We’ve a new component hack for you today. Hopefully it will be useful to you if you’re running a Joomla site with affiliate links.
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Steve’s Blog
JoomlaBamboo and Mootools in Joomla
Back at the beginning of 2007, Johan Janssens announced that Joomla 1.5 will include a Mootools script library. Mootools is a Javascript framework that is lightweight enough to be used for lots of clean, quick Flash-style effects.
A lot of people are starting to take advantage of Mootools, not only in 1.5 but also in 1.0. Anthony Olsen from Joomla Bamboo is foremost among the. He has just redesigned and relaunched joomlabamboo.com so it seems a good time to point out some of the great work he’s doing.
How to Solve Common SEO Problems with JReviews, Fireboard and MosTree
I’ve talked before about how having less pages indexed is often better and after doing SEO audits on several sites last week I was reminded of how important this was. Sites with only 200 or 300 genuine pages of content had over 1000 pages indexed in Google.
Lots of Joomla components produce 100s and sometimes 1000s of unnecessary extra URLs that are then indexed by Google. A simple example is Mostree which is a very robust component but because it was built in pre-Ajax days, it creates separate 4 extra pages for each listing: recommend, rate, review and report listing.
In this post we’re using JReviews, Fireboard and MosTree as examples. You can cut-and-paste the rules from this post into your robots.txt file. However, please read the "important notes" section first.
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Video Explaining How To Write Joomla Page Titles
Part two of my video blog posts about creating HTML page titles in Joomla. This is partly inspired by Barrie from Joomlashack who pointed me to a great post by Copyblogger.
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My First Attempt at a Video Blog
This is my first attempt to create a video tutorial in Joomla.
Its an answer to a question we get a lot … "Whats the difference between a page title and an HTML title?"
It also seems a good place to start because modifying page titles on clients’ sites has produced better results than anything else we do. Adding SEF URLs, generating more links and improving site structure are all less effective than page title improvements.
Above all, I’m interested to see what you think. Are video blogs worth the effort?
5 Great Google Analytics Tips
As a follow-up from my last post which pointed about Brian Clark’s quote about reading more books, I’d love to highlight a great eBook I read over the weekend.
At the last JoomlaSouthEast meeting, Brent from 3by400 showed me a great Google Analytics book called simply “Google Analytics Short Cut“. Wow, does it pack a lot of useful information into a $10 PDF. 
The book certainly isn’t an introduction to GA. Its pretty technical at times and won’t help beginners, but for people already familiar with GA its full of great information. I’ve reproduced some of the best tips here.
Great quote from Brian Clark of Copyblogger
Great quote from Brian Clark of Copyblogger fame about how to become an expert:
"I was chatting with a friend about this topic recently, and we both came up with same initial answer about becoming an expert—read books … most people don’t read and many of those who do swamp themselves with RSS news feeds instead of the foundational knowledge contained in books."
RSS Feeds are like the news … interesting for keeping up with current events but completely lacking when it comes to building knowledge of value. I can honestly say I learnt more about Google Analytics from reading one $10 book over the weekend than from months of analytics blogs. More about that tomorrow … 😉
Review of the Joomla Admin Manual by Barrie North
Barrie North from Joomlashack.com sent me a copy of his “Joomla Admin Manual” a long time ago and I promised to review it. Yep … I’ve been slack. It was only when a client told me earlier this week that he’d been reading it and found it useful, that I realized I needed to get my butt in gear and read it myself.
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Interview with Yannick Gaultier from sh404SEF
Those of you who read this blog regularly know how highly I think of sh404SEF.
Those of you who don’t … its a great SEO tool, one of the most actively developed Joomla components available, costs $0, and has great support from its developer.
I’m delighted then to have the chance to talk with Yannick Gaultier whos runs the sh404SEF project.
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Ten Worst Movie Domain Names Ever
A lot of people have been talking lately about how great domains are for marketing and SEO.
A quick trip to the movies last week convinced me Hollywood isn’t listening. With millions of dollars made in a single weekend, people in movie marketing still think its a great idea to put their advertising budgets behind a $7 domain name.
Joomla Developer To Escape From Staightjacket 55 Feet In the Air
Doing anything interesting this weekend?
Steven Pignataro from corePHP is.
During the week he develops Joomla extensions and on the weekend he does something else entirely.
Continue reading “Joomla Developer To Escape From Staightjacket 55 Feet In the Air”
SEO Comparison of Joomla 1.0 and 1.5
After the big chart earlier this week comparing the Search Engine Friendly URL Components for Joomla, I wanted to take a similar approach and compare the SEO features of Joomla 1.0 and 1.5.
What’s On the Chart?
On the chart is a rundown of all the key on-page SEO factors. We can’t help you when it comes to building links or writing articles people want to read, but we can advise on the technical stuff.
Who May Find This Useful
Hopefully this chart will help people who:
- are thinking about upgrading to 1.5
- want an easy reference chart for SEO improvements in 1.0 or 1.5
The Small Print
- The factors are heavily based on SEOMoz’s Google Search Engine Ranking Factors because it does a good job of combining the wisdom of many experts.
- The list is more-or-less in the order of importance given by the SEOMoz team. Page titles are much important than duplicate content for example.
- The Joomla 1.0 codebase has been around for at least 3/4 years, whereas 1.5 is still Release Candidate. Of course it has less available extensions.
- Some important on-page SEO factors have been left out, notable keywords in body text, bold print and h2 or h3 titles. This is because they can just be done with any WYSIWYG editor.
- I’m sure that plugins will emerge to cover all the current holes in 1.5. Give it time. However, if SEO is really important to you and thinking that you should wait before using 1.5 … you’re right.