Pros and Cons of SEO

[freedomcoach]

Hi Everyone:

I continue to receive conflicting reports about SEO. It is obviously a big rave but there are many reputable web development professionals that say it is very hyped and sometimes bogus. I'm interested in hearing opinions here from the top Joomla people. Do you think it really makes a difference? Do you think using SEF has more upside than downside?

I tried turning on SEF on my site and it messed up my pages, modules and menus. The instructions for fixing these things are beyond my technical expertise and I feel reluctant to hire someone who can make the needed changes.

I would love to have friendlier URLs but would like an easier path to making this happen.

Sincerely,
Howard

[v2interactive]

SEO Pro: If done correctly and given time it does work
SEO Con: EVERYBODY AND THEIR MOTHER CLAIMS TO BE AN SEO GENIUS

That's all I have to say.

And FYI: YES, SEF URL's on a Joomla (or any other site for that matter) DOES and WILL help your SEO rankings for longtrail URLs.

There is a thread here you should review: http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=544&t=518655

Me and a few members debating on some SEO subjects, you should check it out.

Goodluck

[createdevelop]

I would recommend anyone reading those articles before talking to anyone about professional SEO. There are also ways you can improve your searchability without spending too much time or money, and I would say you should try them before doing anything else.

1. Links back to lots of different pages on your website
2. Links from lost of different domains, with a good "authority
3. Consistent use of your core keywords on your key pages
4. Build as much quality content as you can stand - in fact think of ways to build quality informative web pages
5. make sure you have a sitemap in XML and in HTML page form that is linked to from the front page
6. make sure you use SEF URLs and page titles, and don't duplicate page titles.
7. Try to give all your pages a unique description
8. do not duplicate content in your website or from anywhere else
9. use browser plugins like SEO4Firefox to see where your competitors are linked to, and if you can optimise your own website better.
10. Use google tools to work out how well Google views your website
11. Be patient, improving your ranking in the search engines can take months of consisten work.

[Lever]

Howard, SEO is one of those topics that some snake oil salespeople are happy to try and keep "shrouded in mystery" as if it were some form of esoteric art. It *is* an art of sorts, like graphic design, coding php or copywriting but, when you think about it, it's only words. You just need time, patience and knowledge to get to grips with it

SEO *is* important but it's not just about adding a plugin or flicking a switch and letting the site or CMS do all the "magic". You need a structured site (solid and logical information architecture) and to simply follow a few rules for on-page SEO (i.e doing the keyword/keyphrase research, getting your title, description, keywords, h1-h6, strong etc right) and doing solid off-page SEO (i.e building good links, usually through producing excellent content that people wish to share and link to, utilising social media etc.)

Turning SEF on and seeing "messed up pages" means that maybe you should have a test site to play with first. Try using XAMPP to run sites on a local machine first and, when you've mastered the art in a safe local environment (on your desktop) then you can apply that knowledge to your live site.

There's a lot to learn but you'll be in a much better position when you're way down that path

[Ace2110]

Well, as someone who handles SEO work for my own website (and no others) with some first page success....there isn't an easy answer or a magic bullet for SEO success. Simply changing the extension that you are using isn't going to give you outstanding results.

SEO can realistically be boiled down to two things, content and backlinks.

Content allows your site to be seen as an authority and gives your internal link structure a ton of value.

Backlinks show Google and other search engines that your site is seen as an authority.

[v2interactive]

SEO can realistically be boiled down to two things, content and backlinks.

Content allows your site to be seen as an authority and gives your internal link structure a ton of value.

Backlinks show Google and other search engines that your site is seen as an authority.

100% right. However, more importantly is the QUALITY of the links and the relevance to your websites subject. This is one thing people over shoot. I see many times with literally 250,000 backlinks but their PR is 2 and they're hurting on SERPs.

Think of it as dating a girl.. would you want 5 unattractive girls or 1 knock out model type girl? I'd choose the model.

[RonC]

I have a few sites I look after and have had some success in the search rankings. My method is to include a location and words or phrases that a searcher might use if they were looking for your service or product. The location is very important, especially if there are many players in your sites topic.

As for the links screwing up thing. There does seem to be an issue with cached links when SEO is enabled. A work around is to turn off site caching, for a busy site though this might not be a good solution. The screwed up links issue seems to be muddied as a lot of the problems stem from not renaming the htaccess file or not deleting the cached links after the setting has been changed. There is definitely a problem though, a site can be working as expected for days and then all of a sudden the links go wonky. Deleting the system cache seems to cure the problem, it does come back though.

[Ironside]

It's much easier to optimise a website that falls into a niche then a website that has thousands of similar competitors. There are thousands of websites giving advice on how to catch carp. There are much fewer websites giving advice on fishing for carp if you are a wheelchair user. Get my drift? SEO can be a real uphill challenge , or it can go all your own way without too much work or knowledge of search engine optimisation.

[Limor]

Obviously SEO has it's advantage. But today in a world that every one can claim they know SEO I would recommend to only go by recommendation from someone you know that can show you the success and the ROI increase that his SEOs brought him

[Ironside]

Obviously SEO has it's advantage. But today in a world that every one can claim they know SEO I would recommend to only go by recommendation from someone you know that can show you the success and the ROI increase that his SEOs brought him

totally agree, I am sick of receiving e-mails from so-called SEO experts who claim they can optimise my website so it appears at number one on Google. The fact that it already appears at number one on Google proves that everybody is jumping on the bandwagon.