SEO extensions for joomla 3. SEO myths about Joomla: where do so many misconceptions come from? Nice text plugin

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From the author: The goal of each site is visitors, that is, users who will come to its pages and get acquainted with the content. But if the site is new, if it has just been posted on a real server on the Internet, how will users know about its existence? Typically, users learn about the existence of a particular site from search engines, searching for various queries. Therefore, the next stage after website development is its promotion. In this and subsequent lessons we will talk about technical optimization of Joomla from an SEO point of view.

Formulation of the problem

I would like to note that we will not consider the theory of SEO and the actual techniques for optimizing articles. We will look at the technical activities that need to be performed on a website created using the Joomla CMS. And in this lesson we will look at SEO optimization of Joomla, using its basic capabilities. So, first of all, let's define the term SEO.

SEO is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization, which means optimization for search engines. That is, this is the implementation of certain activities on your website that will subsequently affect its ranking in search engines.

Friendly Links (CNC)

The type and structure of a site's links are very important for its ranking in a search engine. And it needs to be determined at the stages of website creation and only later - it is advisable never to change it. Especially after the site is indexed by search robots. Otherwise, when you change the type of links, they will lose their weight, since there are no more pages where these links lead. Moreover, search engines may not index correctly and consider that new links lead to duplicate pages. And this is not very good for the site’s ranking.

Therefore, if you need to change the type of links, change them before indexing the site. At the moment, friendly links are quite well understood by search engines and affect the site’s ranking in search results. Especially if the URL contains the page keyword.

When forming links, you need to take into account that the URL of a particular page should be short and concise. It should not contain various parameters that are necessary to display the page on the screen. The URL must consist of a keyword that characterizes this or that page. This includes both Cyrillic URLs (both the domain and the link itself) and URLs using transliteration. That is, the string that forms the URL is created by transliterating the keyword.

Now let's go to the test site and look at the appearance of the URL without using CNC:

As you can see the URL is quite complicated, so let's fix it. Go to the admin panel and go to the General Settings section. And in the SEO Settings category, activate the Enable SEF setting, and the links on our site will take the following form:

As you can see, the link is now much more beautiful. Next, the address now contains the line index.php, which it is also advisable to remove. Therefore, in the admin panel, we activate the URL Redirection setting, and it is necessary to rename the htaccess.txt file to .htaccess. In this case, we will see the following on the screen:

To add the .html suffix to the URL, you need to activate the Add suffix to URL setting. In this case the URL will change as follows:

Alias

Alias is very important from an SEO point of view, since it is directly responsible for the formation of friendly links. Initially, if this field is left empty, it will be created by transliterating the name of the material.

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When creating an alias you should consider that:

Each alias must be unique;

The alias must contain the page keyword;

After indexing the site, it is not advisable to change the alias, as the appearance of the URL will change.

Meta keywords and description tags

Meta keywords and description tags, although not as important as before for search engine optimization, still have an effect. Especially the description tag, which is designed to create a description of the page. This description can be displayed as a short description of the page in a search engine. True, this rule works mainly for Google and not always. Quite often, search engines show a fragment of the text of a given page as a description as the most relevant to the query. But still, Google officially recommends using the description meta tag to describe pages:

Linking pages

Cross-linking is the exchange of links on website pages. That is, when one of the pages displays links to another page. There are two types of linking: internal - when links refer to pages of one site and external - links refer to external resources.

Why is linking needed? Each page of the site has its own static weight, which directly affects its ranking in search engines. That is, the greater the static weight, the better. Some of the static weight can be transferred to other pages using links. And this part is equal to approximately 10% of the total static weight.

I would like to note that the total static weight transmitted by links does not depend on the number of links. This means that the more links there are in the material, the less weight each link conveys.

The purpose of internal linking is to redistribute static weight between site pages. Linking can be created in various ways. For example, navigation links that go to the next article:

Various modules can also act as linking. For example, breadcrumbs and the Related Materials module. In the Linked Materials module, links are defined by keywords entered in the material parameters.

