Why Joomla! seo is not enough?

Let’s take the following scenario: suppose you’re a Joomla! webdesigner and you create websites on a daily basis. When finishing the website, the most important on-page seo factors - meta descriptions, titles, headings are not well optimized.
Moreover, the site has duplicate content issues.

The website isn’t Joomla! seo ready.

Let’s see what are the common seo problems with Joomla! websites and how can you solve these issues.

1. No unique meta data

By default, all Joomla! pages have defined the same metadata in the Global Configuration “Joomla! - the dynamic portal engine and content management system”, causing duplicate meta description and keywords.

Best practices:

Each meta description must be unique and accurately reflect the page’s content.

How to fix it?

Step 1. Delete the default meta data from the Global Configuration
Step 2. Install the seo extension for Joomla! - RSSeo!
Step 3. Crawl the website with RSSeo!
Step 4. Add unique meta description and meta keywords for each Joomla! page using the RSSeo! extension - see the “Pages” tab.

2. You can not add meta description and meta keywords on each Joomla! page

Joomla! by default doesn’t allow you to add meta description and meta keywords on whatever page you want. For example, article listings will not offer the possibility to incorporate your own meta data. The global one will be used instead.

How to fix it?

Step 1. Use the RSSeo! “Crawler”: it will crawl the entire Joomla! website and index all the pages, including the menu items.
Step 2. Head to the “Pages” tab and set unique meta descriptions and meta keywords for each Joomla! page.
Learn how to optimize meta keywords and meta description for each Joomla! page with RSSeo!

3. Page title

In most cases, templates will set the page title to a combination formed out of the sitename and article title for example. If you are not OK with this, template adjustments will have to made... but why edit advanced PHP code when the answer can be found with a couple of clicks ?

Easier way:

Step 1. Crawl the Joomla! website using RSSeo! to index all the pages
Step 2. Head to the “Pages” tab and set unique titles for each Joomla! page.

4. No headings

Joomla! uses 2 heading classes: “contentheading” and “componentheading” instead of the well known headings tags h1, h2, …, h6 to emphasize text and important ideas.
Because the headings are an important on-page seo factor for search engines, you need to replace these classes with html tags.

How to fix it?

RSSeo! automatically replaces the “componentheading” and “contentheading” classes with the html tags h1, … h6 in the “Settings” tab.

5. Duplicate Content:

A lot of websites, not necessarily Joomla!, are dealing with duplicate content as a result of multiple URL-s displaying the same content.

How to fix it?

Step 1. Enable canonicalization with the RSSeo! System Plugin. ( choose the preferred domain, with or without www)
Watch this video to learn how to enable canonicalization for your Joomla! site with RSSeo!

Step 2. Setup 301 (permanent) redirects when users are accessing your site content trough multiple URL-s using RSSeo! >> the “Redirects” tab.

How to setup permanent redirect with RSSeo! ?

Step 3. Use the Parameter Handling section from Google Webmasters Tools to ask Google to ignore some URL parameters to reduce duplicate content and make the website more crawlable.

What other common seo problems have you encountered after creating a Joomla! website?

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