SEO For Joomla Sites

Today various platforms are available for web design. Like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla or any other CMS. Here I am going to discuss about SEO with Joomla platform.

As per my point of view, Joomla is not Search Engine friendly. Its default URL creation it’s really horrible. It might create duplicate content in several ways.

Default URLs of Joomla can be reframed as Search engine friendly Urls. Below is one of the plug-ins which will convert Joomla’s complicated and non search engine friendly URLs into static search engine friendly URls.

http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,2380/Itemid,35/

Above URL plug-in will solve the main problems that Joomla creates by pointing so many URLs at the same content.

Default structure of Joomla page title is: “SiteName – PageName”

This crates problem when there is long site name and long page name. Crawler can count only few characters while displaying results in SERP. Because of that sometimes it may happen your important world don’t get chance to get visibility or to get priority in SERP.

To resolve this problem, just do one required change in the joomla.php file (which is located at includes/joomla.php).

Change below code

$this->_head['title'] = $title ? $GLOBALS['mosConfig_sitename'] . ' - '. $title : $GLOBALS['mosConfig_sitename'];

Into

$this->_head['title'] = $title && $title != "Home" ? $title : $GLOBALS['mosConfig_sitename'];

I got this solution from one of the forum, just try it once, it will definitely help you.

One Way Linking - Two Way Linking - Three Way Linking

One way linking:
Getting link back to you site from another site is called one way linking, in which you are only putting link in other site, but not receiving that site link on your webpage.

For example:
Your site -- www.abc.com
Other site -- www.xyz.com

In one way linking, abc.com will place its link in xyz.com, and it will give you backlink. www.abc.com --> www.xyz.com

Two way linking:
Two way linking also called reciprocal linking, in which you have to give link back to all those site from which are getting link back.

For example:
Your site – www.abc.com
Other site – www.xyz.com

In two way linking, abc.com place its link in xyz.com and same way xyz.com place its link in abc.com. It like give and take relationship

www.abc.com --> www.xyz.com
www.abc.com <-- www.xyz.com    

Three way linking:
The webmasters who own multiple sites are basically involved in three way linking. They used to get link back through his own websites.

For example: One has 3 websites.
www.site1.com
www.site2.com
www.site3.com

Now site1 place its link on site2, site2 place its link on site3, site3 place its link on site1. This technique is called three way linking.

Why one way linking?
One way linking is most preferable and ethical technique. I strongly recommend going for one way linking program rather than two ways or three way linking.

Advantages of one way linking

1. The most easy to create one way link.
2. Less time consuming.
3. More effective rather than two way or three way linking.
4. Ethical way of link building.

Why not two linking?

1. Two way linking (link exchange) have few disadvantages as listed below.
2. Search engine can easily identify link exchanged links, they give high preference to two way links.
3. Its not sure how long you link will be visible on other website, they can remove it any time without information.
4. You can’t control the placement of your reciprocal link, other site can place your link anywhere in their whole site.
5. Reciprocal link might be coming from the page which itself contains thousand of out going links which reduce the quality of your back link from that site.
6. Links to other website on your website, directs traffic to other sites from your site.

Why not three way linking?
Most people appealing in 3 way linking are doing it with the express goal to control search results. This usually means they are trying to make automated bots think their ideas are better than they are, and are willing to do deceptive things to do it.

There are legitimate reasons to do three way links, but most of the three way link partnerships I have been offered are not worth.

The real problem is that if their two sites are not connected and they are primarily working to benefit the link popularity of their main site then it does not really hurt them if the site linking to you gets banned. If those sites get banned then they parse no link popularity to you.

In doing this webmasters can agressively market their high margin websites while keeping them somewhat shielded from the dangerous effects of their aggressive promotion.

In fact many marketers might set up 20 or 30 or more secondary sites to change links with.

Negative On-page Factor

Below is the list of few important negative on page factors to keep in mind while creating website.

1. Text in graphical format rather than actual body text on web page.
2. Affiliate website.
3. Over optimization penalty – keyword stuffing, meta tag stuffing, over use of H1, H2, H3 etc.
4. Bad incoming links, link farming.
5. Redirection through refresh meta tag.
6. Google respond strictly for copyright violation.
7. Frequently content change.
8. Redirected and hidden linking
9. Search engines can’t able to read flash, provide html alternative.
10. Hidden text.
11. Gateway or Doorway pages generation
12. Spider face problem in indexing page in frame structure.
13. Duplicate contents.
14. Violation of HTML code.

