO after your site is properly ‘optimized’ is new content, but these are my top tips for Joomla website SEO. I hope you find it useful:

keyword research

Use Google to help you find keywords associated with your business. When you type words in the search bar, Google suggests other keywords that you could use. The Google Keyword Tool is a great resource for finding keywords for your business. It allows you to analyze a word to see how many people are searching for that word on a monthly basis in a regional area.

Personally, I think it’s better to optimize for keyword phrases rather than individual words, as people are more likely to specify their searches on ‘web designer Melbourne’ rather than just ‘web designers’.

Google prefers to show its customers more localized returns by displaying local search returns on a map in the right column. When you scroll down, the map actually hovers over the paid ads.

google places

If you don’t have a Google account, it’s worth creating one to access all the tools Google has to offer. For your account page, you can create a Google Places listing for your business. You can add business hours, payment terms and the categories you want to be found for and it’s free. Everything counts.

Browser Page Titles

Each web page must have its own unique browser page titles and must not be longer than 70 characters. Include keywords in your browser’s page title. In Joomla, the browser page title is controlled by the menu or its page/item title. If you are creating a menu item to link to a single page, you can control the browser page title by clicking Menus.

Select the link to edit

Click ‘System Parameters’ and enter the keyword-rich page title in the Page Title field.

If you are viewing an article that is in a category, the browser page title is taken from the title of the page you are viewing.

tags

Make sure each page has H1, H2, and p tags. Remember to include keywords in your page titles. When setting up a Joomla site, I prefer to use K2 to create my pages/elements and write my page titles on the page using the H1 tag. There must be only one instance of an H1 tag on the page; otherwise it looks like spam.

Photos

Each image should have an ‘alt’ and ‘title’ description so search engines know what it is. Make sure your images are optimized before uploading them to your website to ensure faster load times.

interconnection

This is easier to do once you have a few pages on your site. When writing articles, link the keywords in your text to other relevant pages, a bit like Wikipedia. This makes it much easier for people to navigate your website by having to go to the menu and search for information. Internal links are also ranked, as well as some external links to your site.

backlinks

When you’re looking for backlink sites, you really want PR1 sites. These are Page Rank 1 sites that allow you to write to their blogs or create an account where you can add a backlink. Remember that the anchor text is the most important part of the backlink as it needs to be descriptive and include your keywords. The link would probably work better if it linked directly to the page that the anchor text refers to.

Example: Web Designers Melbourne

Ideally, you want your backlink to be placed on an ‘important’ page on a well ranked site. Do not use backlink farms. Your website will take a nosedive if you do. Build backlinks slowly over time and be patient.

SEO friendly URLs in Joomla

When creating your Joomla site, it is best to use search engine friendly URLs. If your server is Apache, you will need to rename a file on your server. In the root folder find htaccess.txt and change it to .htaccess

If an .htaccess already exists, I usually delete it and rename the htaccess.txt and use it.

When you have done that, login to your Joomla website and go to:

Site/Global Settings

Make sure the ‘Site’ tab is selected and you will see the SEO settings on the right.

Search Engine Friendly URLs – Yes

Use Apache mod_rewrite – Yes

Add suffix to URLs – No

Press Save.

Now all your urls will have easy to read urls.

Articles / Items

When writing an article (or item in K2), you must fill in the ‘Metadata Information’. The description box is the short description that people see when they search for pages on Google, so write it neat and concise. The ‘Keywords’ field is self-explanatory. Add keywords and phrases separated by commas.

In the Robots field enter: ‘index, follow’

In the Author field enter: Your name and keyword. It can’t hurt.

Don’t forget the H1, H2 and alt tags when writing your article.

Site Map

When your site is ready, you need to create a sitemap.xml file. Search Google for xml sitemap builder and you’ll find a site that will help you create one of these. When complete, download the sitemap.xml file to your computer and upload it to your server. Now sign in to your Google account and click on Webmaster Tools. Add your site to your Google Webmaster Tools

Submit your sitemap to Google

The best way to submit your site to Google is not through a submission URL, but through their webmaster tools. Click ‘Diagnostics’ in the left column. Then click ‘Get as Googlebot’. Here you can add his home page and any other key pages on your site. Google will find your other pages, but it’s good to tell them about your key pages.

robots

Your site should have a robots.txt file that tells visiting search engine robots which pages to view.

This is mine as an example:

User Agent: *

Allow: /sitemap.xml

Allow: /index.php

Allow: /index.html

Allow: /index.htm

User Agent: *

Disallow: /akeeba-backups

Disallow: /cgi-bin

Do not allow: /logs

Disallow: /plugins

Disallow: /tmp

Disallow: /xmlrcpc

Disallow: /admin

Disallow: /cache

Do not allow: /editor

Disallow: /help

Disallow: /includes

Do not allow: /language

Disallow: /media

Disallow: /modules

Do not allow: /templates

Do not allow: /installation

Google analytics code

Sign in to your Google account and go to Google Analytics. Create the correct analytics code and place this code in your index.php file just before the tag. This way, you can keep track of the search terms people use when they land on your site along with a lot of other information.

Submission to many search engines

If you want to submit to many search engines, a good site to do so is http://www.addme.com. Just fill in the details and you’re done. Some submissions need to be confirmed.

Business directories

Directories can help with backlinks to your site, as well as pushing people to your site from those directories. Do a quick search of local business directories and submit today.

keyword density

The Addme website also has an excellent ‘Keyword Density’ checker. Here you can analyze your site’s keyword density and adjust your article writing according to what you want to optimize for. Your keywords should appear for 10% of the length of your article. That is, 10 instances for every 100 words. You just have to be smart in the way you write so it doesn’t sound contrived.

I think that’s it. If you have any other top SEO tips, please let me know.

Health,

Neil.