The myths that Joomla sites are poorly SEO-friendly were relevant for version 1.5 and 2.5. Joomla 3.x is excellently indexed and promoted in search results. In this article, we will dispel common misconceptions about Joomla regarding SEO.

In this review, we will consider the most popular myths about the unsuitability of sites on Joomla to advance in search engines ah and put an end to them.

Joomla generates duplicate pages?

Duplicate pages are a terrible evil that greatly harms the promotion of a site in search results. The thing is that the search engine can index the duplicate page on the site, and the main page that you are promoting can be excluded from search results... As a result, the labors of linking and external promotion will be in vain.

Are duplicates relevant for Joomla today?

Yes, but that doesn't make her worse than others. CMS: there are duplicates for almost all CMS(paid and free). And one of the stages of SEO-site optimization on Joomla As with any other engine, they are excluded from indexing by search engines: you just need to work once and forget about this problem.

Joomla is not indexing well?

The legend is as old as the world, and the following points are the source of this statement:

Before, before Joomla version 3.3, in the file robots.txt part desired folders was closed from indexing, in particular the images folder.

Search bots, of course, see your entire site, but the prohibitions in robots.txt sometimes followed and not added to the image index.

Plus, lately, search robots need to see your site in the same way as users see it, and on this moment it is important that CSS and JS files are not prohibited from indexing.

Even earlier, on Joomla 1.5 there were problems with cnc links ( SEF URL- human-readable URLs). But the bottom line is that the folder was added to the links of the site pages components, which is indexed in robots.txt there was always a ban. This is why the pages on some sites might not be included in the search results.

It's important to know:

Content of sites on current versions Joomla is remarkably indexed and promoted in search engines.

Can't add meta tags in Joomla?

Yes, before there were problems with prescribing meta tags for some pages.

Currently functional Joomla allows you to prescribe all the meta tags necessary for SEO optimization ( Title, Description, Keywords, Robots) for content pages, categories and menu items. In addition, the Title tag can be specified separately from the title of the material or menu item.

It's important to know:

In the current versions of Joomla, you can register all the meta tags necessary for SEO.

Are Joomla sites too slow?

This topic was relevant for Joomla 1.5 and component VirtueMart.

On Joomla 3 and higher with a download speed everything is in order: the basic functionality allows you to implement server caching and GZIP compression of output data. Separate questions on speed appear, but they are addressed to the hosting setup and to the site owners who are adding materials.

In other words, no matter how fast your car is, you will not be able to drive it fast on a bad road, with poor gasoline and a driver who was issued a license the day before.

It's important to know:

Sites on the current versions of Joomla are loaded no worse than others.

Read about how to ensure the maximum loading speed of a site on Joomla 3 in this section.

An end to the SEO myths about Joomla

This is where the myths end.

What conclusion can be drawn?

All these indicators:

• the presence of duplicates,
• competent structure of the site,
• meta tags,
• download speed,

are important points in SEO optimization of any website.

• competent linking,
• content optimization,
• plus, a very important element for promotion today is micro-markup.

Here with her, in one area or another, everyone has problems. In general, there is no adequate documentation on it. But for Joomla I completely solved this problem.

Since our site is mainly occupied by the owners of sites on Joomla, then list the advantages of this CMS I think it's not worth it: you already know very well about the cool functionality of this system, which surpasses many paid engines.

As a conclusion

Joomla 3 great for promotion. There are problems with takes, but it can be solved.

In order for the site to be in high positions in the search results, it is necessary to work on it and this axiom is for all sites. The roots of the myth that websites are Joomla poorly promoted, coming from version 1.5 and newbie blog posts by word of mouth. Joomla like any other CMS, is well indexed and promoted in search results.

If the SEO says that Joomla this is bad, it means one of two things: either he hasn’t worked with this engine for a long time, or he hasn’t worked with it at all. Therefore, in order not to look inept in the eyes of the client, it is better to position yourself as a specialist in CMS and tell popular myths in clever terms.

