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Book Description

Improve the search engine friendliness of your web site

  • Improve the rankings of your Joomla! site in the search engine result pages such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing

  • Improve your web site SEO performance by gaining and producing incoming links to your web site

  • Market and measure the success of your blog by applying SEO

  • Integrate analytics and paid advertising into your Joomla! blo

In Detail

Some sites always appear at the top of a search result while others fail to even make it to the top ten. Wouldn't you want to see your site on the first page of any search result? This is not easily feasible if you are depending solely on the marketing guys whom you hire for SEO. Joomla! SEO will help you to attract more visitors and improve the way you rank in search engines by giving you the techniques and knowledge to work your site into higher visitor numbers. It will help you to create and improve your site in an easy way. Joomla! is great, and you can make it perform even better by using the guidelines and ideas in this book.

Search Engine Optimization is becoming a must for every web site. As the competition on the Internet grows you need to make sure your site is among the top results on the major search engines. More and more people use search engines to find the information they are looking for, so you need to make sure you show up in those search result pages to get those visitors to your web site.

Joomla! SEO will provide you with a lot of information, ranging from keywords strategies through technical improvements and content creation. All this information and the tutorials provided are targeted to give you the best base for gaining higher rankings.

In the book, you will learn how to build a keyword strategy and create a better site structure for SEO. You will read about technical improvements that will give you better options for SEO. There is a separate chapter that helps you create search-engine friendly and keyword-rich URLs.In the end, you will have a web site that is ready to outperform your competitors and a manual to refer to for improving every step you take.

