Jul 31 2007
This Extension Had Better Sing, Dance and Juggle Print
Tuesday, 31 July 2007

Juggling AnimalSome new products immediately jump out as a great idea. Others don't.


I have to admit that today I came across something that immediately gave me a sinking feeling. A company called Serr.biz are planning to launch a new Search Engine Friendly URL component called SerrBizSEF.


Now, I'm a sucker for Joomla SEO Tools, and I've reviewed just about every one available on this site - most of them with great enthusiasm. However, I don't believe this one will fly. Here's why:

Four Serious Obstacles to the New SEO Component

1) A crowded market. There are already six SEF URL solutions for Joomla: Open SEF, Artio SEF, SEF Advance, sh404SEF, RemoSEF and JPromoter. Oh, and thats not counting forks and hacks of this bunch. When it comes to the current market leaders, SEF Advance is the clear commercial leader and sh404SEF is the most impressive GPL (free!) option. All of these rivals have codebases that have been in development for years.


2) Price. SerrBizSEF is due to go on sale at $75.95 which is 50% more than SEF Advance and about the same price as JPromoter when it launched. JPromoter now costs less than one-third of that price. If SerrBizSEF lasts long after its launch, its likely that its price will need to drop to a similar level.


3) Timing. Given the recent GPL decision, is this really the best time to be launching a new commercial, proprietary component?


4) Lack of Killer Features. The list of features doesn't offer anything thats unavailable from other components and looks like it may offer quite a bit less than the leaders. Serr.biz will offer support tickets, but will that be an improvement on the excellent free support offered by Emir (SEF Advance) and Yannick (sh404SEF)?

Conclusion

Over the last few weeks we've talked about doing business in the new GPL Joomla world, interviewing some of the most dynamic and successful entrepreneurs. Some of even succeeded despite some of the obstacles above: Fabrik is one of many form components and JCE is one of many WYSIWGs. However, I have a feeling unfortunately that Serr.biz, a company founded in 1999, will be outstripped on this occasion by its younger rivals.


Comments (5)Add Comment
SerrBizSEF will be released under the GPL.
written by Serr.biz, August 03, 2007
This is Michael from Serr.biz. SerrBizSEF, in is compliance with Joomla's GPL rules and will be released as GPL. The price is for the right to download and support tickets. The price of $79.95, we believe is fair and will cover our cost of development and support. Support, is one of the biggest hindrances to the open source community. Additionally, Open SEF has gone off line, so it's definitely not a viable solution anymore.

As for features, we've created a very clean, easy to use component and related modules which resolves the biggest problem with all the other SEF's we used: Duplicate Content. Joomla and Open SEF are a nightmare on this point as are others. SerrBizSEF resolves it to our satisfaction. Now, you'll have clean SEFs and the ability to assign which Dynamic URL is the one which should be displayed. We've also added on a couple of other goodies that we think will increase your SEO ROI in the long run.

Anyway, if you'd like to e notified as to when the component becomes available, just register at Serr.biz.

Sincerely,
Michael Zittel.
800.556.7449
...
written by steve, August 03, 2007
Hi Michael

Thanks for the detailed reply. Thats great news that it will be GPL. Do you mind if I ask a couple of quick follow up questions?

1) Will the component be able to work with sef_ext.php files for other SEF URL Extensions?
2) Will it have automapping?
3) Will this be for 1.0.13, 1.5 or both?

Thanks
Steve
Automapping / 1.0.12 / sef_ext
written by Michael Zittel, August 04, 2007
The system does NOT work with other SEF, except the default Joomla of course.

For the launch, we have configured the system to work with Joomla 1.0.12 as that is what our sites, and our client sites, are built on.

We are holding off on upgrades for 1.0.13 until the core 3rd party extensions we use are upgraded.

As for 1.5, we are waiting until a stable version is released.

Note about Hot Properties. Our version is lightly modified and includes a bulk listing (MLS and IDX).

Note about SEF: By default, out system will create true, clean, full URLS for all content items, as well as section and category lists.

