In the last few months I have been moving some websites from subdomains to new domains and sometimes changing there apperance.
Here is what happened on one of them…

The site was number One on Google for a long tail keywords phrase and it site was getting some nice traffic from this term.

After the move from its sub-domain life and going into its own domain I changed the template to a more suitable one and optimized the site to get more traffic.

One thing I did was the craft the Home page title so it would get even more traffic and it worked out nicely. The new theme was search engine optimized and I did not feel like I needed to do anything about it…

As I said, the site had a No. 1 position on Google, but after I wrote a new post on this site this happened to the traffic.

Once I noticed the drop in traffic I checked Google and saw the site was still No. 1 but not with the title of the homepage anymore.

The title shown by Google was the title of the last post and no longer this traffic attracting title of the Homepage!
This title was not really on topic of the search term so nobody clicked on it to check out the site!

I checked the theme and changed the header option to make sure I got the Homepage title back into place.

Bringing it Back on Track

So everything is technically set back to how it should be, and now it was time to get Google’s spider to re-index the site so the homepage title was back where it belonged.

Writing a new post that to update the site did the trick and the site was back in a few days.

All looked good, but a day later there was again this drop in traffic. Now I can explain the first drop, then the recovery but not the second drop.

The only thing I can think of was the short time upgrade followed by something Google might do like switching back for some time serving search engine cached indexes if they upgrade the primary index.
If you have another explanation, I would love to here it!

After this initial drop and kick back the site is now doing well, thank you for asking.
It is still growing in traffic.

Conclusion: Keep track of your site after you do a mayor upgrade like changing themes or even system upgrades.
The thing you need to watch closely is that the so carefully crafted title of you homepage is still the same so it will keep getting you the traffic. Especially it you have the No. 1 position on Google that you wanted to get.

Tags

SEO, WordPress

You are reading No. 1 on Google and No Clicks an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

As I mentioned on Twitter before, the next step in my 2010 cleanup was Hummerbie, the moving of the Blog that is, not the site Hummerbie.com.

If you are reading this post via your RSS Feed reader or your Feed Mail subscription the Joomla SEO Blog is now on HerbertvanDinther.com, yes on its own domain and no longer in a subdomain of a Joomla! based website.

It has served its purpose in getting traffic for its Big Brother, and now its time to set it free on its own to see if it can grow further into a mayor force on its own.

There was af course an other reason for giving this blog its new domain: Branding… I have been blogging on several sites and platforms under the name Hummerbie and now the Blog lives under Herbert van Dinther and the posts are also posted with the name Herbert-Jan van Dinther.

There is also a domain herbertjanvandinther.com and that is setup with Joomla as Content Management System, but that is my next project to get some content and articles on.

Joomla, WordPress and SEO

For those who have been reading this blog for a longer period of time know that the focus was on Joomla! and SEO, well there is going to be an extra topic on this site and that is going to be WordPress. The system this blog is build on.

I think they can work together to give you the best of both worlds and a feed of this site will be part of the Joomla! site.

One great thing I recently came aware off is that http://www.rockettheme.com/ now is offering Joomla and WordPress themes and if that is not enough, they have this fast Joomla! Theme called Afterburner and the same theme for WordPress Afterburner and they are both Free. So you can have your Joomla! site and WordPress Blog with the same look and feel.

Redevolution has been doing the same thing for a longer period of time now. They also have a great SEO Blog that is worth visiting.

So you see, Joomla and WordPress match up just fine and I have been promoting Joomla on several wordpress.com based blogs like seo4joomla.wordpress.com and joomlablogging.wordpress.com.

As I said before, I needed a new focus for 2010 to get more done and to blog more about the topics I love to write about and I think this move will give me new and fresh idea’s to write about. I do have some things in mind to share with you, so lets make this a great year for all of us.

P.s. If you find any problems on this site after its move, please contact me so I can fix it :-)

Tags

Blogging, Joomla, SEO, WordPress

You are reading Moving Hummerbie’s SEO Blog to its new home an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

Yes, that is right, they all fail at Search Engine Optimization…

I have been reading several new posts about how well WordPress is doing SEO compared to Joomla! and how good Drupal is in SEO compared to WordPress and….well, you get the general idea.

it seems that every time people are defending their choice to use a certian Content management system. Which is a good thing, you can show people the reasons why you love the system(s) that you use.

We all do, we all like the system of our choice, whether it is WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, Modx, Typo3, etc,etc. They are all great open source content management systems.

The Big Three, WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal.

I have written before how Search Engine Friendly WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal can be, but they don’t do SEO…, YOU do SEO…

That is right, they don’t do anything else then giving you the tools to get your website ready for higher rankings and better performance in the search engines!

You are the deciding factor in how well search engine optimization is done. You and the webmaster and content writers of your website.

None of the content management systems will come up to you and say, here is a great keyword rich title for your post. None of them will provide you with the keyword rich quality content that attracts visitors and back-links.

That is all up to you.

None of these content management systems will give you the right structure and internal linking ideas for the content of your site based on relevant keywords and none of them will do that keyword research for you.

They are just what they say the are, content management systems. You can use them for building websites, for building blogs, for building community’s, but they still remain content management systems.

They are the engines that drive your website and/or Blog, but you have to work with them to get a really search engine optimized website.