Table of Contents

  1. Joomla! 1.5 SEO
    1. Joomla! 1.5 SEO
    2. Credits
    3. About the Author
    4. About the Reviewers
    5. Preface
      1. What this book covers
      2. What you need for this book
      3. Who this book is for
      4. Conventions
      5. Reader feedback
      6. Customer support
        1. Errata
        2. Piracy
        3. Questions
    6. 1. Developing your SEO and Keyword Strategy
      1. Setting up your SEO strategy
        1. Solving basic Joomla! 1.5 SEO problems
          1. Global configuration meta tag settings
          2. PDF, Print, and E-mail icons
          3. Meta generator tag
        2. Why do you need to do keyword research?
          1. How to do basic keyword research
      2. The tools of the trade
        1. Free tools
          1. Google's Adwords
          2. Wordtracker
          3. SEO Book Keyword Tool
        2. Commercial tools
          1. Keyword Elite
          2. iBusinessPromoter
          3. KeywordDiscovery and SEO toolkit
      3. Choosing the right key words
        1. Building your keyword list
        2. Setting up your baseline statistics
      4. Summary
    7. 2. Optimizing Site Structure
      1. Optimizing your site structure for SEO
        1. Using sections and categories to create structure
          1. Sections and categories
          2. Grouping related topics together
          3. Putting your keywords to work
        2. Create a better-optimized structure with keywords
          1. How will a better structure affect your rankings
        3. Improving your site's usability for users and search engines
          1. Showing your site structure at a glance
          2. Small and fast improvements for usability
          3. Placing uncategorized articles
        4. Improve your menu structure for SEO
          1. Create a better structure with menus
          2. Restructuring your menu items
          3. How to use separators and submenus for SEO
        5. Why a sitemap component is essential for search engines
          1. Why you should use a sitemap.xml file
          2. Installing and configuring a sitemap component
          3. Installing and using Xmap sitemap component
            1. Configuring Xmap
            2. Other preference options
            3. Adding menus to the sitemap
            4. Linking to the sitemap
            5. XML sitemaps for search engines
        6. Submitting your sitemap to search engines
          1. Verifying your site with Google
            1. Uploading and verification
            2. Your sitemap.xml in Google
          2. Verifying your site with Yahoo!
          3. Verifying your site with Bing
            1. Your sitemap.xml in Bing
        7. Using the robots.txt file to guide Search Engine Robots
          1. Putting the robots to work
          2. Improving the Joomla! robots.txt file
            1. The Joomla! robots.txt file
            2. Putting the sitemap link in robots.txt
            3. Search engine webmaster tools
      2. Summary
    8. 3. Improve Joomla! SEO with the Joomlatwork SEF Patch
      1. Downloading and installing the Joomlatwork patch
        1. Getting hold of the patch
        2. Installing the patch
      2. Make your titles more keyword rich
        1. Create keyword-rich HTML titles for menus
        2. Create keyword-rich HTML titles for pages
        3. How to use the new Joomlatwork fields
          1. Making better use of the HTML title
      3. Improve your pages' metadata
        1. Why does metadata matter? How does Google use it?
        2. Using the description tag effectively
        3. Using the keywords tag effectively
        4. How to avoid duplicate meta tag descriptions and keywords
      4. Control how search engines index your site
        1. Control all search engines with the Robots meta tag
        2. Google settings
      5. Upgrade, uninstall, or modify the patch
      6. Some other changes from the patch
        1. Generator Meta name
        2. Copyright
      7. The Joomlatwork SEF component
      8. Summary
    9. 4. How to Write Keyword-rich Articles
      1. Importance of writing with keywords
        1. Choosing your keywords
        2. Choosing the topics to write about
        3. Finding the keywords to target
        4. How do Google and Yahoo! show your keywords
      2. Writing with keywords in mind
        1. Putting structure into your pages
        2. Getting the best placements for your keywords
      3. Optimizing your articles
        1. Start writing naturally
        2. How to write better titles
          1. Getting more keywords into your title
        3. Making sure you stay focused
        4. Keyword density—what is it and why bother?
      4. Using headlines in the best way
        1. How to make your articles scanable
        2. Getting keywords into headers and paragraphs
      5. Using the metadata fields to your advantage
        1. Writing good meta tag descriptions
        2. How to use the Keywords field
        3. Putting it all together
      6. Summary
    10. 5. Joomla! Blogging and RSS Feeds
      1. How is blogging good for SEO?
        1. Creating fresh content
        2. Google and blog indexing
      2. Setting up Joomla! as a blog
        1. How to structure your blog section
        2. Choosing your blog categories
        3. Stay focused and limit yourself
        4. Creating a blog menu
          1. Why use a Full Text instead of Intro Text feed
          2. Separator and blog categories
      3. Commenting anyone?
        1. Why comments are important
        2. Interaction with your visitors
        3. Installation and configuration of the Disqus plugin
          1. Setting up your commenting service on Disqus
          2. Limitations of Disqus
        4. Putting your RSS Feeds to work
      4. Using Google's FeedBurner for SEO
        1. Choosing your FeedBurner options for optimal results
        2. Replacing your RSS Feed with the FeedBurner feed
      5. How to claim your blog on Technorati
      6. Using separate blog components
