Chapter 12 [ 317 ] You'll work with the same set of keywords in the arcle metadata too. We'll get to these in the secon Add meaningful metadata. 4. The images: Explain what they're about Search engines scan and analyze text, but they can't interpret images. To search engine spiders, an image is just a meaningless data le. This means you can help search engines by using disnct lenames for any image you use. Moreover, when inserng an image in the Joomla! arcle editor, add a specic Alternate Text. Here's what the Alternate Text box looks like on the Joomla! Content Editor Image Editor screen (see also Chapter 10 to read more about this editor): This Alternate Text (or "alt" text) is the short descripon that shows when the image itself isn't displayed for some reason. You might also want to add a similar descripon to the Title eld (under the Advanced tab). This tle text pops up when the visitor's mouse pointer hovers over the image: Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Aracng Search Engine Trac: Tips and Techniques [ 318 ] Update articles regularly Try to regularly add quality content to your site. Adding a few pages every week will make both your visitors and search engines happy. Search engine spiders visit your site regularly; aim to have some new content added when they come around. This doesn't mean that the bigger the site is, the beer your search results will be; it's good pracce to delete or archive outdated content. More on SEO-aware wring Of course, creang great content isn't a Joomla!-specic art. If you want to read more on SEO-aware wring, there are many resources on the Web. To get a clear over view of the basics, download Google's Search Engine Opmizaon Starter Guide from www.google.com. Sites such as Copyblogger.com (try searching this site for "SEO Copywring") oer a number of ps on wring eecve copy for the Web. Add meaningful metadata Up to now, we've focused on actual content. You've seen how you can opmize arcles to present their content in a clear and well-structured way. However, web pages also contain informaon that's not shown to site visitors, but is aimed specially at search engine robots: metadata. Metadata is informaon about the contents of the HTML document hidden in the documents source code. Browsers (and search engines) will read it; humans won't know it's there (unless they specically look for it by selecng the View Source opon in their web browser). By default, your Joomla!-powered site will only contain some dummy metadata, consisng of a short descripon and a few Joomla!-related content keywords. Let's change these to something more appropriate. Time for action – personalize the site metadata You'll nd the controls for opmizing your site for search engine trac in the backend Conguraon Panel. First, let's add some global keywords that characterize the site's content: 1. Navigate to Site | Global Conguraon. On the Site tab, there's a secon called Metadata Sengs. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Chapter 12 [ 319 ] 2. Change the Global Site Metadata Descripon default text to a short summary of the content of your website. In our example, we'll enter SRUP is the inter- naonal Society For the Reappreciaon of Ugly Painngs. 3. In the Global Site Meta Keyword text box enter a few keywords that match the con- tent of your website. Make sure to use the words and synonyms the visitor might use to search for your site's contents. You'll probably use a few words that are also part of the site descripon. In our example, we'll enter these keywords: ugly painngs, bad painng, bad art, SRUP, Society For the Reappreciaon of Ugly Painngs. The Metadata Sengs should now look similar to the following screenshot: Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Aracng Search Engine Trac: Tips and Techniques [ 320 ] 4. Leave Show Title Meta Tag and Show Author Meta Tag set to Yes. This way, Joomla! will not only add global (site-wide) meta keywords to the pages, but it will also include the metadata keywords from the individual pages. You can add this Arcle Metadata for each individual arcle in the arcle editor; we'll see how this works later in this chapter. 5. Click on Save and click on Preview. What just happened? By entering metadata for your site you've added some global keywords and descripve text to your site. This informaon will be included in every page of your Joomla!-powered site. Metadata will remain invisible to your visitors, but search engine spiders use this informaon when crawling your site. Although it seems search engines don't give much weight to meta keywords any more when indexing sites the site descripon is sll very important (and will show up when your site appears on a search results page). However, don't expect overnight success. You won't instantly see the eect of your metadata changes in search results, but in due me search engines should pick it up and use it to analyze your site's contents. They'll display the site descripon metadata in the search results. If you need to convince yourself, just google for the default descripon text in the Joomla! demo site (Joomla! - the dynamic portal engine and content management system). You'll get a huge list of results, all links to Joomla!