Steve’s Blog

Do Search Engines Treat Joomla Sites Differently?

Recently I’ve seen people talk about the idea that search engines profile websites partly on the script they use. This idea makes some sense to me because it is possible to make reasonable accurate generalisations about some CMS systems: WordPress = blogs, so they need to be updated regularly to rank well. Many great, high-quality blogs, but theres also a reasonable change that your average WordPress installation is a splog, give the large number of people using automatic RSS importers. Gallery2 = photos. Often little accompanying text, which doesn’t make for great SEO material. OSCommerce = shopping carts, so clearly…

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Review of the SE Keywords Module

A few people have emailed to ask what module we’re using to welcome people who visit from search engines. If you reach Alledia.com from Google and Yahoo, you’ll see the following text: The module is SE Keywords, developed by Pietro Gallo, whose also developing search clouds and search modules for Sobi 2.

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Free Copy of the Joomla SEO eBook Part 2

This week is the second week of our special month-long competition here at Alledia. Answer a simple question and you can win a free copy of our Joomla SEO eBook. This week’s first question: "Recently I’ve seen people talk about the idea that search engines profile websites partly on the script they use. WordPress = blogs, so they need to be updated regularly to rank well.  OSCommerce = shopping carts, so may be short on text. Joomla = ….. Do you think that search engines treat your site any differently simply because its built with Joomla?" Please post your answers…

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New Mambot to Add Headline Tags to Joomla

One of the most important SEO tactics is to wrap your page titles in headline tags such as <h1> and <h2>. Unfortunately Joomla doesn’t provide these out of the box and instead puts page titles inside a relatively meaningless table cell: <td class="contentheading" width="100%">My Title</td>  There are some extensions that allow headline tags currently, including JoomSEO and sh404SEF. There are also some core hacks that achieve the same thing. However, we needed a simple and easy way to apply headline tags to articles, without hacking the core and without utilizing any larger components. 

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Free SEO eBook Winner and New Ping Component

On Monday we offered a free copy of our Joomla SEO eBook for the best answer to the following question: “What’s the easiest way to tell Google what’s new on your Joomla! site?“ We really had some great answers, including; From Zorro: Have a working RSS feed on your site that can be autodiscovered. Click here to learn how to add an orange RSS icon to the address bar of your site. From Danilo Silva: Using Feedburner and pinging to notify blog services. From Zander: By submitting a xml sitemap to the Google Webmaster Tools. Joomap is considered to be…

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Free Copy of the Joomla SEO eBook

For the next four weeks, we’re going to have special competition here at Alledia to get you through those manic Mondays. Answer a simple question and you can win a free copy of our Joomla SEO eBook. This week’s first question: "What’s the easiest way to tell Google what’s new on your Joomla! site?" Please post your answers in the comments section below. The best answer will win a free copy of the Joomla SEO eBook. The winner and answer will be announced on Wednesday morning US Eastern Time (GMT minus 5).

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An Atlanta Treat: Drupal on Tuesday and Joomla on Wednesday

This week should be a lot of fun in Atlanta as there are two interesting CMS groups meeting.  The Atlanta Drupal Group are meeting on Tuesday night and the Atlanta Joomla group on Wednesday. Both meetings are from 7.00 to 9.00 pm at the 5 Seasons Brewing Company in Alpharetta. Their website is 5SeasonsBrewing.com and you can get a link to the site here. We have a conference room reserved over the brewery. It has an overhead project, wireless internet, plenty of power sockets for laptops and great food and beer.

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Run Video Perfectly in Joomla

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been involved in setting up a couple of Joomla sites that have relied heavily on video. Man, it was frustrating. After a day or so, I ended up with a website full of every conceivable mambot, module and component, but none of them would work correctly: In content, modules and other components In all browsers With the ability to resize each individual video Finally, after a night to sleep on it, we came up with a solution. Read on to find out how to run videos perfectly in Joomla … oh, and theres…

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Dodging the Bullets by Tom Canavan

Sometimes an author really should put their biography on the front of a book. Before Tom Canavan sent me his new book: “Dodging the Bullets – A Disaster Preparation Guide for Joomla! Web Sites“, I didn’t realise just how impressive his background was in this area. A quick scan of Tom’s personal history reveals in addition to working for many multi-million dollar companies, he’s worked for a Fortune 100 company helping to design and build out their disaster recovery solution and spent two years making sure the plan was as good as possible. His book aims to teach Joomla users…

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