There is something about Content Management System that is fundamentally not friendly with Search Engines. That is the default URL of the CMS contains dynamic variables. What I mean is that for a normal webpage say www.mywebsite.com/about_us.html, what would appear for a CMS would be www.mywebsite.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18&Itemid=2.
What the hell is that long string of weird stuffs!?
Oh well, you can look at it this way: www.mywebsite.com/about_us.html is actually referring to a file called about_us.html on the website www.mywebsite.com. That's how traditional websites are built. One file by one file.
Onto the modern technology highway, CMS does not really create files for its web pages. It stores its web pages in database so there are actually no files for your web pages. Therefore, when you are requesting a web page from the CMS, the URL is a weird string of www.mywebsite.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18&Itemid=2 where the string actually translated to load up the web page id number 18 from the database to show to the user.
Ok so what does this has to do with SEO? There are two things that matter. Firstly, the words in the URL contributes to your ranking in the search engine! For example, if someone is searching for "dog diet", the URL www.website.com/dog_diet.html will have a higher ranking than www.website.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=18 (all things equal). Oh no! CMS is really going to have a hard time in SEO.
The second thing is that bots and spiders might not go to links that contain dynamic variables as they could be an endless loop of inter-links. You can don't care about the technically of it but just know that the search engines dislike URL like this www.website.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=18 and may not even index your web pages! Now CMS is really really going down in SEO.
So what's there to talk about for Joomla SEO? Oh well, technology is always such that if there's a problem, there's a solution. =) You can solve the URL problem easily by using this component called NuSEF. You can check it out here. Download the component and install it. This component does a very neat thing of rewriting all your URL from the ugly www.website.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=18 to www.website.com/dog_diet.html! How this component work can be quite technical and not much point to discuss in here. The point here is to let you understand the importance of a nice and meaningful URL and how to achieve it in Joomla.
Now Joomla websites can compete with other websites and you still get to enjoy the benefits of a CMS! Best of both worlds!
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Getting Indexed on Google, Yahoo and MSN
The most basic of all SEO is to get yourself indexed in the search engine database.
Basic concept: Getting indexed means making your website known to the search engine. Imagine a new website say www.mynewwebsite.com that is just created in the world. How in the world will Google, Yahoo, MSN or any other search engine know of the existence of this website? In fact, they won't know unless someone or something tells them. And when someone tells them of this new website (www.mynewwebsite.com), they will put it in their database and the website is now indexed.
How do you know if you are already indexed? To check if you are indexed in Google, go to Google.com, type in your website URL (ie. joomla-seo.blogspot.com) and check the search result. If your website appears in the search results, aloha! you are already indexed. If not, then you better follow the steps below to get yourself indexed. You can perform the same check for Yahoo, MSN and any other search engine.
So when you have a website, you will need to tell the search engines, you will need to get your website indexed. There are many ways to do it, here's some:
Basic concept: Getting indexed means making your website known to the search engine. Imagine a new website say www.mynewwebsite.com that is just created in the world. How in the world will Google, Yahoo, MSN or any other search engine know of the existence of this website? In fact, they won't know unless someone or something tells them. And when someone tells them of this new website (www.mynewwebsite.com), they will put it in their database and the website is now indexed.
How do you know if you are already indexed? To check if you are indexed in Google, go to Google.com, type in your website URL (ie. joomla-seo.blogspot.com) and check the search result. If your website appears in the search results, aloha! you are already indexed. If not, then you better follow the steps below to get yourself indexed. You can perform the same check for Yahoo, MSN and any other search engine.
So when you have a website, you will need to tell the search engines, you will need to get your website indexed. There are many ways to do it, here's some:
- Submit your url manually to the individual search engine.
To submit to Google, go to http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
To submit to Yahoo, go to http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
To submit to MSN Live, go to http://search.msn.com.sg/docs/submit.aspx
The simplest D-I-Y thing for every webmaster. - Put a link from an indexed website to your website. Especially if the website is a high-PR website, chances are that the bots and spiders will come to the website often and follow the link to get to your website. This is in fact one of the fastest way to get indexed.
- Alternatively, submitting your links to directories, forums and other websites will help getting your website indexed too. This principle works the same as point 2.
- For indexing in Google, you can submit your website through Google Sitemap at http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/. This is just another way of getting indexed.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
The Beginning of Joomla SEO and Web Design
Hi all!
Welcome to my blog on Singapore Joomla SEO and Web Design.
This blog is catered to all web design and SEO issues on the world's most popular content management system Joomla!.
A brief understanding about me: I am Steven Yap and I am running a Singapore web design company that specializes in Joomla websites. Why Joomla? We believe that every website should be manageable and scalable. And we believe that Joomla is one of the best platform to fulfill that requirement. Joomla can be elegantly simple to solve your day-to-day maintenance chores and yet sophisticated enough to allow you to develop and scale it to a mega super-duper functionality-rich website.
What you can expect from my blog: A developer cum businessman point-of-view to deploying Joomla. I will share with you my experiences and insights into using Joomla in the real-world and general web design lookouts and tips. Moreover, I will try to add some of my own sense of humor into it so that you will not find it too dry and technical. =)
This is my first-time blogging and I look forward to your feedbacks. Feel free to post any technical web-related questions to me and I will answer if I feel like it (it's my blog after all!).
Welcome to my blog on Singapore Joomla SEO and Web Design.
This blog is catered to all web design and SEO issues on the world's most popular content management system Joomla!.
A brief understanding about me: I am Steven Yap and I am running a Singapore web design company that specializes in Joomla websites. Why Joomla? We believe that every website should be manageable and scalable. And we believe that Joomla is one of the best platform to fulfill that requirement. Joomla can be elegantly simple to solve your day-to-day maintenance chores and yet sophisticated enough to allow you to develop and scale it to a mega super-duper functionality-rich website.
What you can expect from my blog: A developer cum businessman point-of-view to deploying Joomla. I will share with you my experiences and insights into using Joomla in the real-world and general web design lookouts and tips. Moreover, I will try to add some of my own sense of humor into it so that you will not find it too dry and technical. =)
This is my first-time blogging and I look forward to your feedbacks. Feel free to post any technical web-related questions to me and I will answer if I feel like it (it's my blog after all!).
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