Read positive on page factors to optimize the web site.

Google Search Engine Ranking Factor

Lot many different factors affect in on-page and off-page optimization to get high position in Google search engine result pages (SERP).

Some of them are very common to keep in mind while performing on-page optimization. It may give positive or negative effect if Google change their criteria. So its your duty to verify it before applying to your site.

Positive On-page Factor

1. Keyword in URL
2. Keyword in title tag
3. Keyword in meta tag description
4. Keyword in meta tag keyword
5. 5-20% (for all keywords) and 3-5% (for single keyword) keyword density in body
6. Use H1, H2, H3 for keywords
7. Keyword proximity (for 2+ keywords)
8. Keyword prominence
9. Keyword in alt text
10. Keyword in anchor text
11. All page must be connected to home page at max. by 2 clicks
12. Domain name extension does matter
13. File size must not exceed 100k
14. One or two hyphen in URL is not a problem, four or more hyphens is bad and creates spammy look, ten hyphens is spam for sure.
15. Keep updating pages regularly
16. Use minimum characters in URL, less than 100 is good. Less is even better.
17. Google like large sites but not supplement machine generated pages.
18. Old is gold. Google like old aged sites.
19. New pages on old sites will get fast reorganization.

What is Social Bookmarking? - How it works? - Benifites of Social Bookmarking - Top 10 Bookmarking sites

Social bookmarking is one of the most popular techniques to drive more traffic to your business. It attracts more people towards your business without spending money.

What is social bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is a process in which users tagged a website and save it for their later use. Users save website to web instead of saving it to web browser. So that they can see it online from any where they wish and also share it with their friends.

How social bookmarking works?

To join social bookmarking service is very easy. It’s one of the easiest ways to promote your business around the world. One can share their bookmarks with their friends.

The only required thing to join social bookmarking is an ID, password and an email address. One just needs to get registered and update the profile by adding important information regarding business.

The most important thing is, when you asked to add tags after bookmarking any site, just add your targeted keywords without fail. That will help other to reach to your site if they are looking for same kind of business which you have bookmarked.

More over one can also bookmark other sites except their own business site. Like, if someone reaches to impressive website and would like to tag it for future use then he/she can bookmark that site also in his/her account.

After bookmarking your business site in any of the bookmarking portal, just share it with your friends. If they like it, they will also share with their friends like wise the chain will continue and your business will get more exposure on web. Even you can start commenting to your bookmarks to gain more focus of other users.

Benefits of social bookmarking

There are few key benefits of social bookmarking activity as listed below:

• One can access their bookmarked websites from any machine, unlike bookmarking on web browsers.
  
  
• Get RSS ping as soon as link added to bookmarking site. No need to wait for crawler to visit your site.
  

You can search your needed web page on bookmarking site rather than search engine, you will have perfect result just in minute with other users voting or reviews or comments.

List of top 10 social bookmarking sites

1. Technorati.com
2. Twitter.com
3. Delicious.com
4. Digg.com
5. Reddit.com
6. Stumbleupon.com
7. Mixx.com
8. Propeller.com
9. Squidoo.com
10. Spicypage.com
    

Bad SEO Techniques

We all know there is no use of site if no body aware about it. That is why SEO comes in picture. It is obvious site get more hits which comes higher in search engine rank than those sites which are several pages back. There are few techniques to focus on for getting higher position in search engine. Few of them are not good as per search engine algorithms, which we called “Bad SEO Techniques” as listed below.

• Hidden Text.
  The text which has same color as the background is considered as the hidden text. The user can not able to see that kind of text but the bot can see it. One should not stuff excess keywords in such a way, this considered as bad technique.
  

• Link Buying.
  Buying a link is one of the most popular techniques. Because of its immediate result people attracts to follow it. But believe me, it’s very costly and at the end it’s not preferable. Google detects purchase links posted under “sponsors links” label, Google mark those links and considered them useless links.
  
  
• Cloaking.
  Cloaking is a technique in which spider can see different contents than user. Search engines don’t like if some one tries to fool them. Site might get banned if it follows cloaking.
  
  
• Duplicate Contents.
  Search engine robots don’t like to go through same contents 50-100 times. They would like to crawl different content every time they crawl any of web page. When robot detects duplicate content, any one of all those can be indexed. Other pages won’t get ranked.
  
