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Well, just in case you did not know, your website's SEO in terms of
it being a site based in Joomla CMS can be really drastically affected,
both positively and negatively, depending on how it is setup. This
article is assuming the legacy Joomla 1.0x is installed and configured
properly on your website hosting. For Joomla 1.5x, the same principles
apply, but not the same steps that are being mentioned. Consult the
internet before proceeding.
The first thing that you should do to obtain SEO friendly URLs is to
make sure that they are being used correctly by Joomla. By default, the
portal creates URLS for new articles and content items; but the URLs
contain queries and symbols which may become obstacles for search
engines and other types of automatic spidering of your content. I would
choose to install an extension at this point to take care of my URLs,
and the extension that I prefer to use after trying numerous components,
modules and bots is the Artio JoomSEF Component. This program seems to
have the most features. It is a commercial application, so you likely
have to purchase it or I believe you must show an advertisement link
perhaps.
Install the component to your portal, and then make sure that you
follow the instructions after the installation has been completed. Copy
and paste the text displayed for the .htaccess file. Edit the
htaccess.txt file on your ftp, paste the code from after the
installation, save it as .htaccess; and then in your Global
Configuration area, change your settings to SEF Friendly URLs. In the
components menu in the backend, make sure that you go to the SEF
component's configuration screen and click save/apply so that you save a
configuration for your site. Now, the SEO automatic URLs should be
generated based on the specifications that you selected in the
configuration area.
Now, here comes the tricky bit - now that your website is
automatically generating URLs for your depending on the article,
content, component etc; what happens if you change for instance, a page
title or a component is moved or uninstalled? Well, if you do not
redirect the URL to the new location, it is going to show up as a bounce
on your traffic logs. The more bounces you have, the worse off your SEO
is going to be, simply because it means that potential visitors are
landing immediately on error pages and they are most likely going to be
hitting their back button sooner than you think.
But the main issue, if you are using automatic generation of URLs, is
that if you have a huge site, you cannot possibly keep track of all of
the changes to content or other items in terms of URL generations. I
would install a program that is designed for use in tandem with Artio
JoomSEF, which is a component called 404 Redirect for Artio by FirstRun.
It can be downloaded for free, and might require you to install another
bot into Joomla, as well as add a line into the editor area for the
default error page that you are going to use for you site.
What the 404 redirect add-in does, is automatically map your visitor
to either a matching page, similar in terms of content, the new URL of
the originally requested page, or if it is at a total loss, it will
display instead a page of search results from within your Joomla search
component, so that perhaps the user can see other relavant information,
content, etc. The main thing is that they do not land on an error page,
bounce your whole site, and leave your site to go back to where they
were prior.
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