For example:
A URL like this:
/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=169

Would become something like this:
/section_name/category_name/title_alias.html

The category list would become:
/section_name/category_name.html

The section list would become:
/section_name.html

To the search engines this will look like a pure html website, which we find is the best. This is based on 9 years of experience and hundreds of SEO Audits. 99% of the time, the top ranked sites for any given search term, look like static html websites. In some rare instances dynamic sites that do not use URL rewriting may rank well due to massive, massive link popularity.

For more details, please visit our site.

Thanks.
Michael.



...
written by steve, August 06, 2007
Hi Michael

Thanks for such a detailed reply.

I think that your more less preaching to the converted when it comes to the need for URLs that are human-readable and mimic HTML pages.

I guess intent of the original blog post was to ask - what does this component provide that the current market leaders (sh404SEF and SEF Advance) do not?

The reason I asked about other SEF components is that one of the easiest ways to make an SEF component work with as many extensions as possible (and thus be as useful as possible) is to piggy-back on sef_ext.php files developed for rivals.

The automapping question is also key. Our experience has been that Joomla will try its hardest to let the ordinary index.php? URLs escape and create duplicate content. Without automapping the default URLs to the SEF URLs, things end up a mess pretty quickly.
Automap and SEF_ext
written by Michael Zittel, August 29, 2007
Hi.

Regarding auto mapping, we have created SerrBizSEF to do the following. Once an SEF is created for a content item, any future internal (dynamic) urls that are created are AUTOMAPPED to ONE sef. So, lets say I create an item in section called "widgets", a category called "green" and titled the item "small". The resulting SEF would be /widgets/green/small.html.

Now, let's say you add this item to Frontpage, Latest news, and News flash. Joomla wants to create 3 different dynamic urls plus the original. When SerrBizSEF is active, only ONE SEF is shown no matter how you navigate to the item.

Additionally, you can easily change which dynamic URL is the one SerrBizSEF should use. By default, SerrBizSEF will use the section/category/title url.

As you know, OpenSEF would make different SEF's for each and trying to define which internal url to use quickly became an endless nightmare. We have worked hard to make the management of this as simple as possible.

Comparing ourselves to OpenSEF, we think this is a huge advantage and the pros are obvious.

Comparing ourselves to SEF Advance, we find our install much easier as you don't need IconCube, which can be a bit of a pain in the butt for non geeks. Heck, it can even be a pain for geeks. That's one plus. More importantly, our system makes, in our opinion, better SEFS. SEF Advance urls look like a path to folder, not a file

/widgets/green/small/
Vs ours
/widgets/green/small.html

Another point of comparison is price. We have decided to launch the basic product FREE through December 1 2007. All people need to do is register and download the product and install. (Official Launch Sept 1.)

Upgrade for 3rd party extensions are tentatively priced at $24.95, which includes 5 priority support tickets.

As a bonus, anyone using SerrBizSEF can be added to a new section on Serr.biz. This will help their SEO link popularity. Details are here: http://www.serr.biz/emarketing...files.html

Comparing ourselves to sh404SEF, we have not used that component. However, the information on the site is not very detailed and didn't excite us. Lack of detailed documentation annoys us greatly. Plus, it's purely a FREE product and might disappear like OpenSEF at some point. We wanted control and good documentation, so we made our own component. We have not launched yet, but already we have a long list of help topics, tricks and tips.

View here: http://www.serr.biz/ask-a-ques...izsef.html

Another aspect of the SerBizSEF is that it comes bundled with a Social Bookmark module. This module serves two functions. It assures that all words in title and meta are in the body copy, which is good SEO. Also, it helps promote a users site by allowing visitors to bookmark their users site in the popular social bookmark sites. This too is good seo.

As for SEF_EXT
We decided NOT to use the SEF_EXT format. For speed we serialize the rules we create and to assure quality of code. At a later time we may use sef_ext, but for now we do not.

As for other comparisons, we look forward to the launch and making SerBizSEF a most excellent SEF component. All suggestions and recommendation will be greatly appreciated.

Oh, real quick, one thing we think is very important is our SEO knowledge and skill outside of Joomla. We have been in this trade for over 8 years. We come to the table with SEO EYES first, and JOOMLA second. We think this is a huge advantage for anyone using our products and services. When you work with Serr.biz, you get practical knowledge based on solid results in a wide array of industries and platforms. smilies/cheesy.gif

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