How to optimize Joomla 3 to improve performance? We know that loading speed is almost the most important factor for the success of your website. By default, Joomla is not a slow CMS, but there are several optimizations you can make to speed things up. Here are some tips you can apply to speed up your Joomla 3. Here are a few steps to help you speed up your Joomla easily:

1) Always use only the latest versions of Joomla and Extensions

Using the latest version of Joomla is important for the speed of the site, because in each version many code improvements have been made. Even if the changes are minor, it doesn't matter a new version Joomla is more powerful than the previous ones. For more information on how to update Joomla to the latest version, read our security guide.

Using the latest versions of extensions is just as important for a fast website as it is for Joomla itself.

2) enable caching

If caching is disabled, then every time site visitors load one of the pages, Joomla has to perform several actions at once: load content from the database, load installed plugins, components and modules, load your template and combine all this in one single page. Needless to say, this process takes time. Here's where Joomla's internal caching system comes in handy. When caching is enabled, the visitor has loaded the page once, and the result of the above actions will be saved. Then all subsequent visitors will directly receive the saved version of this page, as if it were a simple HTML file, which is much, much easier and faster to load. This is why caching is one important process that must be enabled to speed up your site.

To enable caching open Global settings(System -> General Settings).

Then you need to click on the tab System to open the caching settings.

Below on the page we will see the Cache Settings. Click on the drop-down list next to the "Cash" label. Select " Standard caching". There is another option “ Progressive caching”, But it works a little differently: it keeps a cached version of the site for each visitor. This is useful in some special cases and we do not recommend using this option until you are absolutely sure you need it.

After selecting the caching mode, click on the " Save"At the top of the page.

And the last thing you need to do to get the caching system to really work is to enable the caching plugin " System - Cache". To do this, open Extensions -> Plugin Manager.

Here you see a huge list installed plugins... The easiest way to find a caching plugin is to use search. Just type the word "Cash" in the search field and click on the button with the magnifying glass.

Next to the inscription " System - Cache»You will see a button with a red cross, which indicates that the plugin is not currently active. To change its status click on this button.

An image of a green checkmark will appear on the button, and at the top of the page you will see a message that the plugin is enabled.

That's all! Your Joomla caching system is now up and running!

2) use compression

Another thing that will greatly increase your Joomla performance is compression. If you enable internal compression, then the page that site visitors open will be compressed before it is displayed for them. If you reduce the size of a web page using compression, it will load much faster. To enable compression in Joomla, you need to go to General Settings ( System -> General Settings).

On this page, you will see a lot of settings. Click on the " Server"To display the server settings.

Find the inscription “ Gzip page compression"And click on the button" Yes"To enable Joomla compression.

You will see the indicator turn green and it indicates that compression is enabled. Finally, click the "Save" button to confirm the changes.

Well, Joomla 3 compression is enabled. You can use one of the many free sites to test page compression, such as http://checkgzipcompression.com. If everything is done correctly, you will see a notification that compression is enabled, as well as some information about the page size. As you can see in the picture below, the page size of our test site has been reduced by three times.

Comment

In some cases, enabling compression may cause an error. The likely reason is that "Gzip compression" is not installed or the server is not configured correctly. The latter can be obtained from the service technical support Your hosting.

3) Add rules for .htaccess optimization

Htaccess contains instructions for web servers on what to do with your site. Here are a few rules you can add to it to increase your Joomla performance:

ETag- tells browsers to load from their cache an image that has already been displayed.

Expires headers- the rule is similar to ETag, but allows you to set the lifetime for different types files.

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE- reduces lines of code compiled HTML files by removing blank lines, transitions, and spaces.