Robots.txt file

This file is necessary for indexing the site by search engine robots. It directly specifies certain parameters for indexing. Here are its default contents:

User-agent: * Disallow: /administrator/ Disallow: /bin/ Disallow: /cache/ Disallow: /cli/ Disallow: /components/ Disallow: /includes/ Disallow: /installation/ Disallow: /language/ Disallow: /layouts/ Disallow: /libraries/ Disallow: /logs/ Disallow: /media/ Disallow: /modules/ Disallow: /plugins/ Disallow: /templates/ Disallow: /tmp/

User-agent: *

Disallow: /administrator/

Disallow: /bin/

Disallow: /cache/

Disallow: /cli/

Disallow: /components/

Disallow: /includes/

Disallow: /installation/

It doesn’t matter what engine your site is installed on, it is important to optimize it correctly so that search engines pay attention to it. Optimization is the right hand to the success of any project. Without such promotion, the web resource will quickly “wither” and its high-quality articles will be unnecessary if they are not formatted correctly. In this article we will look at the features of website promotion and optimization using the Joomla engine.

How to properly optimize a website using the Joomla engine

Optimization lies in the correct construction of content and the web resource itself.

Your site should have a thoughtful and convenient structure so that the site is comfortable to use for both ordinary users and search robots.

There are 200 ranking factors that you need to consider when promoting your project. The Joomla engine is good because it allows you to create a half-optimized website. Resources with this CMS system work quickly, so you don’t have to worry about page loading speed.

You need to worry about the correct promotion of the resource’s content. The fact is that standard Joomla SEO capabilities are very limited, so you will have to download additional plugins to set up proper promotion. First, let's look at the standard functions of the engine, and then move on to a review of the special extension.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-rUPVziyRY

Standard SEO setup in Joomla

By default, many resource optimization features in Joomla are disabled. Therefore, simply installing this CMS system on hosting is not enough to begin effective promotion of the resource. You need to go to the “SEO Settings” section, located in the admin panel in “Settings” in the “System” item.

The most important thing you can do for your site using standard Joomla features is the activation of CNC links. Search engines love human-readable links because they contain keywords. If you have already started publishing content, then you urgently need to change the illegible Url from a set of numbers and letters to CNC, or SEF links.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxUu-wOL7ng
The next useful feature for the site is the activation of URL redirection. This option is necessary to shorten the links that will be displayed in search engines. That is, the Joomla engine will remove the name of the main page index.html from the URL. Such a small change can have a big impact on your site's indexing. But keep in mind that in order to remove the mention of the main page in links, mod_rewrite must be running on the hosting - otherwise nothing will work. Also, you should use htaccess and web.config. That is, you will need to rename these files.

There is another Joomla setting that concerns site links - adding the html suffix to the end of the URL. In general, this option does not have much significance. It will only allow you to further shorten the page addresses. It is much more effective to use aliases in Joomla 3 - this is the Russianization of links to pages. That is, the search engine will see not the Latin alphabet, but Russian letters - this is useful for optimizing the site.

Using the engine settings, you can also specify meta data for the site as a whole. This is a very important point. If you do not enter this data, the search engine will not understand what your site is about, but will only distinguish between the topics of individual articles that have tags. Be sure to indicate Description - a description of the web resource, as well as the main keywords with which you are going to promote your Internet project. Indicate in the keywords paragraph only high-frequency queries, that is, the most viewed keywords. You can also indicate “Copyright” - indicate your authorship so that others do not copy the content, and the search engine sees that you are the author of the posts and the entire site.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKaFLyrpeEI

SEO Generator Plugin

Full optimization is impossible if you specified meta data only for the site, but did not specify it for individual pages and posts. It is due to this that you will receive an influx of traffic, and this is what quality optimization depends on. The SEO Generator plugin will help you set up tags.

On some resources, 10 or more entries are published daily. Manually entering metadata for each is too time-consuming and inconvenient. The SEO Generator plugin is exactly what you need to make this process automatic. After all, if you don’t enter tags manually through the engine and don’t install the SEO Generator plugin, then resource optimization will quickly become a disaster - search engines won’t like your site. One of the most important tags in the meta is Title.

You can configure the SEO Generator plugin so that it creates the most favorable meta description for indexing. Here is a list of settings you will need to adjust:

meta description length - optimization will not work correctly if you specify the description length to be up to 100 characters - it is better to specify from 150 to 200;
title template - this parameter will regulate the creation of the title;
separator - resource optimization will be better if the name of the web project is indicated in the search along with the title through a special separator;
title for the main page - you can configure this parameter through regular Joomla configurations;
minimum number of characters for keywords - specify at your discretion;
the stop words list is a useful option that will automatically remove stop words from the meta (you can write a list of stop words yourself);
where to get the keys from - indicate either from the title, or from the text, or from two sources at the same time.

