Joomla SEO - How to optimise your Joomla website for search engines

What is Joomla SEO - definition and importance for your online marketing

SEO stands for search engine optimisation.

Search engine optimisation deals with optimisation measures on websites to increase visibility and reach in the organic search results of search engines.

If you would like to learn more about the definition and meaning of SEO, you are welcome to take a look at our article "What is SEO".

Joomla SEO refers to the search engine optimisation of Joomla websites. Important factors here are content optimisation, link building and technical and structural optimisation.

More about the optimisation measures later. Before that, a few words about Joomla.

Definition: What is the Joomla CMS?

The Joomla content management system is one of the world's most popular CMSs alongside WordPress and TYPO3.

This is mainly due to its user-friendly operation and flexible design.

Joomla is open source software. This means that the CMS is developed voluntarily and free of charge by programmers around the world ... and on an ongoing basis.

If you would like to find out more about Joomla, I recommend our article "Joomla - All you need to know about the free CMS".

What does Joomla cost?

You can download the current basic version of the Joomla software (5.0.2) free of charge from the provider's website and install it at a host of your choice.

Let's now take a look at one point that you should consider immediately after installing Joomla.

Joomla SEO: Hosting provider

The choice of hosting provider plays a major role in search engine optimisation.

This is because high-quality hosting offers you a number of advantages:

• professional support (email and telephone)
• reliable availability of your website
• fast loading times
• a secure and up-to-date PHP version
• sufficient storage space
• regular backups
• additional caching functions
• SSL certificates

Depending on the hosting package selected, it may be necessary to invest a monthly sum in the single to double-digit euro range.

Templates for Joomla

Put simply, templates are design templates that determine the appearance of a website.

Depending on your own preferences or target group definition, you can choose between free and paid designs from various providers.

Templates can already contain extensions and customisation options for the design of your website.

At Themeforest, for example, you will find a fairly extensive range of Joomla templates with prices starting at 19 dollars.

We enjoy working with Joomshaper templates and are therefore happy to recommend them to you.

I will now show you how to make the first important configuration settings.

Joomla: 5 important SEO settings

So that you can configure Joomla optimally, the Joomla core basic system already offers you lots of helpful functions for the search engine optimisation of your website.

Firstly, log in to your website and carry out all available updates under Components > Joomla update.

Then take care of the basic SEO settings.

Go to "System > Configuration > Site" to start your search engine optimisation.

Search engine friendly URL

As space in the search engine results is very limited anyway, it should be used very carefully. As Google doesn't like page titles that are too long, we recommend ticking "Yes" for the Search engine friendly URL option.

The algorithms of search engines such as Google prefer a clean URL structure in order to find a website and then crawl it.

Joomla does not display the URL structure in a user- or search engine-friendly way. This function can therefore be used to optimise the URL structure for both pages.

Simply click on "YES" for the function to change the display of all URLs. This removes the unnecessary part of a URL and creates meaningful URLs.

Use URL rewrite

"/index.php" is an unimportant part of a URL from an SEO perspective and can therefore be removed.

How can you do this?

Quite simply: you can activate the "Use URL rewrite" option by clicking on "Yes".

In the file, users can, for example, list all their 301 redirects in order to transfer the existing visibility values from old URLs to the new ones.

Add file extension to URL

To remove the file extension "html" from the URLs, you can also set this option to "No".

Unicode aliases

With the Unicode aliases function, the umlauts and special characters of a Joomla URL from languages such as Chinese are displayed correctly. However, this setting is not recommended for our German language.

Although Google attaches the same importance to both variants, it can happen that the links do not work correctly for multilingual or international websites.

Page name also in the title

As the space in the search engine results is very limited anyway, it should be used very carefully. As Google is reluctant to see page titles that are too long, we recommend selecting "No" for this option.

In the next part of this article, I will introduce you to further SEO measures for the on-page optimisation of your Joomla website.

OnPage optimisation: 7 effective measures for Joomla SEO

You can use the following functions of the conventional Joomla version to optimise your website for search engines.

1.) Meta tags

Published website content should be displayed attractively in the search engine results pages (SERPs). For this purpose, every content requires the so-called meta tags.

