search marketing blog: ambergreen

For the next while Luke will be providing us with a CMS review once a month, there’s some really good info here so be sure to have a look and if you have any questions, or want to see a certain CMS reviewed, ask Luke, don’t ask me!

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Joomla! is an open source Content Management Systems (CMS), and it is fair to say one of the most popular open source web applications ever created, recently winning the Best Linux / Open Source Project at UK Linux and Open Source Awards 2006.

Joomla! is a product from Open Source Matters (OSM), the same team that developed Mambo CMS and can be used to build a simple website or even be used as a framework to create more complex corporate applications.

Lets take a look if we can use Joomla! to build a search engine friendly website.

As a default Joomla! does not offer much of a flexibility in terms of optimisation process, however you can change the configuration to use flat URLs such as http://www.example.com/joomla/content/category/3/7/25/. Unfortunately Joomla! does not allow you to change keywords in URLs, which is what we really need in order to maximize the SEO impact.

This is where SEO components come into place; in Joomla! speak components are additional modules that can be easily added to the system without touching the source code. The Joomla SEO website offers a download of a number of SEO tools that can be fairly easy uploaded to the system core.

We will start from OpenSEF, a Joomla! component that adds support for search engine friendly URLs.

Questions

Standard version – Addons Notes

Can every page have a unique set of meta tags (title, description, keywords)?
Yes

Joomla! automatically pulls in the Site name and adds the Content item title, for example if the site name is “The home of Joomla!” and an article name is “Article 1″, then the title would become: “The home of Joomla! - Article 1″.

It’s recommended to have the site name (usually brand name) at the end of the title, this would require to look into the code and change the way title information is pulled in. As for meta data (description and keywords) these are handcreated. OpenSEF package includes Metatag Generator.

Can URL’s be written in a format that is easily spidered and algorithmically compliant?
Yes, but it does not allow the adding of keywords.

You need to install OpenSEF component and uncomment a bit of a code in the .htaccess file, however the way URLs are controlled is not that great as we need to type in a new version of every URL, ie it would be quite a task to change the URLs of more than 10-20 pages.

Can pages sit outwith the CMS with custom URL’s?
Yes, there are no restrictions here.

Can they use a robots.txt file to block unwanted and duplicated pages from being spidered?
Yes, there is no robots.txt validation however.

Does the CMS allow you to use custom image file names and ALT tags?
Yes. All files are saved in images folder, and there is full control on the structure of all subfolders. Images are saved with the original filename, but it is not possible to change the filename from the administrator panel.

Can the CMS generate a Google site map (xml)?
No / Yes. You need to install OpenSEF or new version of Joomap.

Can the CMS generate a traditional site map and update it every time the structures changes?
No / Yes. You need to install Joomap (shows the normal Menu Structure, Content Categories, Sections and Virtuemart Categories in a hierarchical list.)

Does the CMS allow you to create a custom 404 page?
No / Yes. Use OpenSEF, this allows to set a URL validation level and specify a link to your 404 page.

Does the CMS support creation of RSS?
Yes

Conclusion

Jooomla! is a powerful framework and with OpenSEF it also allows you to develop a site the way search engines love. OpenSEF is not the only component that allows to add SEO features, there are many more including the Google Analytic and keyword density components.

It all sounds great, but you might find some components or modules that don’t seem to work. In most of these cases you will find the answer to your questions in forums or groups, but please bare in mind that some basic technical knowledge (PHP, MySQL, HTML,CSS) would be very handy in order to implement any changes.

Posted in CMS Reviews |