The SEO Generator plugin can be integrated with Google Webmaster. Then resource optimization will become even easier. You can select keywords through the Google service and automatically enter them in the meta data.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI7Iz3V-sWI
Please note that although the SEO Generator plugin will help you with promotion and filling out meta information, optimization does not end there. You have yet to install a single plugin in order to achieve perfect resource optimization. Specifically, you will need to create a sitemap as well as a robot.txt file to help search engine crawlers index your pages.

Today Joomla occupies one of the leading positions among free CMS used to create personal and corporate websites. Even some large companies are developing their web presence using Joomla. This is due to a number of factors, including convenience, a huge selection of additional components, and the absence of fees for use. But, like other websites, portals created on this CMS need to be promoted in search engines to attract users and rise in search results. Website promotion on Joomla has a number of features, which we will talk about today.

Using Joomla - what you should know

Like any content management system, Joomla has a number of advantages and disadvantages. Among the undeniable advantages it is worth noting:

Platform flexibility and adaptability;
Wide selection of additional modules and plugins;
Easy to use (no need for deep knowledge of web development);
The ability to optimize Joomla for specific tasks and needs;
A huge community of developers around the world working on CMS.
It is also worth considering the disadvantages, the most significant of which are:
Ease of hacking the system;
An abundance of versions with already embedded viruses and links to third-party resources;
Joomla website optimization has a number of its own features.

By correctly using all the advantages and disadvantages, you can make a very successful project on this platform, of which there are plenty of examples on the Internet.

Joomla promotion - subtleties and nuances

In order for your website to rank first in searches, you need to take into account many factors and properly promote your Joomla website. Promotion is a serious process that should be approached very responsibly. All manipulations associated with website promotion in search engines can be divided into two large groups: internal and external optimization.

To internal optimization we include all work on SEO of a Joomla site related to bringing the site to an ideal state - as required by search engines. You can look at all the basic requirements for a web page in the sections for webmasters of a particular search engine. Let's define the main points of internal SEO Joomla optimization:

Competent, unique and useful content on the page for the user;
Writing all the necessary meta tags for each individual page of the site
The correct semantic core of keywords, collected according to all the rules of SEO Joomla;
High-quality internal linking of pages (linking with internal links);
Removing all duplicate pages, both full and partial;

External Joomla optimization is basically link building, that is, getting external links to your resource from sites with high TCI and PR indicators. This significantly improves the quality of the site for search engines, based on the logic that a high-quality site is more often referred to by satisfied users. And if you need some kind of budget to promote a Joomla site using links, then you can do internal optimization on your own.

How to properly perform SEO optimization in Joomla

Having omitted all the obvious conditions about unique and high-quality content, as well as about selecting the right keywords, we will focus on the features of SEO optimization of Joomla itself.

Due to the specifics of this particular computer, indexing the Joomla site is hampered by the presence of duplicate pages. Due to the fact that all pages are dynamic, that is, they are created only at the user’s request, their url contains many variables, which in turn leads to the appearance of copies of the same page, accessible under different addresses. This will not cause any inconvenience to the user, but the search robot will definitely find and index these pages, and your Joomla site, the indexing of which did not raise any questions, will sink into oblivion. The appearance of duplicate content can significantly lower a site’s ranking in searches, even to the point of excluding pages from the index.

If you are not a programmer and don’t know how to properly get rid of duplicates, then it would be best to find suitable SEO Joomla components that allow you to either hide duplicates from search engines or redirect the robot to the desired page by redirecting.

Among the most popular plugins in this area, it is worth noting the Joomla SEO plugin called SH404SEF. This application allows you to manage all website urls, and allows you to configure all the necessary SEO data. However, setting up this plugin is quite complicated, and it will be difficult for a beginner to understand it.

In addition to duplicate pages, optimization work includes writing all meta tags for each page. And although the CMS itself provides the ability to add basic meta tags for material categories and menu items, each individual material was deprived of this privilege. Third-party plugins were introduced to enter the necessary data, and only in the SEO settings of Joomla2.5 did it become possible to fill in the necessary meta tags.