The deciding factor for great search engine optimization

It is up to you to get the most out of the system of your choice and you will see that you can do it!

Either with WordPress, Joomla! or Drupal, or any other system, you have the knowledge and the ideas to get better rankings for you site.

You know your system of choice and you are the engineer that knows how to fire up that engine to drive it up to the best possible spot in the search engine results pages!

So don’t blame or praise a website building engine for getting search engine optimization done right, praise yourself for doing a job well done.

Tags

Drupal, Joomla, SEO, WordPress

You are reading Why Joomla, WordPress and Drupal all Fail at Search Engine Optimization an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

Yet another great post from Smashing Magazine, this time Glen Stansberry wrote post reviewing of 10 Weblog Engines among them WordPress, Drupal and Joomla!

Af course they included MovableType and ExpressionEngine which I also tried but didn’t like that much.

Looking and writing about the following aspects of each engine:

• Programming language.
• What features you’ll need.
• The size of the software’s community.
• The age of the software.
• If you are planning on extending the Blog.

For Programming language my favorite is PHP, Like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla! (and Typo3)
Features are within the core or easily integrated with Extensions like Components,  Plugins and/or Modules.
Both these Blogging platforms have very good community to support you, although Joomla! is the biggest at this moment.
Age for me is really not much of an issue but for you looking at the first release dates…
WordPress started in 2003, Drupal in 2001 and Joomla! in 2005 as a fork from Mambo that was build from 2000 (Open source Dual license in 2001)
Extending your "Blog" is really easy with all the packages I favor.

Focus on Blogging

But when it comes to Blogging, WordPress works best for me and in the Smashing magazine post Glen wrote one simple statement under Drupal and extend it later on to Joomla!
        "it’s not just blogging software. Drupal is community software. "
Which is exactly how I see it…
You can use Joomla! for Blogging and with Drupal you can do the same thing, but I just don’t like the Drupal control panel that much to write blogposts.

One other great article comparing Drupal and Joomla  mentioned in the post is from Steve (Hope you get a lot of traffic from this Smashing magazine article!)  over at Alledia on Joomla and Drupal.(Needs an Update since the release of Joomla 1,5 ;-)

All in all, a nice overview of the Blogging Engine landscape of today from Smashing Magazines, and for me its good to see that Joomla now is also considered a Blogging Platform although still with some limitations.
But those limitations can be overcome with the right setting and Blogging Components for Joomla.

Tags

Blogging, Drupal, Joomla, WordPress

You are reading Weblog engines reviewed by Smashing magazine an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

Today I read a Report from Water & Stone, a big name in the Mambo community as one of there Templates is a great looking one with a lot of installations.

The report (which you can download here) brings numbers and conclusions on Market shares of Open Source CMS like Joomla!, Drupal, WordPress and many others like e107,Typo3, Modx, Elgg en more…

In the report there are clearly three Big names in Open Source CMS, not that we did not know who the leaders are, but Rik Shreves does a great job by bringing in the numbers to proof it!

What is strange to me was that Twitter users tend to write more on WordPress and Drupal than on Joomla!, Where are the Joomla Twitters?

I also like the Search Engine Ranking research on page 17, on which Joomla! and Drupal score big time, but WordPress is nowhere in sight for the search terms that contain CMS.
Clearly WordPress is still mostly seen as an Blogging platform instead of a Content Management System like Joomla and Drupal.

In the conclusion pages of the report there is also a section about the future of some projects like Mambo en CMSMadeSimple as well upcoming systems like Elgg and Modx.

Get the download and read the report, it is well written with lots of graphs and gives an insight of what the market in Open Source CMS is right now!

Tags

Drupal, Joomla, WordPress

You are reading Water & Stone Reporting on Open Source CMS Market 2008 an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

After writing my last Joomla SEO Blog post, I started working on a Clients website with WordPress as Content Management System.

However running more into the project I hit some technical difficulties in getting the content together in a Joomla SEO Site structure (no, not the layout) to get an optimal results for Search Engine Optimization.

So I made the decision to offer the client to redo the site with Joomla, also since his site content was much more than I initially saw on this old Flash based website…
And yes, in this case Joomla was better for the larger static Website then the Chronologic base WordPress Blogging platform (although you can build a Static Website with WordPress, this one needed more structure…

The layout of the site was based on a PDF example made by a graphical designer.
Is is always a challenge to get such a design into a WordPress, Joomla or Drupal template, but it works ‘almost’ every time.

But as you might have guessed, this project took a lot more time out of my Blogging and Joomla SEO efforts than I would have liked.
The site is done know, it needs to get approved and put on-line now so that we can do some more SEO for it.
The site structure is now optimized, and well formed on the Layout Design as well.

Lesson learned form this… make sure you get all the info you need before taking on a project!
Note to myself:  Project assessment must be done better next time…

Joomla SEO month

I did read some fast things here and there and found some great stuff on the Joomla front:
One of the posts writing about Joomla 1.6 and SEO is this one http://www.goodwebpractices.com/joomla/joomla-1.6-seo.html a really great read!
And there is the Joomla SEO Wiki, set up by Johan Janssens as an effort to provide the Joomla Forum with a White paper or suggestions on where to go an the SEO Field with Joomla 1.6.
You can read some of the suggestions and information given there and see the suggestions on the Joomla White-papers on SEO posted there by the Team member Steve Burge of Alledia Joomla SEO Club, great Job Steve!

