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.

8) 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?