Setting Up Search Engine Friendly URL’s in Joomla (SEF URL’s)
Setting up Search Engine Friendly URL’s in Joomla is an absolute must if you want to get the most out of your Joomla site. It’s one of the first things I do when setting up any new site and will help you get more visitors from search engines and improve the likelihood that people will link back to your articles – simply because the link looks a lot more attractive, is shorter and less cumbersome.
Most importantly search engines tend to rank content with a search engine friendly URL more highly due to the keywords that are contained in the URL. If you look at the URL of this very page you will see:
blog.joomlabear.com/setting-up-search-engine-friendly-urls-joomla-sef/
This URL tells Google, and other search engines, that the page is most likely about a number of things, such as; Search Engine Friendly URL’s, SEF and Joomla. This reinforces the other primary on-page factors Google looks at, the page title tag and content.
Another very nice side-effect of a SEF URL is that when somebody copies and pastes your link into a blog or forum they give you a link back with keywords in the URL. This is a big bonus, and something that will be explored again in a future blog post.
In this video I show you as quickly as possible how to setup basic SEF within Joomla (yeah I can’t help rambling about little details – It is a long video again, and I’ve got a slight cold, sorry!)
If you want to skip straight to the quick SEF URL checklist and resource list this is under the video.
Quick check list to get SEF URLS working in Joomla
- Access htaccess.txt in your root directory and rename it to .htaccess
- Visit your Joomla Global Configuration and in SEO settings set all options to ‘yes’ and save.
To access your root directory you can either use FTP or your web host’s file manager, as I have done in the video demonstration.
FTP access is something I consider essential for anyone serious about running a Joomla site, or any website for that matter – it still surprises me how many Joomla users I meet who have no idea what this is or how easy it is to setup. With FTP you can access your Joomla installation and manipulate files directly – you can upload and download files, rename, change permissions, etc.
If you want to access your site with FTP then here are a couple of quick tools I recommend:
Firefox – A free web browser – from our web stats I know that more than 50% of people visiting Joomlabear already have Firefox – this message is for the other 50% – Get Firefox here!
FireFTP is a free plugin for Firefox that lets you FTP into your website directory from within your web browser, as seen on TV in the video above. Get FireFTP here (Install Firefox first, then add this plugin).
To access your site with FTP you only need the following:
- your FTP address, usually ftp.your-domain-name.com
- A username, your hosting account login usually works
- A password, your hosting account password usually works.
If in doubt contact your web host for these details.
If you prefer the file manager option, Blue Host offer very affordable and reliable hosting and cPanel can save you a lot of time with many different admin tasks. You can also get a free Joomlabear template membership with any new Blue Host account – more details on this offer and Joomla hosting with Blue Host here.
Joomla SEF – An Amazing Support Story
I’ve just written the statement below as a review on extensions.joomla.org, but thought I would also post this here because I’m so impressed with the support I just received, the quality of the extension, and I want the JoomlaBear community to know about it.
I also want to give you all a heads-up about what I consider to be the new heavy-weight Joomla SEF extension that you should consider using over the other big names in SEF URL’s.
I’m switching to AceSEF because it’ faster and the support is amazing – It’s the type of support we give out at JoomlaBear, a willingness to get in and sort things out for our users. And this type of support is rare.
Below is my review of AceSEF:
I just had the best support experience I have ever had with anything related to Joomla. I contacted JoomACE via live chat to ask a couple of pre-sales questions – mainly to find out if AceSEF would be able to handle everything I needed for a Joomla/K2 installation.
A polite and courteous individual helped me through all my questions via Live Chat – and very promptly too.
So I went ahead and setup AceSEF and found that a feature I had wanted for SEF and K2 was not working the way I wanted – Please note, not a fault with AceSEF but a special requirement for my site – a URL format that would not be typical for most users (I’m pedantic about these things 
So I got back on the live chat with JoomACE and within minutes their developers were logging into my Joomla installation and adding a new feature to the extension! AMAZING SERVICE!
I can’t recommend this extension highly enough – I’ve used sh404SEF on over 100 Joomla sites that I have built in the past 3 years – But I’m switching to AceSEF – It appears to run faster, and the support… need I say anymore?
Final note – I’ve spent days testing various SEF extensions and hacking the sh404SEF extension for K2 – nothing worked properly – AceSEF solved all my K2 SEF issues out of the box and is the BEST option if you are using K2 and Joomla – in my opinion.
Give it a whirl.
Note: I paid $19 for the professional version of AceSEF that allows me to remove the attribution link – but you can get the same full featured SEF extension for FREE if you don’t mind your pages showing a link back to the AceSEF site. If in doubt try the free version, you won’t be disappointed. sh404SEF is now a paid extension too and the only free option is the Joomla core SEF. Joomla’s built in SEF is fine if you are not doing anything fancy with your Joomla site but if you want to run a component like a shopping cart or forum then you will want Search Engine Friendly URL’s for these as well.
AceSEF Control Panel Screenshot
SEO, Social Media and Getting Keyword Targeted Backlinks
Chances are if you have stopped by this blog you are probably looking for some kind of Joomla template. You can find our templates by visiting the home page.
Today’s post however is something a little off the beaten track – I’m going to talk briefly about Joomla 1.5 SEO, Social Media and the best option to drive more traffic to your site with less effort.
The inspiration for this post comes from my friend Griz who has just published an excellent article on SEO and Social Media, and the summary of this comes down to one thing – Get Keyword Targeted Backlinks.
I’ve been a follower of Griz’s blog for nigh on 2 years now and I can say from experience that his methods work. I have put into practice much of what Griz teaches and have seen the results.
At this point you should really go and read the article yourself, if you have not already, because Griz is incredibly insightful, and eloquent to boot. However I will summarize briefly – the crux of it all is don’t waste your time on social traffic. At least not if you want a steady stream of traffic that converts into sale or leads.
Social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc are incredibly over hyped at the moment – yes they provide a nice way for people to interact and share photo’s etc – but when people go looking for a product to buy, for example a Joomla Template, how do you think they do this?
They don’t typically log into facebook and ask all their high school buddies who they haven’t seen for 10 years where the best place to buy a template is – they get on Google and they type in the keywords.
And how do you rank your site highly in Google?
Again you should see my friend Griz on this topic - but it generally boils down to how many links you have back to your site and the quality of those links.
You do want to get your on-page optimization correct, and I have written a post on this that I linked to at the top of this page with the anchor text Joomla 1.5 SEO – this should give me double indexing in Google (again see Griz). There are some extensions that will help you get the right page titles, H1 tags, etc – and you do want relevant content – but beyond this it’s all about the links.
If you want to talk to me directly about link strategy I am always happy to chat. Leave a comment or use the contact form.