O, and if you got the time, the money and the need, it is really a great idea to go to his Joomla Training in Chicago after the JoomlaEXPO 2008 Chicago

I don’t live anywhere near the Chicago area, and I don’t even have the time to go the Joomla Dagen in Nederland which are this weekend…

They are Building bridges, so they have other people coming in on Drupal, TYPO3, Plone/Zope and sugarCRM.
Well, I just have to wait for the posts and articles…

You will see some more post on several SEO aspects the next weeks, as I am working on some posts on Joomla 1.5 SEO and looking at the new version of WordPress 2.5 which also has some nice features!

Stay tuned, and thank you for your patience!

Tags

Joomla, WordPress

You are reading Joomla instead of WordPress and some Joomla SEO Works an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

I just received an email form Joost de Valk, one of the best Search Engine Optimization and WordPress specialists I can think off.
If you don’t know him yet, check out his website and check the contributers list of the famous SEO Ranking factors.
Yes his is one of the ”37 leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization“….

He is starting to build his own list of email subscribers to provide more information about WordPress Plugins and Search Engine Optimization and af course WordPress.

Now I like Joomla and WordPress, he..!, this Blog is WordPress based… and Joost has some great posts on his website and some great SEO Plugins for WordPress as well.

Like the Meta Robots Plugin , Google analytics Plugin and his RSS Footer Plugin among other WordPress Plugins

Just read Joost de Valk SEO Blog and you will see why it is a great idea to subscribe to his WordPress Plugins & Mailing list to get more Search Engine Optimization from this Top SEO Guy!

I just hope he won’t mind me plugging his mailinglist…and I hope (almost know) he will have some great free SEO advice for you.

Tags

SEO BLogs, WordPress

You are reading WordPress Plugins & SEO Mailing list from Joost de Valk an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

First off, search engine friendly is not the same as search engine optimized!
This is something Joost de Valk already wrote about in his post Search Engine Friendly vs Search Engine Optimized

Search engine optimization does go a lot further then making a search engine friendly website, and building a Content Management system for websites that is search engine optimized…, that is just not possible…

What is possible is to look at the search engine friendliness of three popular Open Source CM systems.
Basics for this comparison are the options necessary that are in the system itself and not those things that can by done with Content, Images, Layout or other aspects.
So no info about H1 or H2, no alt or title tags for images and more.
No, you can read here about:

• The possibility to influence the HTML title separate from the content title
• The possibility to use the Metatags like Description and Keywords on individual content items
• Create search engine friendly URLs, preferably with keywords in it, or other wise with as little possible use of parameters like id_?=12 or similar.

For all three system’s the comparison is with the following technical hosting specification:

• Linux (UNIX) based hosting
• PHP 4 or PHP 5
• Apache webserver with Mod_Rewrite active

WordPress, Drupal en Joomla

WordPress

• URL Rewrite is easy to realize with the ”Permalink” option, WordPress can set the right .htaccess options in the file if the file is writable. My own mostly used option is to use the custom option /%postname%/ with which the post title is also the URL. You can change the URL by changing the text in the “Post Slug” option.
• Title is naturally  the standard title of your post, but you want more control on the option for search engine, that is why your could use the  SEO Title tag plugin with just a minor change in your template.
• Metatags in a basic WordPress installation there is no possibility to change the ”Description” and ”Keywords” per post or page. With the All-in-one-SEO-Pack plugin you will have all these options. You can also change the Title with this plugin, but I like the overview and options that SEO Title tag will give you.
  You can use both plugins at the same time if you disable the title rewrite option in All-in-one-SEO-Pack

Tip: Use the optional excerpt function to generate the Meta description, that will also give you better archive pages, since most of the templates use that data for the archive page creation.

Drupal

• URL rewrite in Drupal you need to use the site configuration option “Clean URLs” that also can change your .htaccess file if it is writable. But that just changes your URL to /node/1/ instead off q=1. And you need more…. That is why you need to install the ”pathauto” module and you activate the modules “path” and “pathauto”.
• Title this is just as with the other just the title of your content item, but with the Page Title module you just have a little more control about the title tag, but not a lot.
• Metatags in the standard installation of Drupal this option is also not available, but with the Meta Tags Nodeword module you will get that possibility.

Tip: Set in the Pathauto module in the general settings the option at “Update action” to “Do Nothing” with this option you will later have the possibility to change the title without changing the URL.

Joomla 1.0

• URL rewrite in version 1.0.x of Joomla there is an SEO option in the main configuration screen, a standard htaccess.txt file is included in the package en needs to be renamed to .htaccess. With this option enabled URLs are made on the base of ID numbers like Domain-name/12/25/3/, but here you also want more… that is why you should install a SEF Component like sh404SEF that will give you much better URLs. And it will give you a good 404 error page that will also uses a proper 404 header. (Joomla standard will give an 200 OK and redirects you to the Homepage…)
• Title with the same SEF component you will get the opportunity to use the title alias function for you URL so you can use your normal article title for you optimization. For an optimal use of titles, and also for your menu items, you can use the SEF Patch of Joomlatwork , there is also a paid version that will give you a separate HTML Title option for more control like the WordPress SEO Title plugin.
• Metatags the description and keyword options are already in a standard Joomla incorporated for each article, but not for menu items, you will have to get the above mentioned SEF Patch to use that.