        1. MyBlog—a commercial blogging component
      7. Summary
    11. 6. Create Search Engine Friendly URLs with sh404SEF
      1. What are the best SEF URLs?
      2. Available choices for SEF components
      3. Why you should choose sh404SEF
      4. How to get hold of sh404SEF
        1. Installation and basic configuration
        2. Looking for the optimal basic configuration options
        3. Setting up the plugin
        4. How about the 404 page
      5. Looking at advanced configuration settings
        1. Taking care of extended basics
        2. How to optimize your plugins
        3. Extra components, SEF, and other plugins
        4. Language setting and SEF
      6. Getting advanced, are you?
        1. Cache management
        2. Advanced component configuration
        3. By component settings
        4. Using the best Meta/SEO option settings
        5. Security 404, and advanced
      7. How to change your Home page Meta settings
        1. Putting meta tags on Non-SEF components
        2. Taking it one step further—special URLs
      8. Solving and preventing possible problems
      9. Summary
    12. 7. The Importance of Good SEO Joomla! Templates
      1. Finding the right template for your site
      2. What to look for in SEO templates
      3. Why validation matters
        1. Why you should look at code positioning
        2. Leave your tables behind
      4. Choosing between free and commercial templates
        1. Another problem with free templates
        2. Why go for commercial templates?
      5. What does usability have to do with SEO
        1. How to make your site sticky
        2. Headlines and typography
      6. Going for fixed or fluid?
        1. Display font changes for bigger or smaller text
        2. Why use fast templates
      7. Summary
    13. 8. Why Speed is Important in SEO
      1. Finding your slowdowns
        1. Using OctaGate for insight
        2. YSlow is what you need
      2. Using the cache function of Joomla!
        1. Set the caching for your modules
        2. Optimize your server settings
        3. Caching outside Joomla!
      3. Optimizing CSS and Javascript
        1. Looking at drawbacks and warnings
        2. Optimizing your CSS files
        3. Combining CSS files
        4. Doing easy file path optimization
      4. Looking for errors in log files
      5. Improving your images
        1. Resizing your images
        2. Using the right program for the job
        3. Naming your files with keywords in mind
        4. Using the on page size parameters
        5. Using Caption, Alt, and Title
      6. Summary
    14. 9. Tracking and Tracing to Improve Your Web Site
      1. Looking at your options
        1. Using your own separate AWStats
        2. Getting your statistics for free
          1. The Alexa web site information
        3. Getting free site analysis from StatCounter and Google Analytics
        4. Looking at your StatCounter stats
        5. Don't count your own visits
        6. Looking at StatCounter information and graphs
        7. How to analyze Google Analytics
          1. Filtering out your static IP address visits
          2. Excluding your visits from a IP dynamic address
          3. Getting the big picture of traffic
            1. Visitors overview
          4. What to look for by numbers
          5. Learning more of you traffic sources
          6. Reading more about your Keywords
            1. Don't see a keyword pattern
          7. Structure and content analysis
            1. Site Overlay
        8. How to select a different time span
          1. Joomla! statistics
            1. Joomla! statistics
      2. Summary
    15. 10. How to get Incoming Links
      1. Do you want to use paid incoming links?
      2. Helping people helps you with link building
      3. Commenting done the right way
        1. Finding places to comment
        2. Looking back at Alexa
      4. Creating your own linking empire
        1. Google Sites
        2. Blogger
        3. Squidoo
        4. HubPages
        5. WordPress
          1. Blogging on WordPress and your ranking
          2. Digging deeper into WORDPRESS.COM blogs
          3. Using free blogging services
      5. How to minimize your blog writing time
        1. Using your best content for link building
        2. Writing articles for links
      6. Learning how to ask for a link
        1. Knowing what to include in your link request
      7. Summary
    16. A. A Joomla! Case Study in SEO
      1. Choosing the niche
        1. Picking a domain name
      2. Setting up the Joomla! 1.5 base installation
        1. Installing the SEF patch and sh404SEF component
        2. Installing a good Joomla! SEO template
      3. Naming the sections and categories
      4. Building the menus
        1. The main menu
        2. Using images in blog layout
      5. Installing and configuring a sitemap
      6. Writing the content
        1. Using 404 to guide visitors
        2. Using the HTML title and meta tags
        3. Fast and furious, or slow going
      7. Using Google Webmaster tools
        1. Set your preferred URL
        2. Google's help on meta tag errors
        3. Analyze results, rinse, and repeat.
      8. Rounding it all up
    17. B. Joomla! robots.txt and .htaccess
      1. Making sense of robots.txt
        1. Setting your rules for robots
        2. Standard Joomla! robots.txt
        3. Improving the standard for image searchers
        4. A complete example
      2. Learn to love your .htaccess file
        1. The basics
        2. The good and the bad
        3. Solving the most common problems
        4. Some common problems
        5. .htaccess extras
        6. Final thoughts on 301 redirects
          1. Redirection to a new domain
        7. Working examples for your site
          1. Standard Joomla! .htaccess
          2. FollowSymLinks set Off
          3. FollowSymLinks set Off RewriteBase On
          4. Basic sh404SEF SEF basic .htaccess standard
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