########## Begin - ETag Optimization

## This rule will create an ETag for files based only on the modification

## timestamp and their size.

## Note: It may cause problems on your server and you may need to remove it

FileETag MTime Size

# AddOutputFilterByType is now deprecated by Apache. Use mod_filter in the future.

AddOutputFilterByType

DEFLATE text / plain text / html text / xml text / css application / xml

application / xhtml + xml application / rss + xml application / javascript

application / x-javascript

# Enable expiration control

ExpiresActive On

# Default expiration: 1 hour after request

ExpiresDefault "now plus 1 hour"

# CSS and JS expiration: 1 week after request

ExpiresByType text / css "now plus 1 week"

ExpiresByType application / javascript "now plus 1 week"

ExpiresByType application / x-javascript "now plus 1 week"

# Image files expiration: 1 month after request

ExpiresByType image / bmp "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType image / gif "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType image / jpeg "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType image / jp2 "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType image / pipeg "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType image / png "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType image / svg + xml "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType image / tiff "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType image / vnd.microsoft.icon "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType image / x-icon "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType image / ico "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType image / icon "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType text / ico "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType application / ico "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType image / vnd.wap.wbmp "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType application / vnd.wap.wbxml "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType application / smil "now plus 1 month"

# Audio files expiration: 1 month after request

ExpiresByType audio / basic "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType audio / mid "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType audio / midi "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType audio / mpeg "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType audio / x-aiff "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType audio / x-mpegurl "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType audio / x-pn-realaudio "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType audio / x-wav "now plus 1 month"

# Movie files expiration: 1 month after request

ExpiresByType application / x-shockwave-flash "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType x-world / x-vrml "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType video / x-msvideo "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType video / mpeg "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType video / mp4 "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType video / quicktime "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType video / x-la-asf "now plus 1 month"

ExpiresByType video / x-ms-asf "now plus 1 month"

4) Reduce the size of the images

Images take up most of your site. In most cases, they can be optimized. Here are some tips to follow when using images on your site:

• Never use large images by shrinking them with HTML. The browser takes time to process them and the image quality will be worse than the original.
• Always optimize your images. Applications such as Adobe photoshop or online service Smush It can use their tools to easily reduce the size of a picture without losing quality.
• Don't add too many images to one page. If you have a lot of photos in your article, try paginating it.

5) Remove unused and unoptimized extensions

Each Joomla extension you install requires system resources, database space and disk space to work. Availability a large number extensions increase the overall size of the site and slow it down. This is why it is important to make sure that you only have the extensions you need installed.

Many people often check all kinds of plugins, components and modules, forgetting to remove them. It would be nice to sometimes get rid of such extensions that can add unnecessary content to the site.

Last but not least, always look at user reviews when choosing the most functional extension you want to add. Some components are poorly written, which can negatively affect the performance of the site as a whole.

6) use extensions for optimization

There are many extensions out there that try to improve the performance of your site. Based on many years of experience with Joomla, here is a small selection that we will recommend for you:

• JCH Optimize - Combines JavaScript & CSS, merges images into sprites, minifies and compresses JavaScript. Paid JCH Optimize PRO version is in our fold.
• Jbetolo - everything JCH Optimize can do plus CDN support
• JotCache - improves the caching system in Joomla
• Cache Cleaner - just cleans the cache from the Joomla admin panel

- this is my favorite engine, life is such a thing that you want it or not, but you have to master something new. Therefore, at one time I ran into the content management system CMS Jooomla. Not to say that I am insanely happy to work with this engine, but in some cases it is more flexible than WP, and allows you to solve slightly different tasks than sites powered by WordPress.

And in the process of working with Joomla, over time, many interesting problems had to be solved, which, as it turned out, are a constant illness of this engine. Problems in terms of optimizing a Joomla site for search engines. There are a lot of different dregs, so it is very easy to get confused. I used all the methods described below on a site running Joomla, and it's hard for me to say which of the methods individually works better, but in combination they significantly improved the work of the site, so I consider all these work to optimize Joomla necessary.

It is impossible to describe all the SEO problems that Joomla has, so I will focus on the main ones.

SEO-optimization of the site forJoomla

1. I do not know why this happens, but by default in Joomla folder with pictures (/images) is closed from indexing by search engines... And when you start to look through robots.txt, then upon careful study it simply cannot be overlooked.