Tip: Choose with any SEF component you use alway the option /category/title and not /section/category/title to get a little shorter URLs. /title/ alone is also a possibility but not as good, because you can run into trouble like things like /Drupal/installation manual.HTML and /WordPress/installation manual.HTML (Drupal en WordPress are here been used as categories)

Joomla 1.5

• URL Rewrite is in Joomla 1.5 done with the SEO settings in your Global configuration, but you have now three options, unfortunately in each of those options, there is always an item ID number in the URL.
  • SEF on, will give you directly URLs with the title in it, but with index.php in the URL. (can also be used on windows hosting)
  • SEF with the use of .htaccess, this will also give you the URL with title, but than without the index.php
  • Use suffix, this options sets a .HTML at the end of your URL
  • Attention! Joomla 1.5 uses the title alias, but you have to set the ”-” between the words in your URL options, otherwise you will get a %20% in your URL if you leave it blank.
• Title here Joomla will use the standard article title, if your want more control, than you can use the new Joomla 1.5 SEF patch from Joomlatwork.com (Dutchies ;-)) and I have to add here that Richard of Joomlatwork already has stated that the SEF patch will be update with each release until it is in the Joomla core!
  If you use the SEF patch you get an extra SEO tab in your configuration screen, don’t forget to set the minimal [TITLE] option, otherwise your title will show your URL as title.
• Metatags are also like the “old” Joomla version built-in for articles and site wide via your Global configuration. But like with the old version, here is the same advice to get more control use the SEF patch of Joomlatwork.com .

Tip: For both versions of Joomla versions an advice, do not use the Global Metatag settings! With version 1.0.x you will get the text of the Globals on top of the page Metatags which will leave you with pretty much the same Metatags in the search engines as snippets, version 1.5 does this a lot better, and will not fill it with the standard if you use the page description.However is does set this if the page description is empty…

Conclusion: None of the three is out-of-the-box ready as search engine friendly Content Management system. With all three there needs to be done some extra work to realize the desired options.

For me they all have there own usage:

• WordPress works great for smaller websites and even bigger Blogs
• Joomla is fine for SMB websites and, with some extra extensions can be used for bigger sites as well.
  Especially the easy and user friendliness is great for less “technical” webmasters.
• Drupal can do almost everything, but for me is somewhat staying behind the others because of the lack of user friendliness for those who have the maintain and edit the page content.

But the most important factor in the choice of system is still what your customer wants and the ease of use for him/her… if the site has to become a success, then it must by their website, and to achieve that they have to be able to easily maintain the site themselves!
For search engine optimization…, well, that is why there are specialists, those who will look at the details… and each of them will have there own preferences for a certain system.

O yes, tips and  other options… the comments are open :-)

Tags

Drupal, Joomla, SEF, SEO, WordPress

You are reading Search Engine Friendly? A WordPress, Joomla and Drupal Comparison. an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

Last Year I wrote about the fact that it is a Great Option the use a WordPress Blog in a subdirectory of your Joomla installation the Improve the Search Engine Visibility of your Website.

Before that I looked at the WP-JD Component to Integrate a WordPress Blog inside Joomla itself.. which was not really that great, because of the Instability of the Component, on my site at least.
At Joomla.org it seems to work fine.. up to a point.

But know there is a (Please be aware of this if you want to try it) Beta MojoBlog RC 1.5 that is build upon the work that was done by Marko Schmuck for the JD-WP Component.

And I must say, I was impressed, first by the easy installation and the Back-end of the Component which give me an instant WordPress feeling and let me work on posting directly.

Almost all features work as expected!

Showing the Blog Items

Creating a Menu item for the Component gives you acces to the Front end.
This was the part that worried me the most, how would it look in the Joomla Template?
With JD-WP you could not integrate the layout of your site that easily, there where always some, not so nice looking features.

But you also want to show your most Recent Posts, You Blog Categories and If there are any, the Most Recent Comments..
Yes that can also be done, because Zerolight gives you some MojoBlog – Joomla WordPress Stuff .
Basically he takes apart the old WP-JD Sidebar and puts every function into a separate module.
Which is great then you can just use the parts you want, so great work on hos part as well.

Does it Work and what needs to be done

Yes, it works, and does a good job as well.
You can have your Multiple Categories per post, Track-back, Comments (even Askimet works) and Full RSS feeds via Feedburner if you want to.

There needs be some work done, like the terrible task of SEF URLs for the Posts, but more importantly the Title of the post in the HTML Title tag of the Joomla Page..

Possibly the use of Metatags Descriptions and Keywords as part of the search Engine Optimization.
But those items will be addressed at a later date I guess.

For know, it is already a great tool to use if you want the best Features of a WordPress Blog into your Joomla site!

Want to see some MojoBlog Examples?
Joomlify and my current live Blog on Hummerbie Search Engine Optimization (Great template integration without touching a thing..)

P.s. If I could only get my Forum registration activation email… but he, the site is also in Beta, but I am sure it will be fixed!

