Joomla URLs

This post is intended to answer the question, “Can I avoid using an SEF URL component such as sh404SEF or SEF Advance? Joomla 1.5 default SEF URLs should be enough, right?

Simply – yes. There are many sites and circumstances where Joomla 1.5 default SEF URLs are enough. They are great for most people – certainly are a big leap forward over 1.0. Adding an SEF URL component may simply be adding an extra, unneccessary layer of complexity.

However, for some sites and circumstances, an SEF URL component is a must. Here is a rundown of the ones I’ve encountered most often:

Continue reading “When to Use a SEF Component”

As many of you may know, Yannick is the developer of sh404SEF perhaps the most advanced SEO extension available to Joomla.

This weekend he went to Joomla! Day Switzerland and gave a very detailed presentation about sh404SEF. He talked about the project’s history, showed how to use it, explained some little used features and unvieled some future plans.

Continue reading “Yannicks sh404SEF Presentation from Joomla! Day Switzerland”

This how-to came from a question posed by an SEO Club member:

“How I do move from Joomla 1.0 to 1.5 yet still keep all my /content/view/24/32 URLs?”

I’ve talked with him before and explained that redirecting URLs to a new version is a disaster. My experience it brings a 30 to 50% drop in traffic, so keeping these old URLs was vital.

I did some digging around and found the Backlink plugin. This is a great little tool that is almost completely unknown. I found only around 10 Joomla forum posts and a single blog entry about it which has since disappeared from Joomla.org. Fortunately I was able to dig out the Google cache of Sam Moffatt’s post which helped me understand how it worked. It’s really pretty simple, once you’ve migrated the content to 1.5:

Continue reading “Moving Joomla 1.0 Default SEF URLs to 1.5”

If you read this blog often, you’ll know I love building sites with sh404SEF. However, its such a powerful extension that it can be complex. There are several issues that people keep asking me about. So instead of giving the same answer every time, I’ve written up the answers in a single document.

This is a free article from the SEO Club’s guide to sh404SEF. Club members can look forward to the release of a full guide to Artio JoomSEF within the next couple of days. If you’re not a member, we’re still offering a free two week trial.

Continue reading “Solving Common Problems With sh404SEF”

We use SEF Advance here on Alledia because it was the best option when we launched 2 years ago. It still does a good job but it does produce some strange URLs sometimes, particular when puncutuation is involved.

Heres a funny example of a URL seen in Firefox 3, caused by a hyphen and quotation mark. It looks like Space Invaders have taken over our URLs:

Joomla 1.5 is definitely going to bring some SEO benefits in the core, including better URLs and no-follow on some key links such as PDFs.

However, the mantra of the Joomla core for 1.5 is simplicity. Those of you who have been testing the Release Candidates have seen that fewer options are available and in a much clearer, easier-to-understand layout.

This means that for more complex SEO efforts we’ll still be relying on extra components. The first one out of the block is likely to be from Richard of Joomlatwork.com, who developed the SEF Patch and who used to be on the OpenSEF team.

In the fine tradition of OpenSEF, Richard has revealed that the component won’t simply produce Search Engine Friendly URLs, but will be a multi-purpose SEO machine:

Continue reading “New SEO Component Coming for Joomla 1.5”

We’ve long talked about how important it is to use a Search Engine Friendly URL component with Joomla. The best ones don’t just create human-readable addresses but also help your site in many other areas of SEO.

Trouble is, the wealth of different components means that its easy to get confused. Which one should I use? Should I pay? Should I use a free component?

Hopefully, these two charts will provide a complete comparison guide for the main five SEF URL components.

• Chart 1: What features does the component have?
• Chart 2: What other extensions does the component work with?

Please note:

• all five are being actively developed and there may be some mistakes / omissions. Please post any that you find in the comments below
• Open SEF and Remosef are not included because they are not actively supported
• More features does not always equal better. For some people, simpler may well be better
• Performance can be an issue. Some components run more quickly than others, especially on large sites. However, because of the difficulty of providing a fair comparison, it is not included as a factor here.

Continue reading “Complete SEF URL Extension Comparison”

I had the pleasure of testing out the latest version of sh404SEF over the weekend. Yannick just keeps making his component better and better.

This latest version is 1.2.4x although the difference between Yannick really needs to get a new release numbering system. The improvements between 1.2.4a and 1.2.4x is greater than most developers manage between 0.1 and 10.0. It really is becoming the 800 pound gorilla of SEF tools.

The new version isn’t available yet, but here’s a sneak peak at the upcoming improvements:

Continue reading “sh404SEF Becomes Better and Better, SerrBizSEF Become Free”