  
• Link Exchange.
  Robots really hate exchanging links. In early days, people used to follow this technique, and even today few people are still following it. It’s also known as reciprocal linking and two way linking. It won’t hurt site or wont banned site, but it won’t give any benefit either.
  
  
• Keyword Stuffing.
  On-page optimization is one of the most important factors. Avoid use of excessive keywords in your site to get high rank in SERP. If your site is stuff with keywords, then it would not be appreciated by users as well as robots. It won’t ban site, but it affects users trust rank.
  
  
• Link Farms.
  Don’t go for this technique at all. Say bye to link farming technique for ever. Google knows who follow this technique, if they are not found yet, they will be caught soon. The site may get penalized or may get banned. It will hurt page rank badly.
  
  
• Use of Session IDs in URL.
  Search engines prefer static web pages. When there is session ID at the end of URL, search engine considers that page as different page when it crawls again that same page. And none of the version of the page will get ranked. If you want to boost page rank of your site, avoid using session ID.
  
  
• Flash Implementation.
  Falsh makes your site very attractive, but using flash on site is useless and page rank killing technique according to search engine algorithms. Search engine loves text the most.
  
  
• Use of Scripting.
  Any of the scripting language is widely use in many of the websites. Some times it’s highly required to use scripting, but the problem is, robots don’t know how to read scripts. So the links put under scripting will never get chance to get indexed or crawl.
  
  
• Doorway Page Generation.
  Doorway pages are mainly designed for search engines not for users. It’s also known as portal pages, jump pages, entry pages, gateway pages etc. When user clicks on doorway page, it immediately redirects to another targeted web page, which is created for users.
  
  

Above all are bad search engine optimization techniques. Stay away to get long life ranking results on search engine result page.

Organic and Inorganic SEO

Organic SEO
It is a natural way of getting top ranking in SERP (search engine result page) without paying any amount to search engines for the placement. This is more preferable and trustworthy method of securing high rank on SERP.

Benefits of Organic Search Engine Optimization:

• Usually normal user’s clicks more on organically optimized sites.
• Results are long lasting on search engine result pages.
• Organic results are more trustworthy than inorganic results.
• Organic service is cheaper than inorganic services.
  

Ways to Get Organic/Natural Results:

• Analyze keywords.
• Content optimization.
• Site promotion.
• Meta content optimization.
• Image optimization.
• URL optimization.
  

My experience says, organic SEO is the best way to follow. Many of you are following the same techniques to optimize site but might not aware that it’s organic SEO.

Inorganic SEO
It includes usually paid services such as PPC – Pay Per Click, CPC – Cost Per Click, CPA – Cost Per Acquisition, banner ads, classifieds etc. This service is very expensive. But those who wants immediate results, they can go for inorganic service.

Benefits of Inorganic Search Engine Optimization:

• Results in sort period.
• Site gains more visibility.
• More traffic in sort time period.
• Unlike organic SEO, inorganic SEO gets more effective result in very sort time.
  

Inorganic SEO technique is quite risky; as its cost will be count as per clicks, webmaster must remain alert from competitors, they might click on your site unnecessarily to force you pay more. There is a solution to block those users, but for that you must be aware that they clicked you unnecessarily.

If you don’t have enough money to spend, it’s better to follow organic SEO technique which is far better than inorganic SEO.

On page and Off-page Optimization

Site optimization is done in two ways. On page optimization and off page optimization.

On Page Optimization:
It includes all the factors which should be taken care while building website. Below listed are important points must be taken care during web design.

• Analyze keywords.
• Construct title using keywords.
• Properly use of keywords in meta description.
• Use of keyword in domain name.
• Image optimization.
• Maintain keyword Density to 4% - 5%.
• Well mannered navigation from home page.
• Well optimized content.
  

Below listed are important points which should not be followed while designing website.

• Keyword stuffing.
• Invisible content.
• Hidden text/links.
• Doorway pages.
• Duplicate Content.
• Link farming.
• Clocking.
  

Off Page Optimization:
Basically it is related to promotion of site on internet. Various techniques are available for site promotion.

Below is the list of techniques of promotion:

• Directory submission.
• Search engine submission.
• Forum posting.
• Blog posting.
• Article submission.
• Press releases.
• Classified posting.
• Social bookmarking.
  

These are the two ways of optimizing site and getting high rank in SERP.