Another important optimization factor is competent internal linking: the connection between all pages of the site using internal links. There is more than one Joomla optimization plugin available on the Internet that allows you to create a high-quality combination of internal pages, but the best way to do this is with tags assigned to all materials. For example, TorTags is one of the highest quality and well-thought-out plugins that helps organize proper linking using a tag cloud.

The blog of Semantica, a company that deals with professional website promotion (http://semantica.in/), describes in detail the intricacies of website promotion on Joomla. We recommend taking advice from experts. Surely you will find something important for yourself.

An important point - current versions of programs

By the way, an important point is the timely update of the Joomla version, because with each new release the developers improve the existing engine more and more. For example, SEO optimization of Joomla 3 is much easier than in version 1.5. This is achieved by taking into account errors and correcting bugs related to meta tags that were present in older versions of this cms.

It is also worth constantly monitoring the release of new SEO components of Joomla 3, because new developments often take into account the wishes of users and make site optimization easier for beginners. In addition to, in fact, simplifying the optimization process, all updates to plugins and components perform another function that is very relevant today - closing holes and vulnerabilities in the site.

Hackers don’t sleep, which means any bug in the Joomla or application code can be used to get to someone else’s site, or introduce their own malicious code into it. Such actions affect not only the indexing of the Joomla site, but also positions in search engine results - links to third-party resources, or infection of visitors’ computers with viruses are considered a very serious problem, and can cause serious sanctions, including the complete exclusion of project pages from search.

And finally, I would like to say: if Joomla 3 optimization is a novelty for you, and you don’t know how it’s done, it’s better to trust the professionals. Doing everything at random is more expensive for yourself, take my word for it. Of course, you can learn from your mistakes, but if the optimization is done incorrectly, the site will disappear from the search. Such an error can cost many thousands of rubles in costs and many hours of time to restore the project.

That's all the main SEO points and nuances for sites built on Joomla, the promotion of which is planned in Internet search engines. Good luck to you and your projects!

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Today, a lot depends on the correct internal optimization of a website, so you need to get the most out of this action and in the future you can count on the absence of PS filters and on the stability of promotion and earnings. Today I will briefly talk about main Joomla SEO plugins, with the help of which you can increase the behavioral factor and prevent the appearance of duplicate pages and Meta tags.

In general, there are a great many plugins for optimizing a site on Joomla, but I will talk about four of them, since they have been personally tested on version 1.5, are easy to install and configure, and work effectively without violating the requirements of search engines.

ERelated News plugin

This is a multifunctional Joomla component and it performs more than a dozen operations, so be sure to install and configure it if the ERelated News analogue does not already work. The component can:

Display “similar materials” blocks on the page, when you hover over the links of the cursor, a picture of the proposed material is shown,
Enable the display of tags at the bottom of the page when they are selected based on keywords (Figure 1),
Customize SEO to display the category, publication time, author, etc. in the block.

Using this plugin, you can increase the depth of page viewing and visitor visit time, which will increase the behavioral factor of the resource by improving navigation, while its settings are an order of magnitude higher in functionality than the built-in component of Joomla 1.5.

Nice text plugin

This component will help you change the font and layout of headings H1-H4 without fiddling with styles (Figure 2), and can also change the gradient of the heading and cast a shadow on it. Nice text is perfect for a beginner who doesn’t like to climb CSS tables too much; its only drawback is a small number of built-in fonts (18 pieces), but if desired, they can be added with the help of a programmer.

Shnodoubles plugin

This simple component from CMS fanatics will help you solve in a couple of minutes the problems that I once solved with the help of sh404sef and other crap for a week. The SEO plugin for Joomla Shnodoubles will help get rid of duplication of pages, when the same content is displayed in the results under different addresses. You can remove duplicate pages in Joomla 1.5 in a few clicks, since the component has minimalist settings and only offers to use a 301 redirect instead of a 404 error and specify an alias to which the component/content/article address will change.

The principle of operation of the plugin is as simple as a chicken egg - it redirects all duplicate pages to the main address, and by main it means the url that is in the navigation path. You won’t be able to open the page at another address, and duplication will be a thing of the past.

I wanted to write about SEO-Generator, but I remembered that I already wrote about it on the blog, so I won’t repeat myself, I’ll just say that this is also an excellent SEO plugin for Joomla and it will help defeat Meta duplicates and Title derivation for search engines.