As part of a my goal to review every SEO tool for Joomla, I'm moving on to mambots this week.

We've previously reviewed Search Engine Friendly URL components such as Open-SEF, SEF Advance and Artio SEF and patches such at the Joomlatwork SEF Patch.

Mambots (or plug-ins) are generally much smaller extensions, often just two files, but they can have a dramatic effect on site's operation as we'll see with JoomSEO.

What Does JoomSEO Do? 

• Adds real semantic headings. We earlier posted a hack to core files that enabled you to add <h1> and <h2> tags to content titles. However this mambot allows you to do that without requiring any core hacks. A word of warning - you may need to rewrite your CSS. Quite a few off-the-shelf templates come with a very, very large <h1> or <h2> size.
• Generates metadata automatically. It allows you to create dynamic meta keywords, dynamic meta descriptions and dynamic titles, with quite a few options about which items you do and don't want included. I found the keyword extraction to be pretty accurate. It comes with a long list of excluded words (a, the, it, and etc...) so your keyword list is actually pretty useful.

What Are JoomSEO's Limitations?

• It can't be turned on and off per page. This means that if you're using the "keywords in page title" option and you do have a page with a form for example, you'll need to add some text or your page title will contain something like "| html, , generator , , ,|"
• It only works with content items. It won't work with Content / Section lists, Contact pages etc. or Third Party Components.
  

What Sites Will Find JoomSEO Useful?

Overall, I'd recommend JoomSEO for larger sites with medium-to-large amounts of content. If you have a small site, I'd still suggest using the Joomlatwork SEF Patch and writing your page titles and meta description. However, if you have lots of content, especially user-submitted content, its hard to justify the time need to write descriptions for article. If you're in that situation, you'll find an automatic metadata generator useful and JoomSEO in particularly.

Further Reading

• Reviews at Joomla.org
• JoomSEO homepage