These include the page title (meta title) and the meta description (meta description).

Global metadata

You may have already noticed the "Global metadata" item under "System > Configuration" in the previous settings.

Why?

The meta tags from the global metadata would be displayed on every page for which you have not yet set your own page title or meta description.

You should then define optimised meta tags for each individual page on your website.

I will now show you the best way to do this.

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Page title (meta title)

As a meta title influences the ranking of your website and its click-through rate (CTR), it is definitely worth optimising it for Google.

In principle, the meta title is automatically generated from the title of the menu or post. However, this is not SEO-optimised.

In Joomla, you have the option of defining the page title both in the respective article and in the individual menu items:

• Article: Go to the Page display tab and define the "Page title in browser" there.
• Menu: Call up the page display in the menu to change the "Page title in the browser".

Meta description (meta description)

Although meta descriptions do not affect the Google ranking, you can use them to increase the CTR.

You can also add them to a menu item or an article.

1. Posts and categories: Follow the path Content > Posts/Categories > Select post/category to edit > Publish.
2. Menu: Go to Menus > Manage > select desired menu > select desired menu item > Metadata.

Robots

As long as your website is still under construction (URL structure and content), you should set robots to "noindex, nofollow" in the global metadata.

Only after your site has been finalised should you release it for indexing by the Google crawler. You initiate this step by specifying "index, follow" in the global metadata.

If you do not want individual areas of your site to be indexed, you can change the setting in the individual menus, categories or posts.

2.) H1 to H6 headings

Joomla uses the Protostar template by default, which automatically generates the page title as an H1 heading (H1 tag, title, main heading).

If you want to leave the title (not to be confused with the title tag) displayed, then only define headings from H2 in the editor.

If, on the other hand, you decide to hide the H1 headings, you can use a separate H1 on each website.

Important: Each website should only have one H1 tag. Google does not like the use of multiple titles or main headings on a site.

3.) XML sitemap for Google

An XML sitemap helps Google to read and index your website in a targeted manner. After creating it, you should submit it to the Google Search Console.

As Joomla does not offer you the option to do this, you will need a plug-in to create the sitemap.

With the free OSMap tool, you can quickly create an automatically generated sitemap and submit it to the Google Search Console.

To help you, I've put together this video: it guides you step by step through the entire process.

At the same time, you can also set up a Google Analytics account and link it to the Google Search Console.

4.) Alias option

The alias option is one of the best SEO functions the software has to offer. It allows you to set the name of the URL independently of the actual menu title.

This gives the user greater freedom when using keywords or long-tail keywords: you can use the short main keyword in the menu title, while using a suitable long-tail keyword in the alias (the URL name).

5.) Content search engine optimisation

High-quality content with added value plays an important role in the search engine optimisation of your website.

Optimised texts should:

• contain previously researched keywords/long-tail keywords
• be optimised for the relevant topic
• take the user's search intention into account
• have a logical organisation/structure
• contain graphic elements such as images and videos
• be broken up by enumerations and lists

And for content to be read with pleasure, it should of course also be entertaining.

If you would like to find out more about content marketing and SEO, you are welcome to take a look at this article.

Since we're already on the topic of content optimisation, we can also take a look at the topic of image SEO.

6.) Joomla SEO for images

From the point of view of search engine optimisation and user experience, images are also part of high-quality website content.

You can use graphic elements such as images to present facts or statistical data to your readers in a vivid way. You can see them as a support for the text. This is because they also increase the length of time your visitors stay on your website.

By inserting image descriptions (alt tags), you enable Google to interpret the images used.

TinyMCE, the existing image editor in the basic version, is used to embed images on websites and then add an alternative text to them. This is then automatically assigned to the alt tag on the page.

You can find detailed instructions with numerous images and videos in our article "Optimising images for SEO - improving Google rankings".

7.) Mobile design

The number of search queries from mobile devices is continuously increasing. This is why Google has introduced mobile-first indexing and has been evaluating the mobile version of a website by default for new websites since July 2019.

A website must therefore be displayed just as flawlessly on a smartphone as on a tablet or desktop. At the same time, it should be easy to use.

