Optimizare site-uri web

So you have a great design, great content and even a few links to your Joomla site but it still seems that you aren't going nowhere in the search engines. Well, there is a reason: although Joomla is a great CMS it isn't that good with SEO. Let's see what we can do so Joomla will become the Search Engines' best friend:

1. Enable SEF urls: this is almost critical for good rankings. Even though search engines are very good at indexing dynamic urls many webmasters have seen better results when using search engine friendly urls.

Here is how to enable it: log in the administrator backend and look for the "Global Configuration" icon. Now click it and in the upper right part you must enable "Search Engine Friendly URLs". Also, if your site runs on an Apache server than you must rename the "htaccess.txt" file to ".htaccess".

Although Joomla's built-in SEF component is rather limited the output is still seen very well by the Search Engines. But it gets even better with the next module.

2. OpenSEF ( tinyurl.com/2oeogw ): this the best SEF component for Joomla. It works great, doesn't slow down your site and is very configurable. Some of OpenSEF's features:

- automatic rewrite of all urls
- ability to define how SEF urls will look based on section, category and article title
- define 404 Error url
- unlimited number of alias URL mappings
- possibility to create and update XML sitemaps, usable by Google, Yahoo and MSN
- many more...

And it does all this without modifying Joomla's core files!

3. Put up a sitemap ( tinyurl.com/3y9bz6 ): in case you don't want or can't use the OpenSEF component you should create a XML sitemap to help the search engines index your site easier. It is integrated with other built-in components so contacts, newsfeeds and weblinks are supported.

4. Use metatags: this is very important if you want good rankings and many clicks from the search engines. The keywords metatag isn't used by the search engines anymore, but using the description is a very good idea.

The best use for the description metatag actually is to influence visitors to click more - leaving the text excerpt that is shown up to the search engines is not the best idea in the world.

5. Ping module ( tinyurl.com/y8m5aa ): pinging is usually done only by blogs, but it can be used to great success with normal sites too! Install this component and after each time you write a new piece of content click "Syndicate" in the "Components" menu to ping Technorati.

6. Technorati tags ( tinyurl.com/2nkcqt ): this plugin adds tags at the end of your content, tags that are linked to Technorati. This way, when you ping Technorati with the ping module I've told you about before it will help you categorize the search engines.

7. Trackback module ( tinyurl.com/2wvj7l ): this is another thing we can pick up from blogs to help us get higher in the search engines. If you write about blogs this can help you get a few links. Think of it as a new form of link exchange - you place a link from a page on your site to another page on another site and you get a link back.

Florin Costache is a Romanian webmaster that writes on search engine optimization (optimizare). He also provides Romanian site owners with top notch seo services (optimizare site)!

Wordpress is one of the most seo friendly publishing systems today, but to get the best results you still need to tinker with it a little bit!

So let's see what steps you need to take to modify Wordpress so it will turn into a true seo CMS:

1. Permalinks structure: the default structure is no good at all - although search engines have no problem in indexing pages that have urls with variables, it's very clear that they prefer clean urls.

The best results I have seen are when permalinks structure is set to "%postname%", and only that. This is something to keep in mind for any site you build, Wordpress or any other CMS.

2. Related posts plugin ( tinyurl.com/262ao4 ): this is good for both your visitors and the search engines. It automatically finds related posts and displays them in a list - very useful when visitors arrive on a page looking for something and they get more info on the same subject.

3. Metatags plugin ( tinyurl.com/2fxota ): you simply can't let the search engines handle the text your visitors see in the search engine result pages. You can influence your click-through rate very much just by handling this one aspect of your copy.

As for the search engine optimization aspect - the description metatag can move you up a spot or two when you are in the first 5 with small to medium competition. And it only takes a minute!

4. Sitemap Generator Plugin ( tinyurl.com/2zy4nx ): for a small site this wouldn't be a problem, but when your page count goes over 50 indexing and maintaining a sitemap the old fashioned way just isn't viable.

This plugin is actually more valuable because it creates both an XML sitemap (like those used by Google) and a normal, HTML sitemap for your visitors.

Some of its features include: support for multi-level categories and pages, category/page exclusion, permalink support, what order to list items in and many other options.

