Joomla! 1.5 SEO

Dagu — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:57:04 +0000

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a great way to make our web “read” by the search engine. Many web owners hire SEO professional to optimize their web. But for the Joomla 1.5 users, they should be happy because in this version, Joomla had improved better features for SEO. There are three techniques for SEO in Joomla, they are Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs, mod_rewrite (only for Apache), and suffix. If you want to apply SEO, you should choose at least SEF option. If you wan to use mod_rewrite, SEF option must be choosen. It will much better if we use suffix too. With suffix, in the end of the URL will be added .html. Available combinations for SEO in Joomla are:

SEF
SEF + suffix
SEF + mod_rewrite
SEF + mod_rewrite + suffix (recommended)

The difference among combinations above are the URL produced. If we don’t use SEO, the URL will be:

http://blog.danigunawan.com/joomla15/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=19&Itemid=27

For the SEF option, the URL will be:

http://blog.danigunawan.com/joomla15/index.php/joomla-overview

The URL can be read easily than the URL without SEF. Notice that there is "index.php" in the URL. If we add suffix option, then in the end of the URL will be appended html extension like shown below:

http://blog.danigunawan.com/joomla15/index.php/joomla-overview.html

Compare if we use Apache mod_rewrite, the result is shown below:

http://blog.danigunawan.com/joomla15/joomla-overview

If we use mod_rewrite, URL will look nice and tidy without "index.php". Html extension can be appended by choosing suffix option. The result is shown below:

http://blog.danigunawan.com/joomla15/joomla-overview.html

SEO Implementation in Joomla! 1.5
SEO Implementation in Joomla 1.5 is very very easy.

Login to Joomla back-end as super administrator.
Choose menu Site > Global Configuration.
In Global Configuration there are three tabs that are Site, System dan Server. In tab Site, look at the SEO Settings. Choose the combination as you need.
Click Save or Apply.

Joomla! 1.5 SEO Settings

Remember!

If you want to implement option number two (Use Apache mod_rewrite), the web server should be Apache with mod_rewrite module is active (Read article: Activate mod_rewrite in Apache). After that rename htaccess.txt in the Joomla root directory to be .htaccess (Read article: Rename htaccess.txt to be .htaccess in Windows). If you get error message while implementing SEO option number two, try to edit .htaccess file, find this line:

Options +FollowSymLinks

Add "#" character. So the line will be:

#Options +FollowSymLinks

Restart your Apache web server.

Knowledge Sharing » SEO

Joomla! 1.5 SEO