Here I will find the first Joomla site I come across - timessquare.com. Let's check that it is really Joomla using http://2ip.ru/cms/

This service 2ip.ru sometimes does not quite correctly show the CMS of the site, but this happens quite rarely, so in most cases you can trust. But in order to be sure that this is really Joomla, let's check the positions of the modules by entering the following url address in the search bar http://timessquare.com/?tp=1.

The positions are displayed, so everything is ok, we have a site on Joomla in front of us. Therefore, you can trust me that the examples will show exactly the sites on Joomla

So, if we look at the robots.txt of this site, we will see that search spiders are directly prohibited from indexing the contents of the / images folder, which contains all the images.

We can say that the owners of this site upload pictures to some other folder, but no, all site images are uploaded here.

And this is the situation for all Joomla sites. Therefore, one of the problems that needs to be solved is to remove the prohibition of indexing the / images folder in the robots.txt file.

2. map of site.xml

As a matter of fact, Joomla itself is not an easy CMS, so once upon a time my opinion was radically different from what it is now. I used to use the Xmap addon, however, time has suggested a better solution.

The sitemap generator itself does not take up much space and eats few resources, but why is it needed at all? Its main purpose is to generate a sitemap with a view to more fast indexing site content. And that sitemap fits into just one single sitemap.xml file. The question arises: what is the Xmap component for then? It is much easier not to add Xmap to the site, but to act like this: publish a bunch of articles on the site, then, using a special service, generate a sitemap in .xml format and upload it to the hosting yourself. Actually, I use this solution almost constantly. Generation of large amounts of content, usually more than 500 URLs, will not be free, so if you need to generate a sitemap for free, then you need to use the Xenu Link program.

3. Redirect from www to without and back

I see no reason to use www in the domain, so I always make the domain without www as the main mirror of the site. However, in Joomla, automatic redirection, unlike, does not work. Therefore, for Joomla, you have to register the whole thing in the .htaccess file. To redirect from a domain name from www to Domain name without www, you need to add the following lines to your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond% (HTTP_HOST)! ^ Www \. RewriteRule ^ (. *) $ Http: //www.% (HTTP_HOST) / $ 1

4. Content editor

Initially, the Joomla assembly includes two test editors during installation. These are TinyMCE and Code Mirror. But it is enough to work just a few hours with this editor, and it immediately becomes clear that it will be impossible to work this way further.This is how the standard Joomla text editor looks like

Problems begin from the time when you need to upload images to the site and you will have to do this through a separate menu "Media Manager"

And when you start loading images through the media manager, and not through the text editor itself, then you will think how cool it is. An alternative to all this disgrace is JCE editor(Joomla Content Editor). Once upon a time, when I first encountered these editors, I began to look for information on what to change the standard editors. After just a little googling, I realized that the flagship in this field is exactly JCE.

The JCE panel itself looks like this

I believe this is by far the best text editor for Joomla. The program is located at http://www.joomlacontenteditor.net/. Here you can find and download Russian localization.

5. Plugins forSEO optimizationJoomla

When working with CMS Joomla, this is the most problematic issue. Because there is no monopolist like WordPress for this CMS.

There are a lot of them for Joomla. Here's an example of a few of them:

It seems strange that the Joomla community is simply huge, and much larger than the WordPress community, but in life it turns out that this size is of no use. Because with a smaller community, the leaders are more obvious and help is easier to find.

I have tried many times to find qualified help on the Joomla forums, but I don’t know why, I didn’t get this help. People either do not know solutions to emerging problems, or they simply do not want to help. But if something happens in the Joomla part, then really finding some kind of help on the forum is extremely problematic. The same cannot be said about WordPress.

Without going into the details of all these plug-ins, I can say that the most powerful combine from the above is "Sh404SEF", and the simplest and most functional is "JoomSEF".

If you have a little website customization skills, then I think JoomSEF is enough. Because it performs the most basic functions: creating and editing links, setting CNC, meta tags for site pages.

