Using search engine friendly URLS in Joomla

If you ever noticed the URL of the pages of your Joomla website you would have noticed that is very long and complicated; besides which it does not make sense and is impossible to remember. You can change this to better URLs, ones that you can remember, also called Search Engine Friendly URLs.

Simply follow the steps mentioned below for search engine friendly URLS in Joomla:

• To start with login to the admin panel of your Joomla website.

• Navigate to the Global Configuration from the admin menu like Site Menu >> Global Configuration.

• You will see a page will load with several URL related settings under the SEO settings section. Rest assured each option is explained here to make things easier.

• The ‘Search Engine Friendly URLs‘ option should be set to ‘Yes’ to enable user friendly URLs. This will change the URL of your page to something like http://yourdomain.com/index.php/mypagename

• The ‘URL Rewriting‘ field provides you with the option of removing index.php from the URL. Although it is important to note that this option is not available on all web servers. It is in fact available only on Apache and IIS 7. Thus it is important to know which web server is provided by the hosting company as well.

• For the people using the Apache web server you will need to further clarify if the mod_rewrite has been installed on the server. Additionally you will also need to connect to your web server via FTP and rename the file htacces.txt to .htaccess.

• For those using the IIS 7 web server you will again need to confirm if IIS URL Rewrite Module is enabled for your account. Additionally you too will need to connect to your web server via FTP and rename the file web.config.txt to web.config.

• The next option in the SEO setting section is ‘Adds Suffix to URL‘. This option will add ‘.html’ to the end of all the URLs; thus making the URL of your page something like http://yourdomain.com/mypagename.html

• In addition to this it is possible to manage the aliases of the pages, articles and categories from the field provided for each page. The aliases field is often used in the URL too hence pays to keep it sensible.

Having setup your URLs you can breathe a sigh of relief for your URLs will now make sense and be easy to remember. These type of URLs will also help promote the ranking of your website.

As far as the search engine optimization (SEO) of a website is concerned, making the URLS sensible and easy to remember is one of the first steps. There are several techniques and procedures to be implemented however this is the first step.

In the case where you have gotten your website developed by a professional Web developer; it is possible for you to request them to change the necessary configurations and even added a little extra bit to help with the search engine optimization. But for those who have opted the ‘do it yourself’ approach this article should be more than helpful to make the necessary settings.

However if you are the kind who wishes to add their own ideas and have a custom design on their website then you may need to hire a professional Joomla Web developer for the job. Alakmalak is one such Joomla Web development company that can help you out with such requirements.

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