Joomla SEO is really not much different than other standard SEO practices. There are Joomla specific SEO addons and plugins, and the way that Joomla handles meta data and does not build "H" tags from scratch. But overall, it is just good old fashioned hard work. Please do not fall for any "hidden Google Secrets" claims.
The Search Engines
For the 4 weeks ending October 3rd, 2009 Google owned 71.08% of US searches. Yahoo was 16.38%, Bing 8.96% and Ask was 2.56% according to Experian Hitwise. So it is quite clear where you put most of your focus and energy in terms of search engine optimization. Not that you should totally ignore Yahoo or Bing, but start with Google
Authority & Traffic
This is the old balancing act. Google has a metric called Page Rank. This is a number from n/a and 0 to 10. This is a Google authority ranking for your website or pages based on their ever changing algorithm. Higher is better. And it is a non-linear rank, meaning 7 is X times better than 6. And 10 is perfection. Suffice it to say that people with more experience, research time and implementation time than us all argue about the algorithm. But I know this. The higher Page Rank you have, the better you will rank in the SERPs, based on the competition for those key words and phrases.
Alexa is one metric for traffic ranking. Compete and Quantcast are two others. Technorati also ranks blogs. All of these sites rank your domain based on overall traffic and each uses its own approach. The lower the ranking, the better. Generally speaking, anything ranked under 100,000 on Alexa is good. Under 10,000 is great. For example, Google is #1. Joomla.org is #528. Wendys.com (fast food) is 22,121.
You need Authority to do well with SERPs on highly searched terms. This takes time and effort and good, relevant content and backlinks. You need traffic to increase your readership and social authority and increase revenue through conversion. How? Read on!
1) Do Keyword Research
So what are the keywords in your marketplace that you are trying to get good SERPs (search engine results pages) for? Do they even get searched? What is the competition for those keywords? Can you compete? Much of this is based on your Google authority and ability to find keyword opportunities. If you sell "headphones" on-line, there are 1,000,000 searches per month on average for that term. And the competition is fierce. But if you dig deeper, you might find some key phrases like "pink headphones" that still gets 6,000+ average searches per month, but the competition is not as stiff, so you have a better chance at higher SERPs. Click here for a great blog on keyword tools.
2) Use SEO Plugins
The big dog of SEO addons is sh404SEF. This component writes Joomla URLs to a more user-friendly format (SEF URL or URL rewriting). There are several third party plug-ins for support of other components. sh404SEF also has an option to insert H1 tags on your pages. A nice page title function is also included.
If you are not using sh404SEF and are using the built in SEF friendly feature in Joomla core code (like this website), then look at Article Title H1 which puts H1 tags on all of your article titles automatically. We use this.
Click here for all Joomla SEO and Meta data addons.
3) Host in a Good Place
Where you host your Joomla site is important. When search engine bots spider your website, downtime is a killer. If they can not find your Joomla site, they start factoring "server unavailable" into future visit frequency calculations. Also, if you are hosted on a shared server that does not have strict security rules, your website could be very slow or email server blacklisted because of questionable use by others. Also, many hosts offer very low prices and big promises, but oversell each shared server so blog performance (page loads etc.) suffers.
4) Create Keyword Rich Content - Constantly
Once you have done your keyword research and have identified how to go about using them in content, then create content regularly. Nothing kills SERPs and ranking like a static website. Whether you are blogging, adding news articles, case studies etc, add new content all of the time. Give the search engines a reason to come back often!
5) Backlinks, Promotion and Social Media
Building quality one way links to your site is a very important part of building your authority and building traffic. That concept requires its own blog post. So here is one. Promote your new site content using social bookmarking and on social media sites. These create new streams of conversations and build valuable backlinks.
6) Analyze and Adjust
Use good analytic tools like Google analytics or Woopra real time analytics. Find out what posts and promotional efforts are getting traffic. Check time on site and geographical data. Make adjustments. Post more. Always be analyzing.
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