A good Joomla template is only half as effective if it isn’t equipped with a sitemap, robots.txt, body tags, and SEF URLs. In other words, your Joomla website won’t get you anywhere unless it’s search engine friendly. The top ranked websites on search engines get the most love, whereas the rest only get their fair share in the spotlight. Website owners are always trying to bring new techniques to improve their online visibility. Yet, they fail to realize that in the entire midst, SEO is and will remain the most effective and reliable tool to boost search engine rankings. Here we have gathered some essential SEO tips to help boost your Joomla website and find a place in the echelons of SERPs.

Search Engine Friendly URLs

Readable URLs are deemed as ‘search engine friendly. Before we discuss this point, let’s take an example of a URL of an SEO tips page for Joomla: http://www.joomlaseo.com/index.pho?option=comview=item&id=150:seotips Doesn’t really make much sense does it? Now by simply adding keywords to the URL and making it more readable, this happens: http://www.joomlaseo.com/blogs/seo-tips Looks much better and more appealing right? Search engines like Google upgrade their search algorithms by the day. By making your URL more readable, you are allowing to become more user friendly. Go to Global Configuration and turn on ‘Search Engine Friendly URLs’ to update your existing URLs.

Install a Sitemap

When Google or other search engines know your sitemap, it automatically becomes easier for them to determine the quality of the website. As a result, you are rewarded with a higher search engine ranking. Create HTML/XML Sitemap files that allow search engines to determine all pages. There are many extensions available for creating sitemaps. Xmap, for example, is free to use and allows users to create sitemaps using the menu structure. Once you have created a sitemap, access Google Webmaster tools and submit it for indexing. Download the Xmap Extension!

Improve Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

Extensions like sh404SEF allows users to implement meta descriptions and titles that can be optimized for SEO. The minimum requirement for an SEO optimized meta description is to make it sound relevant to the page. The title as well as the description should be no longer than 70 and 160 characters as they are visible in the SERPs. In other words, your page titles and meta description have to be user friendly in order to attract more traffic. As a practice, you can include keywords in the page title and meta descriptions. While this will not significantly affect your SEO rankings, it will however generate more interest when users want visit see your website on SERPs. Download the sh404SEF Extension!

Joomla SEO Extensions

There are many top SEO extensions available on Joomla to optimize your website and its content. The most powerful SEO extensions currently are sh404SEF and Xmap, both of which we have discussed. SEO-Generator is another great extension that automatically produces keywords and descriptions for all your pages for relevant SEO. Download the SEO generator Extension!

Other than SEO, content is also important to make your website more visible to users across alternate platforms like social media. If you have any suggestions, please let us know.