-powered websites that haven't yet personalized their global site descripon: Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Chapter 12 [ 321 ] Have a go hero – nd metadata to t your site All that Ugly Painng business is okay for the example site, but what kind of metadata descripon and keywords would t your parcular site best? First, do a lile research and use the Google keyword tool menoned before (or a similar tool) to get a few keyword ideas. Another great way to get going is to have a look at how others do it—what kind of keywords and descripons do similar sites use? Of course you won't copy that text (as that will be of lile use in making your site a unique source of informaon), but it may inspire you. Here's how you can explore metadata; point your browser to a site you'd like to explore and select the opon to look under the hood of the current website—it's probably called something like View Page Source. A new browser window or tab will open showing the HTML source code of the current page. You'll nd the meta tags in the <head> secon of the document. The description tag looks like this: <meta name="description" content= "A few lines explaining what the site is about">. The keywords tag looks like this: <meta name="keywords" content= "first keyword, second keyword, and so on"> Exploring a few examples of websites oering the same type of content will get you going—and make it easier to decide whether you want to do things just as they do, or dierently. Entering metadata for individual articles You've set the metadata for the website in the Global Conguraon screen. This is great to help search engines to understand what your site is about. However, it's a good idea to add keywords to individual arcles as well as this will help search engines analyze and rank individual pages on your site. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Aracng Search Engine Trac: Tips and Techniques [ 322 ] Time for action – add metadata information for an article To see h ow it's done, let's open an exisng arcle in the ar cle editor and enter some metadata: 1. Navigate to Content | Arcle Manager and select any arcle. Click on Edit. In the following example, we've opened the SRUP Welcomes New Members arcle. 2. Below Parameters (Arcle) and Parameters (Advanced), you'll nd a panel called Metadata Informaon. Click on the name (Metadata Informaon) to open this panel and enter the appropriate informaon. 3. In the Descripon box, ll in a short one-sentence summary of the arcles content. In this example, we've entered Feel free to join SRUP, the Society for Ugly Painngs enthusiasts. 4. In the Keywords box, add a few content keywords. In this example, we'll enter SRUP Membership, Ugly Painngs Membership, Member, and Join SRUP. 5. Click on Save. No need to Preview—metadata is invisible on the frontend of the site, remember? Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Chapter 12 [ 323 ] What just happened? You've set the metadata for the website and added some keywords for an individual arcle. You'll usually enter keywords and a descripon for each individual arcle as you write the arcle, but it's of course also possible to edit a bunch of arcles aerwards. It's good to have a descripon for every page. Although there's some discussion whether search engines will aribute much value to keywords, they do add to the meaningful content of your web page. In this example, we've le the Robots and Author text boxes of the arcle metadata secon blank. In the Robots box, you can enter oponal instrucons for robots (the programs that search engines use to crawl your site). You can tell them not to index this page or not to follow the links from this page. In the Author text box you can enter an arcle author name to be added to the page metadata. Normally, this won't be of any importance for your search engine visibility. Have a go hero – explore the art and science of metadata Joomla!'s metadata capabilies are ne, but if you really want full control and tweak your pages for opmal search engine visibility, there's a must-have metadata extension. It's called the Joomlatwork SEO patch for Joomla!. The patch provides you with addional elds, both in the global conguraon and in the arcle editor, allowing you to customize the page tle, the page metadata, and more. Go to www.joomlatwork.com to read more about the SEO patches capabilies and to download it. Don't forget to choose the perfect site name One of the rst things you do when you set up a new site is entering a name for it. You'll be prompted to enter a name when installing Joomla!; aer that, you can change this text in the Global Conguraon screen. It's a good idea to think very carefully about the Site Name as this will appear in the browser tle bar of the home page. