My name is Chris Diprose and I am the Manager of
Web Design firm Kanga Internet - http://www.
kangainternet.com. I have been an active member
of the Joomla Community for several years and
have an established business based upon Joomla
Development in Melbourne, Australia. My main
focus is Search Engine Optimisation for Joomla
Content Management System.

This article focuses on the first few steps in
the Web Development and Design of a decent search
optimised website in Joomla. Okay lets get into
it. Once I have setup the standard Joomla
installation there are a few component types that
are mandatory to install and I believe these to
be:- a sitemap component and a SEF URL changing
component. These are by far the most important
components to have on any Joomla Installation.

What is a SEF URL changing component and how does
it relate to Web Design in Joomla? SEF stands
for Search Engine Friendly and a normal
installation of Joomla has a URL like this: index.
php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5&Itemid=6

When it comes to search engines they are really
smart in many ways but the normal Joomla URL
describes nothing about the web page and its
contents and so they really do dislike it in many
ways. It is what I call, Search Optimisation
Stunted (SOS). I like this term because it
describes exactly what it needs; some help! This
is where a SEF URL changing component comes into
play. These types of components take the normal
Joomla URL and change it into something more
meaningful to both us and the search engines. eg:
buy-blue-widgets-here.html

From my Web Design & Development experience this
is the single most important component
installation you can make on a Joomla Website. I
want to detail my personal best picks. There are
a few available to us but I believe the JoomSEF
component to be the best of the best when it
comes to Search Engine Friendly URL's. There is
only one drawback to choosing this component and
that is a hidden advert in the code from the
original makers. If you serach on google for "
Joomsef patch" then you should be able to find a
decent article on how to get around this problem.
Looking at the "best of the rest" of the SEF
components we find a new component (May 2007)
called sh404SEF which is ad free, if you search
on the Joomla extensions website you will find
this one. I believe it to be strongly based on
JoomSEF; in both look, feel and functionality I
have noticed this. Another SEF friendly
component for Joomla is OpenSEF. When OpenSEF
was released about a year ago it was great but
since that time there has been no updates and the
project has lagged way behind Joomla development.
Having said though, it still does a reasonable
job of converting Joomla URL's to search engine
friendly but I found in my testing that it proved
to be duplicating too many URL's.

Which ever one you choose, download the component
and then using the Joomla Administration
interface install the component. Then go to Site-
>Global Configuration->SEO (tab) and ensure "
Search Engine Friendly URL's" is set to yes.
Ensure your htaccess.txt file in the root
directory of the Joomla installation is changed
to .htaccess and follow the directives in the
file in how to turn on "mod_rewrite" - this is
straight forward. Then just go to the JoomSEF
component and configuration and turn it on. Once
this is done you should be generating friendly
URL's on the front end interface so you should go
and check. It's as easy as that!!

Okay so lets move on to what I consider the next
most important thing to do to your Joomla
installation once the SEF component is installed
and working a Sitemap.

In my books there is really only one legitimate
and decent sitemap component and it is called
Joomap. The standard version of this component
does not output a decent XML file for google so I
also suggest searching on google for "joomap
patch" and you should be able to find an article
to lead you through editing the Joomap component
also. The installation of this component is the
same as before, we do it through the Joomla
Administration interface. With no other config
after installation we can just go straight to the
component and select it. Now we just choose the
menu's we want to include in our sitemap.
Generally these are main menu and top menu. Now
we just create a new menu item and select the
component to link to it, being Joomap and the
rest takes care of itself. Easy!!

One other advantage of Joomap is that it allows
you to hook in to Google Sitemaps. On the admin
interface these is a Google Sitemap URL given.
All we need to do to generate a dynamic google
sitemap is to copy paste this URL into google
webmaster interface and now whenever google wants
to download your whole website sitemap it gets a
dynamic version - which is significantly better
than just hoping google will find all of your
pages! With this sitemap it tells google all of
your pages and where they are so it can scan them
more affectively.

Okay now I have covered off the first two steps
in Search Engine Optimisation for the Joomla
Content Management System. These are the first
two steps every Web Designer and Developer should
take when they want to Search Optimise Joomla.
Until the next article you can gain more Web
Design hints and tips on my website.