Tags

Blogging, Joomla, WordPress

You are reading Working a WordPress Blog into Joomla! an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

If you run a Joomla or WordPress Based website, you are of course constantly creating quality content for your users.
Writing the best Titles like www.copyblogger.com told you how to do.

But there are several options in Joomla, and with the right Plugin you get something similar in WordPress.

If you create new content in Joomla, you find yourself with two Title options:

The Title and the Title Alias.

The first option is what is going to be the title of you page and is show as a content header.
The second option is not shown anywhere on the page.. so what’s the use of this option?

Most SEF Components have the possibility to use this alias as the base for there URL rewrite.
So you can have an Title that says:
“The best Content Management System, Joomla or WordPress”
but the alias is written ”Joomla or WordPress CMS”
With the use of the alias, you URL is going to be http://www.example.com/joomla-or-wordpress-cms.html
instead of the longer title based version

http://www.example.com/The-best-Content-Management-System-Joomla-or-WordPress

But with the paid version of Joomla SEF Patch by www.joomlatwork.com you get a second title option:

The HTML Title

Now this title is the one that gets indexed by Google and other Search Engines… this is (after good content) the number one Search Engine Optimization tool.

With a standard Joomla installation, you content title is also the HTML title.
But you might want to keep the content titles short, and the HTML titles extended with some extra keywords…!!

This functionality is also integrated in the latest version of JoomSEF, in the edit URL section.

The Title Options in WordPress

You may not be aware of it yet, but there are similar functions in WordPress.
Just start writing you post, and you are editing your Post Title, which (if you have permalinks enabled) becomes the content of your URL as well.

But there is this nice option in WordPress that is called “Post Slug”

Here is where you can change the URL that is used for you Post, especially useful if you have a long post title..
Just shorten you Post slug and the URL will be much shorter and easier to pickup.

And with the right Plugin you also have the possibility to change your HTML Title, or as some call it, you SEO Title.
There are two Plugins that can do that for you:
The SEO Title Tag Plugin which is great for rewriting titles in bulk, and for page titles rewrites, and the best part is, you can use it in combination with the next Plugin.

This Plugin not only gives you the HTML title rewrite option, but also the best way to insert Metatags like keywords, and with the use of the “Optional Excerpt” to fill the MetaTag description.
This Plugin is really the All in One SEO Pack for WordPress and this one is a must have for Search Engine Optimization.

It does even more than just the Title rewrite as you can see.
It can even fill your Metatag Description automatically with the first words from your post…

If you want to use it with the SEO Title Tag Plugin, just untick the Rewrite Titles and the Titles from your other Plugin are used.
So if you are starting a WordPress Blog, go for this Plugin form the start and you will do allright.

Title use Conclusion

The HTML Title tag is very important for your Search Engine Optimization.
Not only should it be written to draw people to your website, it also should contain your targeted keywords.

With the options I mentioned above, you have now the possibilities to extend the power of the HTML Title tag beyond your post title and keeping your URL short as well.

Make good use of it, and don’t forget to write some keywords, but even more important, write very good excerpts of you post and content in you description tags.
Because in essence they are small adverts for you page that show up in the SERP Pages of the mayor Search Engines.
So work extra hard to create those descriptions.

Tags

Blogging, Joomla, Joomla Seo, Optimization, SEF, SEO, SEO Optimization, Search Engine, WordPress

You are reading What Title to Use in Joomla or WordPress an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

I like Joomla, Drupal, WordPress and Typo3, all Open Source Content Management Systems.
But which ones are Search Engine Friendly? Or are they Search Engine Optimized?

To be honest, Joomla in the latest version 1.0.12 is not Search Engine Friendly, the new Beta 1.5 version is much more Friendly from a Search Engine Point of view.
For the current version you have a lot of work to do before its Friendly enough.
Drupal and Typo3 are already more SEF, and WordPress is the easiest to work with if it comes to creating and using a Search Engine Friendly system.

So Joomla is the worst at the moment, but I love it because its so easy to work with from a content creation point of view.
Besides that, there are a lot of free components, modules and Plugins that can help you in making it SEF.

Search Engine Friendly and Search Engine Optimized 

Did you notice, I never said any of them being Search Engine Optimized…
That is because I totally agree with Joost van der Valk in his post on Search Engine Friendly vs Search Engine Optimized

Also the post that inspired him by Joe Dolson is a great read on the topic of SEO versus SEF, which in turn was written as a reply to a post by Stony de Gruyter.

Then Gary of Phoenixrealm wrote a Post on Content Management Systems and SEF and SEO to point to the make sure that your CMS of choice should be Search Engine Friendly.

But just a Search Engine Friendly Content Management System doesn´t mean its Optimized!
Some Buro´s think just making your site SEF is enough to make it Optimized… no way..
As Joost pointed out, Optimization takes a lot more effort then just making a website completely search engine friendly.
Optimization is in the details, in the little things and learning from tracking and evaluating your changes and there effects.

Search Engine Optimization is delicate work and you need a lot of knowledge to get the job done.
Its also not a static one-time effort, it takes a lot more than just that to get good ranking and stay on top with your results.
So why waste the SEO´s time to make a site Friendly?

Educate the designers and Site builders

Just make sure that your site builders and designers have a basic knowledge about Search Engine Optimization to get the best results if your have to hire an Professional Search Engine Optimizer!

