By default the Joomla SEF functionality is not enabled which basically mean’s the url’s displayed via your web site will look like this http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php?option=com_weblinks&Itemid=23.
There are a number of disadvantages in SEO terms for not enabling search engine friendly URL’s which include.
1) The url does not accurately reflect the Meta title, description or the content included in your news item, menu item or component.
2) One of the many factors in getting ranked by the search engines is to ensure your keywords are included in the url’s and they clearly reflect your meta description and content.
How do I enable SEF
Complete the following steps to enable search engine friendly URL’s for Joomla.
1) Confirm that your web hosting company support’s Apache and mod_rewrite.
( most web hosting providers do support this functionality )
2) Access your web host using an FTP client like smartftp.
3) Navigate to the root directory or Joomla installation directory.
4) Select the htaccess.txt file and rename it to .htaccess
5) Now Access the Joomla administrator console
6) Select the Global Configuration item.
7) Select the SEO tab
8 ) Enable Search Engine Friendly URLs
9) A popup box will now appear to confirm you have renamed the htaccess.txt to .htaccess
10) When you view your web the URL’s will now look like http://www.yourdomain.com/content/view/1/2/ or http://www.yourdomain.com/Section_Name/Categoryname/Item_Name/
SEF Advance
SEF Advance is developed by one of the core Joomla development team called Emir Sakic and is a commercial search engine friendly URL component which basically compliments the existing Joomla SEF to bring additional functionality and control over your URL’s. It also enhances your chances of achieving a higher ranking position across Google, Yahoo, MSN.
We also need to consider content, meta tag’s ( h1/h2 tags, bold and italic) description, keywords, linking strategy, web design ,keyword density, domain name all of which play an important role in search engine optimisation of a Joomla based web application
What are the benefits of using SEF Advance.
1) SEF advance provides you with more control and functionality to manage your URL’s.
2) It produces meaningful keywords within the URL’s for your components, menu items and content items.
3) Includes functionality to manage your URL’s based on Long URLs, Lower case ,Unique item’s and URL Alias
4) Including your keyword’s and providing the search engine’s with URL descriptions which clearly reflects your content and meta descriptions, can improve your chances of achieving a high ranking position across the search engines.
Before we install SEF Advance the url’s will look like http://www.yourdomain.com/Section_Name/Categoryname/Item_Name/
After you install and configure the component you can generate url’s to look like
http://www.yourdomain.com/The_News/Search_Engine_SEO_Articles/Keyword_Density.html
