SEO TIPS: Understanding Joomla

There are piles upon piles of platforms available for users to choose from when they build their online presence, and Joomla is one of them. Joomla has both strengths and weaknesses – not unlike any other platform. Joomla is reputed as being one of the most search engine friendly, but it isn’t always as reputed as being very user friendly. At least not as easy as some of the other plug and go platforms or even WordPress. This brings up a question of whether it is right for you as a user.

One of the biggest perks of Joomla is that it is SEF. Although there are many different reasons why SEO experts might prefer Joomla over other SEO platforms, the main one is this:  Joomla comes with SEF as one of its add on components. SEF stands for Search Engine Friendly, and is what can make optimizing your website a much easier job. This, however, does not necessarily mean that you are getting that feature if you don’t know what you are doing, have a good guide through it or spend time going through tutorial after tutorial.

Here’s another piece of information that you need to know – this isn;t free. That’s right, you have to pay for it. The SEF Advance feature is not free; if enabled, you will have to pay a fee. This can be considered a worthwhile investment, and should be budgeted as part of your websites SEO expenses – but don’t jump the gun. Before you pay the fee for the SEF Advance feature, make sure that your hosting has all the required configurations and that your hosting provider supports the feature – otherwise you are wasting your money. Again, if you have an SEO that doesn’t know this, send them packing because you have an incompetent masquerading as an SEO and you’re wasting your money on them.

When you first install Joomla, this SEF feature is not enabled and this is one of those little hiccups that not everyone realizes. You would think this would be an automatic, but it’s not. There are even people that consider themselves pros about Joomla that can’t even figure this out – they assume it is am automatic feature. If you are dealing with an SEO that doesn’t know this, get a new SEO because you’re wasting your money on them.

If you have a real SEO service provider, they will be able to advise you on the SEF feature if you don’t quite understand its usefulness and importance. This is one reason you should hire an experienced team to handle your website’s SEO – in addition to their speed and experience overall, they will have up to date information on all the latest SEO strategies and all the latest tools available in the market. You’re paying for their knowledge. Be advised that if you have an SEO trying to sell you on Joomla and they don’t know these basic ins and outs, you need to look for someone else.

As far as SEO is concerned you should go with an established company that can show examples of websites they have worked on as well as ranking,  traffic and conversion rates for the same. Pay attention to their actual history, and talk to people that have used them and can attest to their success. If their own site is buried on page 10 of the SERPs, how can they show you good results with your own site?