SEO

  • 1&1 SEF URL's problem reloaded

    A while ago I already posted an article about problems getting SEF URL's work on 1&1-s servers and thought I know how to deal with the idiosyncrasies of 1&1's (very unprofessional) server settings. I was wrong...

  • A fool- and SEF-proof link to homepage with core Joomla multilanguage

    What? Is not that simple as place a <href="index.php">Home</a> and you're done?

    Yes and no... The Joomla routing engine is smart enough, to redirect all such above links to the default menu item in most cases. But using the core multi-language engine in Joomla 1.7+ has created a little-bit different situation. Let me explain!

  • Add a Favicon to your template

    Websites can include a small image called a Favicon that appears in your web browser generally on the left of URL field and also in the bookmarks to help visually identify a site. Many are saying that is among the few real good things coming from Redmond, since the Favicon was introduced with IE3, and initially supported only by Microsoft's browsers. But now the support for Favicons became widespread and is one of differentiating factors of a website, essential part of the general look/corporate identity.

  • Add article title to Read More links

    the competition for SERP's (Search Engine Ranking Positions) is fierce. The slightest advantage you can gain can make the difference. Good navigation is key here - and part of this is to give some extra info to your visitors of what they will see if they clicking on a given link. Adding the article title to your Read More links is a way to make this happen.

  • Category Meta Data

    One of most annoying limitation SEO wise in the Joomla versions prior to Joomla 1.6 was the inability to set directly (without use of some SEO component or a core hack) meta data information for categories. This was important especially on category blog or category list type of pages, where you have left without proper way to control the meta data added to these pages.

  • Change Your Home Page Title Tag in Joomla 3x: Tutorial

  • Convert Microsoft Word documents to clean HTML

    Have you been driven crazy by the junk code added to your articles when you, your mate, or your clients are added page content to a Joomla site by copy&pasting from Word? I'm sure the answer is YES. The huge amount of junk you can add this way to your page not only slows down considerably the site, but also can potentially destroy your design. Anyway, you can kiss goodbye the clean, uniform look you (may) wished for your page when started to build it.

  • Customize your Browser Caching for Faster Performance

    In the race to the top of Search Engine result pages - ultimately higher SERP (Search Engine Ranking Points) the site speed is an important factor. There are lots of tricks to increase a Joomla site's speed, here is one wich does not need additional code to be installed and executed, but yet is powerful an let you fine-tune your site's performance.

  • Duplicate content penalty

    In the world of dynamic sites generally, and, of course among the webmasters runing Joomla sites there is often a lot of worry about duplicate content penalties since so many different URLs can point to the same exact page.

  • Dynamic vs. Static URLs

    Joomla, as a PHP/MySQL powered solution is inserting the content into a webpage by way of a script. This type of site is considered to be dynamic. The advantage is obvious - that's why you and me have been chosen Joomla Tongue out. But what's the drawback?

  • Enable GoogleBot to fetch your JavaScript and CSS files

    Google announced recently that they’ve updated their webmaster guidelines to specifically note that blocking your CSS or JavaScript files may have a negative impact on your indexing and search rankings in Google. They are claiming, that for better understanding your site, they need to access these files too (and, probably next time they will want to take a peek in your laundry bag too...)

  • Enhance your security with .htaccess rules

    One of often overlooked security (and not only) resource for any Joomla site is under your fingertips! With each Joomla install (even from the old Mambo days) you have a file named htaccess.txt in your site's root directory. In most cases is never touched, and left as is - most weekend webmasters don't even know what is for. A few are using it to help Joomla or the specialized SEF URL builders to make those pretty SEF URL's for their site. And that's pretty easy - in most cases it's enough to rename it to .htaccess, and you are set. But there is much more power hidden there...

  • Enhanced readmore links

    The default Joomla "Read More..." link is fine... but as always is room for improvement. Especially SEO wise, but not only. How about to have a more descriptive and compelling "Read more..." link, complete with the article title for example? Ye-ye-ye, you can right now use sh404SEF for all Joomla flavors, but what if you don't have it?

  • Google Indexing '?tmpl=component&type=raw' Webpages

    When doing Search Engine Optimization tests you discover that your web pages are duplicated in the Google index. One record is correct and the other includes '?tmpl=component&type=raw' in the url. Usually panik strikes instantly... since the hype about Google's "duplicated content penalty" is still high, giving more, than 1,2 million hits, despite the fact that Google officially denied the existence of a dumb penalty for such a "duplicates", claiming that they are penalizing only copycat pages. so, it's mainly a false alarm... but since all SEO workers are living (and dying) form the confidence - or lack of confidence - of their clients, it's a problem, wich should be solved.

    But let's see first, where these links are coming from, then we will find an easy cure for the problem itself.

  • How deep linking can give you an edge in the competition for better ranking

    You knows the basics, right? Great content and a good number of incoming links are necessary for gaining the top SERP (Search Engine Ranking Points) for a particular keyword phrase. The good old way to reach this goal was to build an attractive landing page and add to it as many links as possible.

  • How to Add Meta Tag Robots in Joomla 2.5 withouth extra tools

    By default Joomla 2.5 does not add the robots meta tag in the header and you have no handy tool by default to do it in one place, unless you don't use some add-on which let you do this easily.

    But what if you prefer to do it yourself, bare-handed, without seeing even some code? You might be surprised, but in fact in Joomla 2.5 it's very easy to set up meta tag robots for your home page and content articles.

  • How to configure Joomla to open by more than one domain?

    Did you followed the advices of SEO gurus, and now you have a bunch of domain names, like mydomain.com and mydomain.org, mydomain.info and mybestdomain.net, and you want to use all of them to display your sole, well built Joomla site, but dunno how? Here's the trick you need!

  • How To Create A RSS Feed For Joomla 1.7+

    After I upgraded this site to Joomla 1.7 I wondering, how I can create a RSS feed with all entries to re-create the original functionality we had in the initial site. The problem is that Joomla 1.7 use for this purpose the "Syndication Feeds" module, which picks up the Featured Articles menu item (if any) to create a RSS feed from the currently displayed page.... This works fine - relatively - if you use the default Joomla setup, the Featured Articles menu item being your default homepage. But this isn't my case - and this isn't anymore the case of most of the sites... so I needed to find out something else.

  • How to Create SEF URL's for ChronoForms with sh404SEF (or any other SEF component)

    The sh404SEF component is a terrific tool for creating and maintaining SEF URL's for your Joomla site - and to make it more Google - and user - friendly, with one condition: to have a SEF plugin for your components already delivered to you with the sh404SEF or to find one ready-made on the web.

    Luckily most of popular components are already covered by the component itself, or there are geeks on the net (like me) publishing the needed add-ons. One of notable exceptions is the popular form component, Chronoforms.

  • How to install Joomla to GoDaddy

    Even if hosting Joomla on GoDaddy can be challenging, and anybody ever built a site on their servers will tell you to turn to some better Joomla host, many people still choose them because of the excellent price/offering ratio. Here are a few tips that will help you get Joomla running on GoDaddy with minimum fuss.

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