Below you can watch a video of the SEF plugin

As for the "Sh404SEF" component for Joomla, I came across it most often. Frankly, it eats up a lot of hosting resources and is not universal in everything. However, it has almost everything possible settings as far as SEO can be. Therefore, I cannot say that this plugin is for beginners only. For beginners, there are many configurable parameters that you can not manually register on the hosting. But at the same time, will beginners figure it out? This is also a question. In general, this plugin is versatile, cumbersome with a lot of settings.

6. Search for duplicate pages on the siteJoomla

From my own experience with this CMS, I can say that the problem of creating duplicate site pages in Joomla is probably the biggest headache there is. And how to solve this problem - xs, because Joomla in some incredible way creates duplicate pages.

But something needs to be done, so there is a certain range of actions to neutralize this problem.

Problem number 1 - duplicate pages need to be found

Task number 2 - duplicate pages need to be removed

How to find duplicate pages on the site?

I assume that if you are reading this article now, then for sure you are either starting in SEO, or already working in this direction and looking for something new and interesting. So, I will say the easiest and most inexpensive way to find duplicates on the site is to use the tool “ Google Webmaster Tools". It is enough that a little time has passed after adding the site to this panel, and then you can go in and see if there are duplicates on the site

Here are three points that interest us in in this case... When we click on the title "Duplicate Meta Description", we will immediately see all our takes

Actually, this is how the duplicate pages of the site are located.

How to remove duplicates on a siteJoomla?

Right here in the panel Google webmasters, you can create a request to remove unwanted site pages

And in Joomla itself, you can remove duplicates using the above-mentioned SEO component "Sh404SEF"

First of all, let's note what you need to do in order to improve the SEO of your site:

On the page:

1. Managing meta tags (such as title, description): keywords in elements that will appear in search results.
2. Fix crawl errors: Search engines will treat your site as high quality and improve your rankings.
3. Rewrite URLs: The default URLs do not give search engines information about the page's content. You should change the URLs to "friendly" ones, they will help you achieve a better result.
4. SEO article content: the content must be of high quality. Not only home page but each of your articles can influence your ranking in search results.

Off page:

1. Add a sitemap: and your site will be indexed the way you want.
2. Provide backlinks: more links tend to lead to better search engine rankings and the best google Page Rank.

Traffic check: monitoring visitors and constantly working on SEO.

In this article, you can find several plugins designed to solve the above problems. All of these extensions can be easily downloaded from the Joomla Extensions Directory (JED).

JM sitemap

Free SEO plugin for Joomla 1.5

Functions:

SEOsimple

Free SEO plugin for Joomla 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 2.5.

Functions:

1. Setting title
2. Ability to select description (description) and title (title) automatically
3. Establishing the ROBOTS meta

SEOsimple is the best Joomla SEO meta tags extension you need for your website. SEOsimple helps administrators with important tasks: create a good description and display title.

But the most wonderful thing about this tool is the generation of all meta content tags. Sure, you can write them yourself, but not all of us are good at SEO. This feature will help your site get a proper title and description if you are out of ideas. You can use them as they are or modify them as you see fit.

In the latest version, there is another interesting feature: the ability to set Robots META "noindex, follow" for category pages. You can tweak all the options in the plugin settings, check the code before and after using SEOsimple to see the difference.

You can download latest version.

Sh404SEF

Paid plugin for Joomla 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 2.5.

Functions:

1. URL management: rewriting, translation, etc.
2. Customizing metadata
3. Inserting an H-level tag
4. Redirects from error pages: 301, 404

From the author: the goal of each site is visitors, that is, users who will come to its pages and get acquainted with the content. But if the site is new, if it has just been uploaded to a real server on the Internet, how will users know about its existence? Usually, users find out about the existence of a site from search engines by searching for various queries. Therefore, the next stage after the development of the site is its promotion. In this and subsequent lessons, we will talk about technical optimization Joomla from an SEO perspective.