Next, I would like to introduce you to some structural methods of on-page optimisation.

4 structural Joomla SEO optimisation methods

The design of a website and its content can be the visual eye-catcher. If the website structure or the table of contents is very confusing, users will not enjoy it for long.

That's why web design SEO is just as essential for the success of a website as other SEO measures. If some of the relevant factors are not taken into account when creating a website, this will have a negative impact on the user and search engine friendliness of your website.

User-friendly navigation/menu structure

Offer your users a menu structure within which they can orientate themselves without much thought.

You can achieve this through

• a clear hierarchical structure
• a low click depth - 3 clicks should be enough to access a subpage
• a manageable number of main categories

Categories and posts

In addition to the menu structure, the category structure of a page should also be taken into account.

Posts: Joomla pages that contain written information are called posts. A post can consist of text, images and additional content elements. Each post can only appear in one category.

Categories: Categories can be used to organise website content. A category can contain both posts and subcategories.

There are two important criteria why posts are organised in categories:

• Firstly, categories make it easier to group and manage many posts on a website.
• Secondly, they are shown. Posts in certain menu item types (layouts) such as category blogs and category lists are automatically displayed in the first position in the blog

Keywords (tags)

Another way to organise content flexibly is to use tags.

You can assign a tag to many different elements with different content types. The number of tags per element is unlimited.

Breadcrumb navigation (breadcrumbs)

Breadcrumb navigation helps visitors to larger websites or portals to find their way around them more easily. You can consider it as a supporter of the main navigation. However, it cannot replace it.

Let's move on to the next important topic: improving the loading time.

Optimising loading times in Joomla

The loading time (page speed) of your website greatly influences the ranking of your site and the user behaviour of your visitors. You should therefore devote some time to this topic.

To optimise the page speed of your website, the Joomla core system offers you two options. You can also give your website the ultimate boost by activating the "JCH-Optimise" extension.

GZIP compression

The "GZIP compression" option can be found under the Server menu item. This means that this function must also be supported by your server.

Activate the option to improve the transmission of information on your site.

Caching

Joomla offers you a wide range of caching options to temporarily store your site's data.

• Page caching, with the integrated page cache plugin
• conservative caching
• progressive caching

You can currently customise the three implemented options "Cache", "Cache memory" and "Platform-specific cache" to suit your needs.

You can also adapt the cache duration to your page activity.

Joomla extension: JCH-Optimise

The SEO plugin JCH-Optimize is available in a free and a paid version.

Once installed, it runs in the background and can be found under Extensions.

After activating some front-end optimisations, it significantly boosts the loading time of the website.

The plugin is mainly used to

• CSS and JavaScript files are summarised
• Minimises HTML outputs
• Sprites created automatically
• CDNs and cookieless domains supported
• Images optimised

Joomla: 3 helpful SEO extensions

Last but not least, I would like to recommend these three SEO-friendly extensions to you, which we have had very good experiences with in our daily work as an SEO agency.

SP Page Builder

Page Builder is a tool that makes working with a Joomla website much easier. It also offers you much more flexibility in the visual and functional design of a page.

JCE - Content Editor for Joomla

The SEO extension JCE offers you a sophisticated editor for formatting content and images. You can download the free version here.

These functions make the Joomla Content Editor something special in our eyes:

• The link manager simplifies the creation of internal links.
• Texts can be formatted, tables created and styles edited in the editor.
• Images can be easily uploaded, deleted, renamed and inserted in the image manager.

OSMap Free

With the free OSMap extension, you can create an XML sitemap that you can send to the Google Search Console.

You can also create a new sitemap with just a few clicks. This is also automatically updated with every new menu item and blog article.

Conclusion: What you have learnt about SEO for Joomla

Optimising your Joomla website is one of the most important foundations for a better ranking and more visitors to your website.

In order for you to be successful, you should follow the above basics and tips on configuration as well as the content and structure of your website from the moment you install Joomla.

As you already know, your website should not only be user-friendly, but also designed and optimised for search engines.

If you have any questions about SEO Joomla or would like professional support with the implementation, you can contact us. Send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. call us on +43 1 353 2 353 or send us your enquiry using our contact form.