How To Make Your Joomla Website SEO Friendly

Do you find it challenging to rank your Joomla site on Google? Then you’ve come to the right place. This post will give you an overview of what you can do on your Joomla site to rank it on Google.

If you own or manage a Joomla site, then you need to know the importance of constant optimization and SEO tweaks to achieve the results you want

Here are the top tips and best practices that you can apply to make your Joomla website SEO-friendly:

Although Joomla is a free app, it’s a self-hosted solution. It means that you still have to pay for a hosting account. In exchange, your web provider should ensure smooth performance, excellent security, and uninterrupted uptime.

These three factors play a crucial role in your SEO rankings as well. For instance, service outages can hurt your SEO performance. Search engine crawlers regularly visit your site and may have certain tolerance if they encounter occasional error messages.

However, if your site goes down regularly and can’t be accessed for long periods, crawlers might abandon it. Thus, Google will de-rank your site in favor of more optimized content. You also must ensure that you’re hosting your site with a reliable provider. Elements like site speed, security, support, and uptime are all things you need to consider when picking a reliable hosting provider.

Site speed can directly affect your Joomla website’s SEO performance. Also, security vulnerabilities and poor uptime can lead to website quality issues. So, don’t be tempted to go with the cheapest site provider in the market since it’s highly likely that you’ll suffer from performance issues in the long run.

When installing Joomla, you might see the “Protostar” default template. Chances are, this isn’t the template that you want to use. If your site’s design and framework are essential elements to consider, then you need to pay close attention to SEO, or you might end up with something that isn’t SEO friendly.

While many templates claim they’re SEO friendly, it’s common for these extensions to come with bundled scripts and plug-ins that you don’t end up using, slowing down your site’s performance. So, before installing a template, make sure you run its demo using Google’s web. dev tool. Doing so will give you insights into its performance and SEO issues.

One of the key aspects of Joomla SEO is to ensure that you’re using the platform’s latest version. Doing so allows you to keep built-in SEO tools and features updated.

Moreover, all the extensions you’re using should be up to date. This allows your site to function the way you intend it to, leading to a positive user experience for your site visitors.

Keyword research allows you to look for terms users search on Google related to your business. Doing so will enable you to come up with targeted content that shows up on search engine results pages (SERPs.) It also can draw in visitors from search engines such as Bing and Google.

You first need to do some research to help you look for the right keywords. One of the best places to start is using a keyword tool that provides you with analysis and insights on keyword popularity and the difficulty specific keywords can rank for.

In your site’s Joomla Global Configuration, set both the “Search Engine Friendly URLs” and “Use URL Rewriting” to “Yes.”

Doing so helps you eliminate the random codes in your URLs so that you can optimize them, making them rank higher up in search engines. This also clears things up so that Google and other search engines help you decipher what your URLs represent.

Most people nowadays search the web using a smartphone. Thus, one of your priorities needs to be setting up a mobile version of your site. That’s because Google’s algorithm crawls and indexes your site based on its adaptability to mobile devices.

Also, when you utilize Jooma to look for templates or extensions, ensure that the data and structure are the same for your desktop and mobile. Users’ experience is more enjoyable when your site looks great and functions well on any device.

With Joomla CMS, some of your content may show up on numerous web pages within the site. The site crawler could easily get confused of duplicate content. They could also end up being unsure whether the URL is the correct one that appears on search results.

The solution is using canonical URLs wherein you can direct the web crawler to index a specific URL and skip the other duplicate content on your site.

If there’s one significant thing that can hurt your site, it's too many 404 errors. Search engines like Google don't want these 404 errors since it ruins the entire site experience.

Although you might not avoid every error, you can develop a simple yet pleasing 404 page that allows users the information they’re looking for.

You’d also find that many Joomla templates have built-in 404 pages, making sure you review and verify them to add value to your site.

One of the best things you can probably do for your site’s search engine rankings is to invest in quality content consistently.

At Sytian Productions (web developer philippines,) we always tell our clients that quality content relevant to your target demographic allows you to create backlinks, attract visitors, and improve your site authority. It’s a long-term investment that yields long-term value.

Joomla SEO in any CMS or site management platform is always a challenging thing to do. Ranking well on Google requires a clear strategy, dedication, and handy tips to get the job right. 

This guide will provide you with an overview of what you need to do for your site to rank at the top spot of Google and any other search engine. Good luck!