Search engine algorithms are really smart in gathering information from webpages. However, they could find troubles when dealing with Joomla-based URLs. These URLs are unable to tell anything meaningful about the content of the webpage. This could be among the least preferable things about Joomla and an ideal URL structure should tell us about the content of the webpage. For people who own Joomla-based websites, it is important for them to change URL to match the content of the website. With SEF URL-changing component, we should be able to change Joomla-style URL into something much more meaningful, such as [http://yoursite.com/buy-red-gloves.html].
From SEO standpoint, having a meaningful URL that contains primary keywords is ssential to improve SEO performance. There are different tools that we can choose to do this. JoomSEF is among the best when it comes to converting URLs into more SEO-friendly versions. However, we should be aware of tools that insert hidden ads in the code and they may show ads without warning when readers open the website. Many of these tools share similar functionality, they may even have the same look and feel. OpenSEF is another tool that we can choose to convert the URL. It should be able to do a decent job of changing Joomla URL into something that looks friendly and nice.
Regardless of the tools we choose, we should download the component and install it using the Joomla Administration Interface. We should go to Site > Configuration and choose the SEO tab. The “Search Engine Friendly” option must be set to “Yes”. In the root directory, we should change htaccess.txt file to .htaccess. The next step, we could follow the straightforward method of enabling the mod_rewrite component. Eventually, we could go to the URL-changer tool and enable it. Once we do this, the Joomla-based website should be able to generate SEO-friendly URL. It is a quite easy thing to do.
Other than installing these URL-changer tools, we should also provide a working sitemap. We could use a component called Joomap to create a workable and usable sitemap. The tool will create a sitemap in XML format and latest versions could deliver more optimized sitemap format. Joomap can also be installed with Joomla Administration Interface and it shouldn’t require any kind of configuration setting. We could directly go to the component and enable it. Some sitemap-maker tools could also allow us to choose which parts of the website that should be included in the sitemap, while the default setting is to include all webpages.
One big benefit of using Joomap is that we could integrate it easily with Google Sitemap. In its interface, we could choose to create a Google-based sitemap that’s easily understood by the search engine’s crawler. The sitemap in XML format can be submitted to Google and we will have a better chance of being indexed. By changing the URL of the website and submitting sitemap, we should be able ensure that our Joomla website will be indexed properly.