Smart Choice Sites

So you're creating your Joomla site. You're working hard to make it look good, adding in your keywords and all the right content. Now what about your visitors? To drive the most traffic possible to your site and for getting more powerful features and benefits there is some advice you just cannot ignore. Read on below to find 6 quick Joomla SEO tips that will help maximize your traffic potential.

Step 1: Turn on Search Friendly URLs

This is one of the most effective Joomla search engine optimization tips. To enable Search Friendly URLs you first must run Apache server. Then, mod_rewrite must be enabled. Your server will also need to allow .htaccess override. Next you will need to set $mosConfig_sef="1" in configuration.php. Lastly you will need to rename htaccess.txt.

Step 2: Install sh404SEF Component

To install, you will need to download the sh404SEF plug-in from siliana.com. After downloading, you can go through the straightforward configuration to finish installing.

Step 3: Easy & Clean Joomla Titles and URLs

Joomla automatically enters the entire title of your page in your URL, which can make it unnecessarily long and messy for Google results. One way to fix this is to take out stop words. You can do this using the "Title Alias" option when creating your webpage.

Step 4: Insert H1 Tags

First you will need to install the sh404SEF component, which should be no problem if you followed the earlier step. After installation, go to components > sh404SEF > sh404SEF configuration > Meta/SEO > Insert H1 Tags and select Yes. Your H1 tag should be different from your Joomla page title. It should accurately represent what is on the page.

Step 5: Create a Unique Home Page Title

Your Home page tag is quite frankly the most important element of your Joomla site's titles, and as such it should include your most important keywords. To create a Joomla home page title tag, select the sh404SEF admin. Next select ‘Meta Tags'. At the top, right-click on ‘Home Page Meta' and create your title. It should be about 10 words, give or take. Then you can create a description of the site in about 20 words. Simply save it and you're set!

Step 6: Prevent Duplicate Content

Duplicate content can prove problematic down the road in Google and other search engines. So the best advice is to prevent it! You will need to un-publish the print and PDF options in Joomla to prevent Google from systematically indexing them as separate pages. You want Google to pick up your real content pages to keep from unneeded headaches later.

By following these simple Joomla search engine optimization tips, you can increase your audience massively with no trouble at all. Of course this is really just the tip of the ice berg when it comes to this best SEO CMS, but these 6 steps will get you a long way.