5. List of ping sites ( tinyurl.com/2ljwrb ): put this great list in the Options -> Writing -> Update Services box and every time you write a new post 56 sites will link to you. This is a great way to ensure a quick indexing of every post on your site and, given enough time, get quite a few backlinks with the text anchor you choose.

Some optimizers say that blog and ping doesn't work anymore, but I do this everyday - it takes next to no time and the benefits are visible.

6. Technorati ( technorati.com ) is another easy way to make your Wordpress blog known, especially to other bloggers. Still, its biggest benefit is categorizing and indexing your content.

Create an account, claim your blog and then fill in the details in the blog settings page: write up a good description and then in the "tags" section fill in the keywords that represent your blog. Try to fill all the boxes but don't spam. If you grabbed the list from no. 5 you'll have all your posts listed in Technorati, and you're going to see the benefits really soon.

Apply these tips and soon you'll be on your way to more traffic and better ranking!

Florin Costache is a Romanian webmaster that writes on search engine optimization (optimizare). He also provides Romanian site owners with top notch seo services (optimizare site)!

Let's face the facts: search engine optimization, for the most part, is hellishly boring. Doing the research, making the on-page changes, writing content and syndicating it is all tedious and time consuming. Fortunately I am not the only one, and like-minded web developers have come up with some great, and best of all, free seo tools.

Let's have a look at some of the best tools for any optimizer:

1. 7search.com Advertiser Tools ( www.tinyurl.com/2wj5ac ): as always, keyword research is the basis of any seo project - you have to get the right keywords or your work will be useless.

This is one of the best free keyword research tools out there, and although the traffic numbers aren't accurate, their related searches suggestions are the best!

2. Back Link Analyzer ( www.tinyurl.com/86hk8 ): this free link analyzer, courtesy of Aaron Wall, is an absolute jewel! The best way to use this is to actually spy on your competition and see where they are getting all that link juice from.

Here is some of the info that Back Link Analyzer can gather from Google, Yahoo, MSN and/or AllTheWeb on the backlinks for the query: anchor text and type (one-way or reciprocal) of the incoming link, the title of the page that has the link and the url that the link points to, ip address of the domain and much more!

3. Hub Finder ( www.tinyurl.com/9kpd3 ): yet another amazing tool from Aaron Wall, and this one is even open source! Like me, you've probably found out by now that it's a good idea to get links from the same places that your competition has.

Well this is the perfect tool: you input a keyword or keyphrase, which search engine to use (I recommend Yahoo) and the number of sites that each hub must have in common (between 2 and 10). Wait for the results and then try to get links from each of the sites.

4. SeoQuake ( www.tinyurl.com/2pzemv ): this plugin for Firefox is essential for any optimizer. When active it can be set to show any number of parameters including:

a) for Google: PageRank, number of links pointing to the url, number of pages in its index and cache date;
b) for Yahoo: same as for Google, but with links for domain and link in Yahoo Directory;
c) for MSN: the same as for Google;
d) number of links in DMOZ, Digg, del.icio.us and Technorati;
e) Alexa rank;
f) WebArchive age;
... and many more!

5. Free Monitor for Google ( www.tinyurl.com/85atz ): although it's only for Google, this ranking monitor does the job it is supposed to do. It works with all regional versions of Google flawlessly and it supports multiple keywords/keyphrases per url.

Bonus point: 6. The Tattler ( www.tinyurl.com/2ma5pg ): although I usually prefer Back Link Analyzer for link analysis, sometimes I need to look at all the data without the fluff.

One of the features I like that I like in Tattler is the possibility to show how many links you have from a certain domain - this is really nice to find out what sites your competitors find most valuable to them in terms of seo.

Florin Costache is the webmaster of Optimizare, a Romanian search engine optimization blog. He also offers seo services (servicii optimizare) to Romanian clients.

Florin Costache offers seo services (servicii optimizare) through his seo blog called Optimizare; a very good resource for optimizers is his seo web directory (director web).

Are your seo efforts at a standstill while everyone else seems to be getting results? Maybe it's time to take some tips from the guys that know the limits of optimization and the benefits of playing in the grey area.

So let's see what black hats do to get traffic: