SEO Step-By-Step Guide – 179. Joomla SEO Considerations

Most webmasters consider Joomla as the most search engine friendly content management system. Joomla undoubtedly is one of the most user friendly content management system and we can create websites with a number of features. It also comes with a number of built in modules. One of the useful modules of Joomla is Search Engine Friendly URLs. Using the global configuration we can create search engine friendly URLs for all the links. Though it is a very welcome feature, implementation of this feature is not without glitches.

When we implement SEF function in Joomla some of the modules do not work or they lead to 404 errors. We will have to manually create a number of pages using the Menu management tool and this can be frustrating. This makes our website behave in an erratic way. One of the examples that we can readily give for this issue is the Poll function. If you have already installed Joomla for one of your websites, you will realize that as soon as you enable the SEF function, your Poll module does not work. Neither vote nor results links will get you to the right pages. You will get the custom 404 error page. There are some tweaks available to get around this problem but we should look for more holistic solution for the entire operation of the site and not just feature by feature tweaks. Moreover, not everyone will be capable of implementing such tweaks and fixes. It may require some programming skills to overcome some of the problems. All these would force us to disable the SEF feature.

This is one of the major SEO considerations of Joomla. However, Joomla allows us to create meta description and meta keywords for each page we create. This is a very SEO friendly feature. We will also be able to create unique page titles for each page. All these make our search engine optimization efforts fast and easy. Site navigation and menu options are limited with Joomla. Creating search engine friendly navigational menu poses an additional challenge with Joomla.

There are many Joomla templates available on the web. You need to carefully choose your template. Joomla has become notorious for its slow loading speeds. This can be a serious SEO glitch. You need to make sure that the template you use loads fast and it should not put you in to a disadvantageous position in this regard.

It is best to get some professional help in terms of setting up your site in Joomla. You will need professional help at least to fine tune your websites functions. While adding additional plug-ins make sure that your sites online performance is not hindered in any way.

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