Seo Joomla
2008
SEO for Joomla – How to configure using sh404SEF
I have seen a lot of people ask for instructions on how to setup and configure sh404SEF for their Joomla website. So here it is, my step by step guide to configure Joomla for SEO.
The article assumes that you already have a Joomla website setup and are familiar with how to install and configure extensions in Joomla.
sh404SEF is a must have component for any Joomla site, it is essential to create Search Engine Friendly urls which are very important for anyone wanting to get into Google,Yahoo or any of the other similar search engines.
Installation
Installation of this component is pretty straight forward, go to the install/uninstall page and install the sh404SEF package.
Joomla native SEO Configuration
Before configuring sh404SEF, the native SEO settings of Joomla need to be turned on. You can do this in the Global Configurations page on the top right corner.
If you are using a .htaccess file, you can turn on the mod-rewrite option as well. The easiest way to use the .htaccess file is to rename the htaccess.txt file that is provided with the default Joomla installation.
Once you have the SEO settings turned on you can test your urls and see if they look better. Although the SEO feature in Joomla makes the urls pretty, it still lacks a long ways as to how the urls should look like for search engines to pick them up.
That’s where the url re-writing components come into picture. One such component is the sh404sef by siliana. It’s the component I use for all my clients and my sites as well and its worked pretty good so far. And the best part is it free!! It has a lot of configuration settings to customize how the urls come out and did I mention its free!
sh404SEF Configuration for Joomla
When installed the component is disabled and once configured, its needs to be enabled. When you click on the sh404SEF menu item on the Component drop down list and you should get to this page.
The default display shows only basic settings, click on the Switch to extended display.
Click on the sh404SEF Configuration button and this page comes up.
Enable it by clicking on the On radio button and select all or whatever categories you want the url re-writing to be done as shown above.
In the Advanced tab, select the Rewriting mode for your site and save.
The component will ask if its ok to clear the cache. It will wipe out all the existing rewritten urls. Click on OK.
There you go, you can test your site with pretty urls now.
The best way to have all the urls re-written is to create a sitemap for the site and best way to do it is to go to http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/. You can create a sitemap for your site for up to 500 pages.
Good luck with your website and hope you have fun. Please comment and let me know if this helped you or if you have something added to the article.
About the Author
Ganesh Madireddy is an IT professional who specializes in creating small to medium scale web solutions using open source Content Management Systems and configuring them for Search Engine Optimization. He is also the webmaster for web-sites like Dealster. You can visit his web-site at 3rd Rock IT to find more tutorials on Joomla as well as other open source software packages.
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