The basics are not that difficult to learn, like the comment op the post of Joost by Ruben Timmerman mentioning that a web developer should know that the title tag of each page should be into the H1 tag.
It should be basic knownledge of your designer on how to work these things into there designs.

There are companies out on the web promoting there SEO Services who don’t have a clue what SEO really is.
I have seen some websites from “Search Engine Optimization” firms that are so NOT optimized that I would never give them that part of business..

But the main thing is, looking at those content management systems that they all use templates.
Templates designed by Professional designers, who have no clue about Search Engine Optimization.

So its not just the developer that needs to be educated, please focus on the designers as well!
They are the ones that can make the efforts of your Optimizer much easier, by already creating Templates that need little to no work the make the site Search Engine Friendly.

Not only for Joomla, Drupal and Typo3 websites, but also for WordPress, as there are some Themes that need to be worked at to make them Search Engine Optimized…
And as Joost pointed out, those are just the simple mistakes that need to be corrected to make you website Optimized for Search Engines.

Tags

Joomla, Joomla Seo, Optimization, SEF, SEO, SEO Optimization, Search Engine, Webdesign, WordPress

You are reading Is your website Search Engine Friendly or already Search Engine Optimized? an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

No, seriously, is this one of the ways Google looks at your website?

I was looking at some of my website ranking results, as for some reason this came to mind.
I have Blogs based on WordPress, Websites based on Joomla and more recently I am running a Drupal based website.

Results from the Blog come in fast, lets say within a week or so.
For Joomla and Drupal sites it takes longer to rank for the targeted keywords, mostly weeks and some months.

But the Blog results are dropping as fast as they come up, in a few weeks they are dropping of page one and decline over time.
The CMS results stay pretty much on the same position were they rank over time.

Now Steve of Alledia does a test with WordPress, Joomla and Drupal and he was trying to figure out what was causing WordPress to start so well, but runs into trouble later on.
It could of course be due to the explanation of SeoRefugee in his Post Google Irregular Content Upgrade

Which would explain the burst in Search Engine referral visitors after adding content to this Blog.

But how does Google determine what is a Blog and what is an “regular” Content website?
Is it the timely updates, or is there more?

Looking at the Source Code

What I am wondering is, looking at my websites results, is Google using the “meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress 2.1.2″ from your source code to determine what kind of site you run?

Look at WordPress, it has the tag in the source code “meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress 2.1.2″
Joomla has the basic “meta name=”Generator” content=”Joomla! – Copyright (C) 2005 – 2006 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved.”
But Drupal, by most considered the best Content Management System for Search Engine Optimization has No Reference to the System at all !!

If you use the Joomla SEF patch from Joomlatwork.com the tag mentioned above is stripped, along with other improvements.
Although the reason for stripping is more of a security issue for the Guys at Joomlatwork.

But websites with the patch run better than before the patch was applied.
So to try out some of this stuff, I am now running this Blog without the Code, although its probably to late, because Google probably already determined that this is a Blog.

But does this mean that if you want to start with WordPress to Build a website just like a Content Management System, that you need to strip the code before going live?
P.s. The code is mostly part of the Template.

And how about a Joomla based website? Should you strip the code as well, because Google ranks Joomla as a technical more easy CMS than if people make the effort of building there own without code?
That would mean that the SEF patch is even more important then you should think.

Google Patent

From Google’s patent request there is one part that says:
“38. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more types of history data includes domain-related information corresponding to domains associated with documents; and wherein the generating a score includes: analyzing domain-related information corresponding to a domain associated with the document over time, and scoring the document based, at least in part, on a result of the analyzing. ”

Is this also one of the “domain-related information”? What do you think?

Tags

Joomla, Joomla Seo, SEO, SEO BLogs, SEO Optimization, Search Engine, WordPress

You are reading Does Google look at your Website Generator? an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

I know, its off topic :-(

But many of you are probably Blogging with WordPress, and Hopefully with Joomla as well.
And I found two major WordPress Plugins that in my opinion ar just “Must Haves” for your Blog Search Engine Optimization.

All in One SEO Pack

This new Plugin is a replacement of “Another Metatag WordPress Plugin” but has some real nice features.

First it gives you the ability to have your titels like “Postname – Blogname” without having to change your Template setting.
Second The Categories you assign your post to are made into tag for your Metatag Keywords.
The Description Metatag is taken from your Excerpt, it can even create one for you from the post itself, although I don’t recommend this, you really should make the effort of writing your own.

The Categorie pages are set to “noindex,follow” to prevent duplicate content.

Another nice thing is that you have the option to Set the Metatags Description and Keywords of your Homepage a well…
Other options are to use the Categories for Keywords Metatags, and set extra keywords per post, You can also choose if you want the Titles to be changed by All-in-One-SEO-Pack (Download Link), or have them handled separately.
This last option works best for my, since I also have the other Plugin I wanted to tell you about.

The SEO Title Tag Plugin

This one is a real killer… if you have read the SEOmoz Search Ranking Factors you know that having you keywords in the Title Tag is a number one Item.

