Search engine optimisation (SEO) helps tune website content to improve visibility and being seen is now the key to online success. Search queries bring interested users directly to a website or service. However, the vast majority of those using search engines will not go beyond the first page of results.
There are no short cuts, especially if you use "white hat optimisation" and stay within the guidelines of how the search engines want you to build a website, which we do. Many companies use far to many keywords on each page than the guideline rule of 8-10 which is stipulated by Google, be careful here or you may fall into the "black hat" rule. Content is king, but "relevance" is also king. Content must be feature rich and relevant to the industry you are in, and SEO is more important now than ever before due to the web growing and forever expanding.
The higher you rank in a search engine's index, the more visible you will be. This means more visitors, who can be turned into paying customers. If the SEO is done well, your internet marketing adds value to your brand with more potential return of investment.
This is how I work with all of my client websites that we develop for them.
Many of the comments here including grbrains are true and correct.The title and description on your Joomla site does define the way the search engines pick up relevant content, but you need to do the SEO properly for every page for the content to be picked up quickly.
Content must be "feature rich" without duplication and the page must be "relevant."
For example, Google changes its business algorithms daily, not weekly, but daily, this is why they have a 92% of the UK market which is growing... There are many variations of what the ISP's want and do, all are guarded secrets and all we can do is learn from each other and grow the knowledge.
KEYWORD CHOICE!To get your keywords correct for every page, you need to do some market research into what "users" are searching for, the best way to do this before even touching your website is to go to Google and type in "KEYWORDS FOR GOOGLE" this will bring up Google Adwords, you don't need to create an account or anything, you will get a box which loads up in grey and you simply type in the word that you want to use as a keyword and click search, what will then happen next is a JOY to the heart... and you will go OOOOOooooo - or something like that, as it is what I did when I first saw it.
https://adwords.google.co.uk/o/Targeting/Explorer?__c=1000000000&__u=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEASGoogle will tell you how many people have searched for that keyword you have put in, and better still tell you all the other keywords that people have searched for based on that word you have put in!

THIS SHOULD BE MAKING YOU GO - YIPPEEEEEEE... Because if you know what your potential customers are putting in to Google to find your services in "real time" and today, you can then use these keywords in your website and attract the right type of person to your site!
Better to know what your customers are searching for than to not know!
DO NOT make the mistake in thinking that you know what the keywords are!! You don't, but having this knowledge freely helps you choose the correct keywords on mass, making you a more professional consultant or consultancy.JOOMLA ARTICLES from an SEO point of view.If you are looking to be thorough, do not use the SEO extensions available, not at first.. what you should be doing is putting to use the actual Joomla Meta description and keyword boxes on the right hand side of the joomla admin panel. Go to Article Manager, open an article and click on
Metadata OptionsMeta Description - Add in a sentence and add a phone number
Meta Keywords - Add in your keywords, but don't put more than 10
Several of your keywords that you have placed in the
Meta Keywords box should then be in your content in the Article. Try not to bullet point them as Google does not like this. Make the words into sentences so that Google bots and spiders can pick the words up as they go.
I hope this goes some way to helping someone out there and if we can help further,simply reply.
Good luck.