Joomla 1.5 little SEO Tips & Tricks

[juanparati]

My first little SEO Tip & Trick for Joomla is add a static text in the <title>

Open the file:
libraries/joomla/document/html/renderer/head.php

Search for the next piece of code

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$strHtml .= $tab.'<title>'.htmlspecialchars($document->getTitle()).'</title>'.$lnEnd;

Add your statict text for example:

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$strHtml .= $tab.'<title> All about Canada - '.htmlspecialchars($document->getTitle()).'</title>'.$lnEnd;

The text into the <title> tag is very important for the search engines.

If you need obtain a great search results for the word "All about Canada" I recommend your put the static text before of the $document->getTitle();

Other important thing, is don't use symbols like ":" or "$", etc for the title.

Please if you know some Joomla 1.5 SEO Tip & Trick, please post it here!

[brad]

Thanks for sharing...

Why not put tips like this on: http://docs.joomla.org ?

[betweenbrain]

Brad,

I've gone ahead and started a SEO page at http://docs.joomla.org/SEO. I'll go ahead and add this one. I'm on the hunt for more and will be adding to the doc as they're found.

[juanparati]

Search engines give a special relevance to the senteces between a "H" tag like <h1>, <h2> or <h3>.

If you want put a "H" tag to the article titles in joomla 1.5 you need edit some files:

Open components/com_content/views/category/tmpl/blog.php

seach for this piece of code (Line 5):

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<div class="componentheading<?php echo $this->params->get('pageclass_sfx');?>">
	<?php echo $this->escape($this->params->get('page_title')); ?>
</div>

add your "H" tags between the title like this:

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<div class="componentheading<?php echo $this->params->get('pageclass_sfx');?>">
	<h1><?php echo $this->escape($this->params->get('page_title')); ?></h1>
</div>

Remember normalize the font-size of the "H" tags using css, for example

Edit your template css and add something like:

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.componentheading h1 {
  font-size: 16px;
}

[juanparati]

When you view a list of articles by category, joomla put into the page the default configuration metadescription, but perhaps we want write the category description into the metatag for SEO reasons.

For this we need open the file:
includes/application.php

Search for this piece of code in the function &getParams:

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$params->def( 'page_title'      , $title );
$params->def( 'page_description', $description );

Add this code before:

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if (strcasecmp($_GET['view'],'category')==0) {         
         $description = $database->GetOne("SELECT description FROM #__categories WHERE id={$_GET['id']}");       
}

It's ok, now the metadescription is more dynamic when you view a list of articles by category.

[betweenbrain]

I just figured this one out. Kinda nice for static sites. It can also be found at http://docs.joomla.org/SEO

Some search engines allow you to submit feeds to them for utilization in their search capabilities. Yahoo! Site Explorer http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com is one such service. This is a powerful way for sites that regularly update their content to get relevant search placement. It can also be used for simpler sites that have fairly static pages. This procedure will explain how to create feeds for pages within your site, be it static or not.

In Joomla! 1.5.3: If you are not using sections and categories for your static pages, create a generic section for these static pages, such as "website content". Create separate categories for each static page. Change your menu items from, for instance, Article Layout to Category Blog Layout. Under the advanced parameters for the menu item, make sure that the show a feed link item is set to show. Make sure the syndicate module is published. If it isn't go to the Extensions Menu, select Module Manager, select the new icon, select Syndicate and publish the module in the desired position. You can then view the site and copy the URLs for each feed to submit to each search engine.

NOTE: You should have SEF enabled for this to work well.

[juanparati]

You can improved the Joomla SEO with third party extensions.

• http://www.artio.net/

• http://www.remository.com/downloads/mam ... or-joomla/

• http://joomlaequipment.com/content/view/4/19/

• http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/sh404sef/frs/

• http://www.smartsef.org/downloads.html

[betweenbrain]

Good resources. I wonder if this has the potential to become a sticky someday.

[juanparati]

Add a site map for your Joomla with:
Joomla 1.5 Sitemap

[betweenbrain]

Good point. Thanks!

[akonews]

use : http://www.artio.net/

[betweenbrain]

Are you referring to JoomSEF?

[alledia]

Two problems with hacking the files in this way:

1) Makes it harder for non-technical people to upgrade
2) All this work and more has already been done by Artio, sh404SEF and others

[ircmaxell]

Good resources. I wonder if this has the potential to become a sticky someday.

My personal feeling is no, because it involves core hacks. You can do everything here without ever touching a single core file, so it is not necessary to hack them ( and bring about the upgrade issues that Steve talks about ).

[brad]

FYI The best place now for Tips & Tricks is: http://docs.joomla.org especially the submitting of new ones

[betweenbrain]

Brad,

Thanks for helping keep us on track. Check out http://docs.joomla.org/SEO

Matt

[brad]

Excellent.

[juanparati]

ircmaxell, please can you explain, how we can do all this SEO tricks without core hacking?

[ircmaxell]

ircmaxell, please can you explain, how we can do all this SEO tricks without core hacking?

http://developer.joomla.org/tutorials/3 ... oomla.html