I’m a big fan of WordPress for Joomla. From corePHP, I use it on both the iJoomla blog and UsabilityTesting.tv. I love it because:

• I can enjoy all the features of WordPress, the most powerful blogging platform!
• It’s completely integrated in Joomla!
• It makes my blogs look awesome.

But doing SEO for my WordPress blogs has always been a challenge. To assign a title metatag (the most important factor for SEO) and all the other metatags, I had to install a special plugin. And even with the plugin, I still have to open each blog post, enter the metatags individually, and close and repeat for each blog post.

And then I have to find a way to monitor my keywords on Google.

The beach near my house

Frankly, I’d rather be at the beach.

Many of our customers also found SEO on their blogs a giant headache, and they asked us to add support to WordPress on iJoomla SEO. So we did!

Now I can:

• Edit all my WordPress metatags on ONE page. It’s fast and easy!
• Monitor my keywords on Google. I can see their positions and whether they’re up or down.

This not only saves me a ton of time, but also gives me an insight into my SEO efforts on Google — and what I need to do to improve my results!

Plus, I get to enjoy my summer rather than spending all day in front of the computer.

Here’s a video that explains how to add SEO your WordPress posts easily with iJoomla SEO:

Get WordPress for Joomla for a discount

If you are not using WordPress for Joomla yet, our friends and corePHP have given us a special promotion:

Enter this discount code for 20% off!

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Not using iJoomla SEO yet?

Here’s a special discount code. It will expire within the next 48 hours though, so do please hurry and get it now.

Enter this discount code for 20% off!

ijoomlaseo1

We’ve just released iJoomla SEO version 1.1.0 and many of the improvements it contains are down to you. As you know, we monitor user suggestions on our forum very closely and tackle a different extension each time. The latest version of iJoomla SEO is packed with suggestions raised by users:

• Choose your Google site. Now you can choose the Google site you use to monitor keywords. Just go to the settings page and replace the .com extension with any other Google extension.

• Extensions metatags sync. Previous versions of iJoomla SEO retained different metatag entries in supported extensions. Now those entries sync. When you upgrade, you will be asked to choose the metatags you want to keep.

• Categories for internal links and redirects. Now that you can place the internal links and redirects in different categories, we’ve also added a search box and a filter by category.

• More supported extensions. By popular demand, we’ve added support to more extensions, including Zoo by YooJoomla and WordPress by corePHP.

As always, your upgrades are free! So get your copy now and enjoy these great new features!

The new features of iJoomla SEO version 1.1.0

How to upgrade iJoomla SEO

1. Download iJoomla SEO
2. No need to unzip the file
3. No need to uninstall previous version
4. Go to extensions->install/uninstall and install the zip file there

Don’t have iJoomla SEO yet? Buy it here

Because so many Joomla users use VirtueMart as their shopping cart, and because VirtueMart has no easy way to control metatags, one frequent request that we received was to support the extension on iJoomla SEO. So we did it.

The latest version of iJoomla SEO allows you to manage all your VirtueMart metatags in one place. You’ll be able to:

• Add/edit title, keyword and description metatags on both categories and products;
• Quickly generate new description metatags;
• Populate title and keyword metatags in a snap;
• Monitor your keywords on Google.

And it’s all so easy! Take a look at the video below that explains how to add metatags to VirtueMart using iJoomla SEO.

Even if you’re using VirtueMart, iJoomla SEO is still the SEO solution you’ve been waiting for. You’ll be able to cut 95% of your SEO time and head to the beach instead. (Unless, of course, you’d rather spend the summer playing with metatags…)

Do you use VirtueMart? And if yes, how do you currently manage your metatags?

How to add metatags to VirtueMart

(my apologies for the audio not syncing with video towards the end)

As you know, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the most cost-effective way to get more traffic to your site. A finely-tuned, search engine-optimized site can do wonders for your visibility — and your bank account!

That’s why we created our newest component. iJoomla SEO makes search engine optimization easy and effective. It even makes it fun. We want to help you and your SEO efforts succeed!

Managing your metatags and monitoring your keywords with the iJoomla SEO component though are not the only ways to build your Google love. There are a number of other important strategies that can help you rank higher on Google. In particular, your site should be fast, accessible and table-free!

And that’s where are our friends at Joomlashack can help. They offer templates that are not only beautiful, but also SEO-friendly. Because there’s no point in having a slick site if no one ever sees it, is there?

JoomlaShack templates have several critical SEO features:

• The super-light code framework makes for fast loading!
• The powerful grid framework is easy for search engines to read.
• The logo image replacement produces SEO-readable text read instead of an image.

Get JoomlaShack templates for a discount:

These are templates that look great to readers and are loved by search engines. The coolest part? We persuaded Joomlashack to let us give you a BIG discount! Enter the promo code “ijoomlaseo” and you’ll get 15% off JoomlaShack’s templates now.

Visit JoomlaShack >>

When the Internet was young and dotcoms could write their own start-up checks, meta keywords were all the rage. They determined search engine rankings, and the rankings determined income. So they got spammed. Marketers stuffed them with all sorts of irrelevant terms and search engines responded by… well, ignoring them. Google’s Matt Cutts explains in the following video that:

“Our web search disregards keyword meta tags completely. They simply don’t have any effect in our search ranking at present.”

