Welcome to Alledia - the Joomla SEO Experts

During conversations with clients over the last few months, one key question keeps coming up: "should I use Joomla 1.0 or Joomla 1.5?" In fact, I can trace the first time I was asked that question back to October 2006.

Now that 1.5 has officially launched, I tend to point the non-technically minded to 1.0 and those who don't mind dealing with a few bugs to 1.5.

However, until this week I don't think I've found a compelling reason for anyone to use 1.5 rather than 1.0. That may have changed:

I recently came across a cool SEO tool:

http://www.seo-browser.com

SEO-Browser.com displays a website the way search engines view your site.  The site is displayed with all images and formatting removed, leaving just the links, headings, and text.

Viewing a website the way the search engines do reminds us of and enforces the key elements of SEO.  

I have used this tool to show clients how their web site looks to the search engines.  Seeing your site as simply text demonstrates how important relevant text is.

Update: We now have classes all across North America. Click here for full details on our new Joomla Training site.

Its been a long time coming, but I am very excited to be able to announce our first Joomla training event in the US. Its going to be the day after the Joomla EXPO 2008 in Chicago.

The EXPO is on Friday 16th of May, and the training is on Saturday the 17th. The classrooms are right next to the hotel where the EXPO is being held.

I'll be there in person to give the training session and you'll be able to follow up with me in the weeks after the event ... all SEO training attendees get a free Site Review membership. We also have some great trainers for the other sessions, recognized leaders in education as well as Joomla. Book your spot soon as the places are very limited.

Here's an Easter special for all our readers.

Over the Easter weekend you can use the coupon code "easter" for a 20%  discount all membership plans.

This offer works for new and renewing members. It starts right now and ends on Sunday night.

Note: Membership prices are going up by 30% on April 18th (the club's half-year anniversary), and so now is a great time to get in for only 50% of next month's price.

Click here to join the Joomla SEO Club today.

Google have just announced that the speed of your site will start directly affecting your profits. If you're using Adwords, fast landing pages will lead to a better Quality Score. Slow sites may well end up paying more for their clicks. More from the Google Adwords blog:

Why are we doing this?

The SEF Patch is one of the most vital SEO component from Joomla. However, it has one really, really useful function that surprises everyone when I mention it to them.

You can easily add and edit 100s of URLs at once and access a far greater range of features.

Here's how ....

Earlier this week we launched a new frontpage for Alledia.com. We used iJoomla.com's News Portal and it really is a pretty slick application.

The main goal of the redesign was simply to place the freshest content right on the homepage. 

Three weeks ago some of the brighest SEO minds in the Joomlasphere took up the challenge to form a thinktank and bring together their thoughts for improving SEO in Joomla! 1.6.

Today this team is happy to announce the opening of a public wiki for the Joomla! community to get involved in this process. Over the next 2 weeks we would like to gather as many ideas, suggestions and concepts as possible.

One of the hardest things for a new site owner to do is start generating links. However, because you've built your site in Joomla, you have the chance to get  a good number of valuable links.

Earlier this week we talked about using Siteground's strategy of dominating the search results with extra sites. This is an alternate strategy that involves building positive links to bolster your online reputation. It helps you fill the search results with positive mentions of your business and provides protection against negative news. I'd love to have a dollar for everyone who's said "we decided to do business with you after searching through your results on Google".

Good news over at Joomla.org - extensions with hidden advertising will be clearly labelled.

We've covered this topic two times on this blog and thoroughly support the decision. I think this will do quite a bit to protect the reputation of Joomla and 3rd party developers. Its embarrassing to explain to high-value clients why their Joomla sites contain hidden links to hotels,  apartments or random web developers.

This is the notice that will appear on guilty extensions:

Last year I wrote a couple of posts about how important it was to fill the search engine rankings with positive mentions of your company. Its one of the cornerstones of online reputation management and can help to filter out bad news about your company.

A few people have asked for examples of those techniques and I found a great one today. Siteground is a hosting company that targets the Open Source niche. They offer middle-of-the-road prices and like many other companies they manage servers at the ThePlanet.com. They do offer fast answers to support tickets, but generally they offer the same product as many other companies. So, how do they fill the search engine results with their company and drive more customers than their rivals?