But you don’t want to have long Post Slugs for your Permalinks, nor do you want Long Titles for your posts page.
This SEO Title Tag Plugin  gives you the option of rewriting the Post Titles, as well as the Page titles you might have.
Installation is really easy if you follow the simple instructions on the homepage of the Plugin.

One thing you should be aware off, is that the management of the Titles are not at the options page of the Plugin, but on the really obvious place “Manage”, there is a extra function “SEO Title Tag” from which you can choose to manage your page titles or you post titles (in bulk)

Having these two Plugins combined gives you full power and control over some great Search Engine Optimization for your WordPress Blog

So make sure you have them active, write your Titles the right one, use your tags and write great excerpts..

But most off all, write good copy for your visitors…
I hope this one works for you, although is not about Joomla :-)  

Tags

Optimization, SEO, SEO BLogs, SEO Optimization, Search Engine, WordPress

You are reading Two Must Have WordPress SEO Plugins an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

This morning I was reeding some feeds on my Netvibes pages.
One of my favorites on Joomla is the Feed from Amy Stephens.. who was planning a Move some time ago.

And now she has moved, and oh boy what a Great Building she now lives in…

Check out the OpenSourceCommunity.org where you can read, write and communicate about Open-Source software like Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, Typo3, Plone and Tools like Open Office.

For now not all topics are covered yet, but I think they soon will.

Member schip is free and easy and most certainly worth subscribing, as well as the Feed of course
There are not a lot of members at the moment, but I bet we can change that…

I know that Amy works with Joomla, WordPress and has now been introduced to Drupal :-)
Some busy Lady she is, and what a great crew at the Open Source Community

Read Amy’s opening Blog entry welcome-opensourcecommunity-org

Tags

Joomla, Webdesign, WordPress

You are reading New OpenSource Community open for Business an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

I was just reading a post on a dutch website that Google seems to love Twitter.
Probably because of the frequency that Twitter pages are updated.
Twitter of course is already witten about on numerous posts and Graywolff is doing some testing as well.

But what I was looking for was a way to let you as another Twitter put up a simple “Twit”or Micro-Blog  post, or whatever you like to call it, that you are reading my Webpages of Blogs.

And the best part is that you can doe that via the coding on www.twitthis.com and you even have a WordPress Plugin to give you visitors that possibility.

If you use Twitter, you probably like to inform people on every move you make.
That is not really the kind of thing I am into, so you won’t see a Twitter widget here that is telling all about me…
That is not the Intrest I have, what I would like to know is:
- do I get more visitors via Google because of the high update rate of a Twitter page like http://twitter.com/hummerbie
- Do I get more back-links for my Yahoo rankings if other people “Twit” my pages?

So let see what happens in a week or so, and I will tell you about it, in the mean time:

Tags

Joomla, SEO, SEO Optimization, Search Engine, WordPress

You are reading Twitter and Search Engine Optimization an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

According to Shoe Money Branding is “Hugh” as you can read in his post on 9-random-tips-on-being-a-successful-online-marketer

You read my post on Branding with Feeds?
The Image shows up, but only on the Top of some Feed readers and in the mail notifications from Feedblitz.

So I still wanted to work some kind of branding into the posts…but without every time placing an image, giving the width and height and filling the alt tags…

Your simple branding solution….

If you use the Adsense-Deluxe WordPress Plugin on your Blog, just in case someone sees something they like..
You can create a special “adsense” code…

Just make a special tag and called it something like adsense#feed, but instead of the adsense code in the reserved space, you put in the HTML source of your sign-off image.
Include the alt tags and make it an hyperlink to your Blog.

Now you can simple type a short code at the end of your post like <! — adsense # feed — > and you incorporate your sign-off picture into your posts… as an option of course.

You can even use this option if of you don’t use Adsense on your website.

Like Feedburner says “Have Feed, Will Travel” even if the post is scraped, you still have your link-back and start building a brand as well.

So, just signing off

P.s. For my Joomla based blog I keep a “secret” unpublished static content page with the complete code, just to copy and past.
Also great for keeping documentation of the alterations and modifications you did on a website online, right there on the site itself :-)

Tags

Joomla Seo, Optimization, SEO, SEO Optimization, WordPress

You are reading Signing Your post with an Image an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

If you are a Blogger, or use RSS Feeds to bring your website content to your visitors, you might have seen these feed scraper sites that use your content.

Building Feed scraper sites

No, I am not going to tell you how to create those sites.
But I know of at least one that just feeds on Blogs about Joomla, just to bring visitors to their site which is filled with Google adsense adverts (not a bad thing…) and affiliate links (can work as well).
But the main problem I have with this site is that is has no original content!

And it is not set up as a RSS Feed directory where you as a blogger can place your feeds yourself.
No it automatically harvests Blog content.

However this site still gives a link back to the original Blog poster.

Today I came across a site that does the same scrapping, but does not even give a link to the original content….

The Good thing of Showing Feeds on you site

These sites are sometimes build with Joomla and the RSS Feed technology that is in the core application, or build with WordPress and a special Plugin.

These options can also be used on your website, but use them in a good way.
That means that you limit the number of Feeds you bring into your pages and keep them focused on the content of your site…. and keep the link to the original.

That way you give back some quality inbound links to the originator of the post and you, your visitors and the Blog you feed off will win in the long run.

P.s. I think these sites will get less attention once Google, Yahoo and Live are able to see these sites for what the are really are…. the evil site of RSS Feeders.