And yet, iJoomla SEO allows you to manage all of your meta tags in one page. If Google doesn’t use them for ranking, should you bother?

You should, and here’s why:

• Title meta tags and description meta tags are still very important for search engines. The title meta tag is the single most important SEO element on a Web page, and Google uses the description to create a snippet of your page in the search results. If a description isn’t there, Google will simply grab the text around the search term. That won’t look anything like as persuasive.
• Meta tag information is used in modules. In Joomla, the keyword meta tag is used for a number of different modules, including “related articles.”
• Meta tags can help with your keywording. iJoomla SEO uses the keywords you enter in the keyword meta tag for the “keywords manager” page. This page shows how each keyword ranks on Google. That alone is a good reason to populate your keywords meta tags.
• Search engines still rank by meta tags. Google might not do it but MSN, Yahoo! and other search engines still consider keyword meta tags when ranking pages.

So don’t let anyone tell you that meta tags are not important! You need to use all of these vital metatag fields:

• Title meta tag – This is the most important meta tag, and it’s the phrase that appears at the top of the page.
• Description meta tag – Important for correct display of your articles on search engine results.
• Keyword meta tag – Important for some search results and vital for a number of Joomla tools, including some of the great features of iJoomla SEO.

Cut your SEO time by 95%!

With iJoomla SEO, you can edit all your meta tags in ONE page! You won’t need to open each article, add the tags, close, and repeat for every article you’ve written. You have more important things to do than that! You can also manage all of your menu item meta tags and the meta tags of extensions such as k2, sobi2, Mosets Tree, and iJoomla extensions.

Stop working hard on your SEO today, get iJoomla SEO!

Due to popular demand, we’ve decided to add meta tag support to K2, the popular extension by JoomlaWorks.gr, to our iJoomla SEO.  So now, you will be able to edit all your K2 meta tags in one place, easily. This feature will be available in the next version of iJoomla SEO, coming in mid July 2009, stay tuned!

Here’s a video that describes what are the new features that we’ve added to the upcoming version of iJoomla SEO. As you will be able to see, this new version is MUCH more robust, and allows you to monitor your keywords placement on Google, identify problematic pages on your site and fix them easily and create internal and external automatic links. These new features make iJoomla SEO a very complete solution for optimizing your Joomla site for Search Engines.

SEO may sound complicated and expensive, but there are a number of things you can do to improve your search engine ranking that won’t have you spending a dime or tearing your hair out. Our friends at Alledia.com have put together a list — just for iJoomla’s newsletter subscribers — of the 10 simplest SEO tips and tricks for Joomla sites.

Alledia.com really are experts at SEO for Joomla, so when they talk search engines, we listen. 

1) Don’t install any sample data when you set up a Joomla! site.

When you launch your Joomla! Site, it’s very easy to forget to delete all the demo articles that come with it. That will give you pages, links and newsfeeds that are irrelevant to your topic. Delete your sample data and don’t forget to empty your trash as well!

2) Your Site Name should be your site’s name.

There can be a temptation to cram as many keywords as possible into the “Site Name” field. It doesn’t help and when users register at your site, they get an email saying “Welcome to Widgets, Buy Widgets, Cheap Widgets, Bargain Widgets!” You don’t want that.

3) Turn off your PDF links.

When we analyze Joomla! Sites, we often find PDFs ranking higher than the original pages. Because PDF pages have no menu links, they’re a dead-end. Users can’t move from the PDF to the rest of your site. So turn off those links.

4) Don’t waste your site’s link juice with lots of social bookmarking links.

Lets face it, very few pages have a chance to hit the Digg home page or do well on Reddit, so only place those buttons on your best articles. Your visitors appreciate clean, uncluttered pages — and so do search engines.

5) Redirect the www and non-www versions of your site to the same place.

All you need to do is add this little piece of code to your .htaccess file. Note: Replace MyDomain with your domain name and .com with your domain extension.

6) Turn on your cache.

Search in Google and you’ll see a size for each site. Smaller, faster sites are more popular with visitors and with Google. One easy way to make your site act small and load faster is to turn on your cache in Global Configuration.

7) Enter a full description for all your sections and categories.

These pages are great for organizing your site… and for improving Page Rank. If you organize your sections and categories carefully, your site becomes very easy for both people and search-engine spiders to navigate.

Less is often more

Having thousands of Joomla! pages indexed in Google isn’t always a good thing, especially if those pages don’t bring value. Some components, for example, can produce lots of extra pages that are completely worthless. One easy way to check if your site is putting garbage on Google is to search for site:mydomain.com. If you find pages that don’t have good content, you might want to remove them.

9) Empty your global configuration metadata.

I’m sure you’re all big fans of Joomla!, but I’m equally sure that “Joomla! – the dynamic portal engine and content management system” doesn’t describe your site. Take it out.

10) Be confident.

Joomla! is fantastic software that allows you to easily create lots of high quality pages that are great for your SEO. If you keep a close eye on your site and take the time to learn how Joomla! works, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have top-flight search engine rankings!

Need more SEO advice?