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Aracng Search Engine Trac: Tips and Techniques [ 324 ] In the case of the example site, it's beer to have some meaningful words here rather than just the mysterious abbreviaon SRUP. You can change the site name as follows: Navigate to Site | Global Conguraon. In the Site Sengs secon, enter an appropriate name in the Site Name box. In this example, we've entered SRUP – Ugly Painngs Society. This is descripve and not too long; it won't take up the full browser tle bar. Click on Save and click on Preview. The new name is displayed in the browser tle bar: Coming up with a good domain name The name of your site should of course be reected in the domain name. Your domain name may be shorter, it may be an abbreviaon, but it should be associated with the name you carry on the site itself. If you haven't already chosen a domain name, how can you come up with a domain name that's short, easy, and memorable? Unless you've got a very strong brand that visitors know and recognize, you might want to use a descripve domain name, telling people right up front what product or service you're oering. If you're selling bicycles or providing nancial advice, it's good to combine these with your business name to create a web domain name like petersbicycles.com or petersnancialadvice.com. To help you nd a nice do main na me ( that isn 't taken ye t!), you can use ma ny resources on the Web. On http://justdropped.com, you'll nd expired domain names that are available again. On http://domainsbot.com it's easy to type several possible domain names to quickly nd out if they're available. If you're really stuck, do a Web search to nd a "domain name generator" helping you on your way. Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Chapter 12 [ 325 ] Use search engine friendly URLS Up to now, we've focused on SEO techniques you can deploy when wring content for your website. You can apply SEO techniques by presenng and formang arcles to make their contents easily ndable, or by adding clear metadata to your site and its contents. Another technique that can make search engines pick up the contents of your site more easily is to make your URLs clear and readable. Aer all, you've probably noced Joomla!'s default URLs contain a good deal of incomprehensible gibberish: http://www.srup.net/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=82:ugly-paintings-gallery&catid=39:facts&Item id=54 Actually, this is not gibberish, but sll human beings as well as search engines will have a hard me guring out what all the codes, special characters, and numbers are about. That's why you'll probably want to use search engine friendly (and human friendly) URLs. This technique results in readable URLs that match the content of the page, such as the following example: http://www.srup.net/ugly-paintings.html Joomla! has search engine friendly URL funconality built-in, but it's turned o by default. Time for action – enable search engine friendly URLs Let's switch on Joomla!'s friendly URL funconality: 1. Navigate to Site | Global Conguraon. In the Site tab, there's a SEO Sengs secon. Set Search Engine Friendly URLs to Yes: 2. Click on Apply and preview the frontend of the website. In the browser, URLs will now look something like this: Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Aracng Search Engine Trac: Tips and Techniques [ 326 ] This is much beer as these URLs are shorter and easier to understand. However, as you browse your site, you'll see that all URLs share the index.php bit. You can change this using the other SEO Sengs. This requires a bit more work than just selecng Yes; you'll also have to rename a le on the web server. Feeling condent? Let's try it out. If you've installed Joomla! locally you may experience some dicules with the next step that requires renaming a le to .htaccess (with a leading dot). By default, Mac OS Finder and Microso Windows Explorer don't allow you to rename lenames starng with a dot. There are several workarounds, but it's easiest to just rename the le using your FTP program. This does allow you to use a leading dot in the names of both local les (on your computer) and remote les (on the web server). Another point to note is that not all hosng providers allow you to use .htaccess les. If you're not sure whether your account supports using .htaccess, check with your hosng provider. 3. Navigate to Site | Global Conguraon. In the Site | SEO Sengs secon, make sure all three of the opons are set to Yes: 4. The Use Apache mod_rewrite opon may sound like technical mumbo jumbo, but it's a crical seng, allowing further customizaon of URLs. For this to work, you'll have to rename the htaccess.txt le that's installed with Joomla!. Using your FTP program, go to the root of your Joomla! site on the web server. Locate the htaccess.txt le: Download at Wow! eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM . default descripon text in the Joomla! demo site (Joomla! - the dynamic portal engine and content management system). You'll get a huge list of results, all links to Joomla! -powered websites that. opon in their web browser). By default, your Joomla! -powered site will only contain some dummy metadata, consisng of a short descripon and a few Joomla! -related content keywords. Let's. eBook WWW.WOWEBOOK.COM Aracng Search Engine Trac: Tips and Techniques [ 320 ] 4. Leave Show Title Meta Tag and Show Author Meta Tag set to Yes. This way, Joomla! will not only add global (site-wide) meta keywords