Just to give the post a nice ending…

Tags

Joomla, SEO, Search Engines, WordPress

You are reading How Good things can turn Evil, or the Black part of RSS Feeds an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

In December I wrote a post on Joomla and WordPress on how you can use a WordPress Blog along your Joomla site to get better rankings.

Now I came across this post form http://www.toprankblog.com/ describing the SEO Benefits from Blogs that gives a good insight on why Blogs are such great tools to work with.

I know, Joomla has the possibility to Blog as well, but that function misses other functions that are of such great value to do Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization.

If your hart is really set on working just with Joomla, than check out this Post about Creating a Blog site with Joomla from http://www.compassdesigns.net/

But if you are really committed to the subject of your site, and want more visitors, read the above mentioned post about the Benefits of Blogs, and start Blogging your way to extra traffic for your site.

Tags

Joomla, Joomla Seo, SEO, Search Engine, WordPress

You are reading Blog your Joomla site Up in Google an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

If you start asking people if they fill there metatags, most of them now don’t fill them.

Because they have read somewhere that the Metatags aren’t used anymore for ranking in the Search Engines..

How wrong they are, and what a great opportunity for you!

Keywords Metatag

The Keywords are the main problem that webmasters think they are no longer relevant.
This Metatag was previously heavily used by spammers, who filled the tags with everything possible or by repeating there main keyword over and over again.. this is now called keywords stuffing and can get you banned from Search Engines like Google and Yahoo.

But this Metatag is still in use by some search engines, but should only be filled with up to ten keywords that are also included in the body text of your page.

Description Metatag 

And we have a winner…
The Description Metatag is used by most search engines to be displayed right onder your page title on the Search Engine Results Pages.
Google sometimes takes the Metatag, and sometimes a part of the text if it thinks this is more relevant to the search.

This Metatag contains a small description of the page. This description is placed there by you in a separate item from your content management system.
It should be different on every page.

Writing the Description Tag

If your write the Metatag, please keep your visitor in mind.
Place yourself in their search, and see if you can come up with a smart “advertising” text for your page.

Include your keyword in the Description

Using the keyword you want to reach in the description field works for you position, but use it no more then one or two times.

It seems that there are some studies on search behavior that show that sometimes people are clicking more on a link that has a good description of the page rather then the higher positioned one.
You should write a text that pulls people into the click, and will deliver the content they search.

Try it yourself, search on your own keyword target and see what you normally would click on….

This post and its description tag

You can see the title of this post, but the Metatag is nog really visible on this page.
If you look at the source code, you are able to read it, just like search engines will display it.
See it for yourself :-)

In Joomla there is a special item on each page where you can fill the descriptions and keywords.
Install the SEF Patch from http://www.joomlatwork.com/ to get the tags right and use the same Metatags for Menu items.
You can even fill your descriptions in with the OpenSef SEO assistent Metatag Generator.
But you should write your own if you are serious about SEO for your website.

For WordPress, you need to install a Plugin.
The one you could use, that is the same on this site, works really easy.
You can download it from Another WordPress Meta Plugin 

Tags

Joomla, Joomla Seo, Optimization, SEO, SEO Articles, Search Engine, WordPress

You are reading Use your Description Metatag to get more visitors an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther

Update! This post will tell you how to use WordPress and Joomla together for better SEO results. If you are looking for some ideas on how to choose between the two, you could read the Page How to choose between WordPress and Joomla!

If you look at these Opensource Content management systems, then people use them for Blogging and Building websites.

Joomla
Now Joomla with al its extensions is great for building a good solid website with all the features you want. And you can bring it to high rankings in the search eninges as well, if you start with the proper technical improvements.

Templates in Joomla make it easy to get a good layout for the site, and you can find lots of good free Joomla templates. For a good business website I suggest you look for a good commercial template based on a Table less design with external css files.

WordPress
For Blogging you cannot beat WordPress, especially if you do the right setup, making the permalinks work right the .htaccess file and set the options to /%postname%/. Creating posts and giving it the special keyword tags is really easy.

Templates for WordPress are also very easy to obtain and to implement. Besides that…Google loves WordPress Blogs

My advice?

Use them both!!
Setup your main site in Joomla! and start working on the content, create good quality content.
In a sub directory, or a subdomain, install WordPress and start blogging, using the keywords you also use for your website.

WordPress with its create SEF functions and categories will bring you traffic, this traffic reflects to your main domain.

And with the content on your main website, you work to keep your visitors captured and make them come back.

Yes, I know there is a great Component to integrate WordPress in Joomla from j-prosolution.com (Site is no longer available, but a great replacement can be Found on http://www.joomlify.com/) and I use it also on my website www.pathos-seo.com And if that is not enough, they even use it for the news via blogs on http://www.joomla.org/ !!

Still I like the separate installation better, because there are more features I can use for Search Engine Marketing and Viral marketing.

In my short experience with combining them that the combination of Joomla and WordPress are a killer combination for getting High Search Engine Ranking!

Tags

Joomla, Joomla Seo, Optimization, SEO, Webdesign, WordPress

You are reading Joomla or WordPress? Which one to Choose? an article from Joomla , WordPress & SEO by Herbert-Jan van Dinther