Formulation of the problem

I would like to note that we will not consider the theory of SEO and the actual techniques of article optimization. We will consider the technical activities that need to be performed on a site created using the Joomla CMS. And in this tutorial we will take a look at Joomla SEO using its basic features. So, first of all, let's define the term SEO.

SEO is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization, which means search engine optimization. That is, this is the implementation of certain activities on your site that will subsequently affect its ranking in search engines.

Friendly Links (CNC)

The type and structure of a site's links is very important for its ranking in the search engine. And you need to determine it even at the stages of website creation and afterwards - it is advisable to never change it. Especially after the site is indexed by search robots. Otherwise, when you change the type of links, they will lose their weight, since there are no more pages where these links lead. Moreover, search engines may not index correctly and think that new links lead to duplicate pages. And this is not very good for the site's ranking.

Therefore, if you need to change the type of links - change it even before indexing the site. At the moment, friendly links are quite well understood by search engines and affect the ranking of a site in search results. Especially if the URL contains the keyword of the page.

When forming links, you need to take into account that the URL of a particular page should be short and laconic. It does not have to contain the various parameters that are required to display the page on the screen. The URL should consist of a keyword that characterizes here or another page. In this case, they are understood as cyrillic urls(both the domain and the link itself) and the URL using transliteration. That is, the string that forms the URL is generated by transliterating the keyword.

Now, let's go to the test site and see how the URL looks like without using the CNC:

As you can see, the URL is quite complex, so let's fix that. Go to the admin panel in the General settings section. And in the SEO Settings category, activate the Enable SEF setting, and the links of our site will look like this:

As you can see, the link is now much nicer. Further, now the address contains the line index.php, which is also desirable to remove. Therefore, in the admin panel, activate the URL redirection setting, and it is imperative to rename the htaccess.txt file to .htaccess. In this case, we will see the following on the screen:

To add the .html suffix to the URL, you need to activate the Add suffix to URL setting. In this case, the URL will change as follows:

Alias

Alias ​​is very important from an SEO point of view, as it is he who is directly responsible for the formation of friendly links. Initially, if this field is left blank, it will be created by transliterating the title of the material.

Modern trends and approaches in web development

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When creating an alias, you should take into account that:

Each alias must be unique;

The alias must contain the page's keyword;

After indexing the site, it is not advisable to change the alias, as the form of the URL will change.

Meta tags keywords and description

The meta tags keywords and description, although not as important as they used to for search engine optimization, are still effective. Especially the description tag, which is for creating page descriptions. This description can be output as brief description pages in the search engine. True, this rule works mainly for Google, and even then not always. Quite often, search engines show a piece of text on a given page as a description as the most relevant to a query. Still, Google officially recommends using the description meta tag to describe pages:

Re-linking pages

Relinking is an exchange of links on the pages of a site. That is, when one of the pages displays links to another page. Re-linking can be of two types: internal - when links link to pages of one site and external - links link to external resources.

What is interlinking for? Each page of the site has its own static weight, which directly affects its ranking in search engines. That is, the more static weight, the better. Some of the static weight can be transferred to other pages using links. And this part is equal to about 10% of the total static weight.

I would like to note that the total static weight transmitted by links does not depend on the number of links. This means that the more links there are in the material, the less weight each link transfers.

The purpose of internal linking is to redistribute static weight between site pages. Re-linking can be created different ways... For example, navigation links, jump to the next article:

Various modules can also act as interlinking. For example bread crumbs and the Related Content module. In the Related Materials module, links are defined by keywords entered in the material parameters.

Robots.txt file

This file required for site indexing by search engine robots. It directly indicates certain parameters for indexing. Here are its default contents:

User-agent: * Disallow: / administrator / Disallow: / bin / Disallow: / cache / Disallow: / cli / Disallow: / components / Disallow: / includes / Disallow: / installation / Disallow: / language / Disallow: / layouts / Disallow: / libraries / Disallow: / logs / Disallow: / media / Disallow: / modules / Disallow: / plugins / Disallow: / templates / Disallow: / tmp /