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Home / SEO / Joomla 1.6 and SEO

Jul

2009

Joomla 1.6 and SEO

Written by Steve Burge

If you haven't done so already, you need to head to Joomlacode.org and download Andrew Eddie's presentation on Joomla 1.6. Its also on video at Vimeo. After reading, I'm more encouraged about Joomla's future than I have been for months.

The presentation has 39 detailed slides, so I won't try to recap them all - look for that in a blog post next week. Today, I'll focus on what's important from an SEO perspective:

Slide 9: URLs Will Change

No surprise. I can't say this enough - if you want to build your site for the long-term, you need to be using some kind of Search Engine Friendly URLs. If you don't, you'll always have problems when you need to upgrade or migrate.

Slide 33: Redirect Component

This allows you to find broken links and redirect them to a valid page. This has been fairly widely available in other components, but if done right it could be a useful addition to the core. A couple of suggestions:

Allow people to search the errors by the number of times they've been visited
Bring the 404 page inside Joomla so it can be edited easily

Slide 24 and 34: Metadata

Slide 24 shows an additional field in the metadata "Alternative Page Title". Brilliant! This was Joomla's major metadata weakness and it looks like its been solved. Essentially this should allow you have a human-friendly title on the page: "10 Reasons Why Joomla 1.6 Will Rock Your World" and have another keyword-laden title appear in Google's results: "Joomla 1.6 Improvements Metadata and SEF URLS"

Slide 34 promises "custom metadata solutions" but how that works wasn't shown in the presentation.

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Your Comments (12)

Dan Walker

July 09, 2009

Wow! That was a very impressive slide show. 1.6 is going to be a huge improvement.

Steve Burge

July 09, 2009

I was impressed too.

Some good new features, but also more simplicity - quite a few usability items improved.

bucabay

July 10, 2009

Yes, definite improvements. Especially the nested categories.
Only thing I would have liked to see with the extensions manager is the "discover" page being able to discover extensions from "package repositories".
The ACL looks like a really good upgrade from what Joomla1.5 currently has, but could improve.

Sean Redfearn

July 10, 2009

Hi Steve,
Very impressed with everything that is coming, but I just hope the upgrade from 1.5 to 1.6 is easier that before.
Also what are your thoughts on Virtuemart with Joomla is this going to work the same as normal?

SEO will we still be using sh404sef?

Regards,
Sean R.

Sean Redfearn

July 10, 2009

Just though of another thing, what about Admin Praise will this still be a better admin template to use than the new Joomla 1.6?

Nancy1122

July 11, 2009

Thanks Steve.. Indeed the improvement is remarkable...

Ilan Hertz

July 12, 2009

wow.. looks impressive. looking forward to trying the beta.

Al Hatch

July 14, 2009

What is the significance of the lack of reference to SEO in the slides or subsequent updates?

surendar

July 15, 2009

That would be very great if Joomla1.6 solve all the metadata issues.
Looking for that....

Sylvain9929

July 21, 2009

Nice! It could be a nice promoting solution

Sean Cook

July 28, 2009

Now they are getting somewhere! The problem now is that templates have to be upgraded and all of the extensions as well, so the migration to 1.6 sounds like a big headache! smilies/angry.gif

Amor Jones

October 15, 2009

J1.6 looks very promising and especialy for SEO. Now...what is going to happen to components/modules/plugins (purchased or free)? will they work? are they going to be upgraded and if so, how soon?. Of course, when 1.6 beta or RC is made available, remember to install it on a test bed and not on a live site. I can't wait for J1.6