SEO is the main source to drive free traffic on your website.
So if you want to optimize your Joomla article for better SEO, you need to pay attention to this article.
As you know, writing content is not that big a task, but when it comes to creating an SEO Optimized Article, it needs a special kind of practice.
Today with the help of this article, we will learn how we can create SEO optimized content for our Joomla website without using any third-party extension. We will just use the inbuilt features of core Joomla.
So without wasting your much time, let’s dive into the knowledge pool and learn to optimize Joomla articles.
Optimizing Content for Better Search Engine Ranking
Optimize Your Article Title
Article Title plays a vital role in the Search Engine ranking as well as to attract more users toward your article. If your Article Title is convincing enough and tells the visitor that what information your article has, there are 98% chances that the user will read the article.
So while you are optimizing your title, you need to take care of these following points.
- The title should be Catchy.
- The title should include a Power word. You can check the list of power words here.
- Your Title should contain your primary keyword.
- The title should be meaningful.
- Before finalizing the title, analyze it with any heading analyzer. Here is a free tool from Coschedule which helps you to analyze the headline. Try to achieve as much score as you can.
Optimize Article Alias
I am assuming that you are already aware of Article Alias so I am not gonna in detail about what Alias is and all.
By Default, Joomla auto-generates the Alias from the title. But you can edit it anytime as per your needs. But I will suggest you do it once at the time of publishing your article. Because once your article gets indexed, and you change the alias, it will return a 404 error.
So while you are optimizing your article alias, take care of these following points.
- Keep it short.
- Do not use any stop word like a, or, of, the, above, etc. You can have a look at the list of these SEO stop words.
- Use your primary keyword as an alias.
Optimize the Article Content
Content is King.
This is a true proverb. On the guts of quality content, you can win your customers. Drive more sales. Rank on top of the search engine for your money keywords and do a lot. You just need to provide what the user is looking for in a well-optimized way.
While we are making an SEO optimized article, we need to pay attention to these following points.
- Your content should be fully researched and provide all the information that a user is looking for. For example, if a user is looking about creating a Joomla website, you should tell each and everything about the topic. Like how he can start, about templates, extensions, what mistakes he should avoid, etc.
- Add proper heading tags to your content. Create a content structure using H1 (Only for the title), H2, H3, H4 tags, and bullet points. It will help you to decorate your content as well it will be easy for users to understand. Also, try to use your keywords in the heading tags.
- Use LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords in your content. LSI Keywords are conceptually related terms that search engines use to deeply understand the content on an article or webpage.
- Use Long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are keywords that are more specific – and usually longer – than more commonly searched for keywords. Long-tail keywords get less search traffic, but will usually have a higher conversion value, as they are more specific.
- Your content should be unique. In some cases, you can’t play with the facts that are acceptable. But try to produce unique and engageable content.
- Try to add questions to your articles. Find out what people are using to search on Google. Check out the “People also ask” section in the SERP.
- Try to add tweetable content. Adding tweetable content in your article can boost your article's social share. Here is a detailed guide on how to add attractive tweetable boxes in your Joomla article.
- The most important part, don’t forget to add some external authority reference links in your articles. And also add some internal links as well. It will increase the value of your content.
- Add relevant graphics to your content. Graphics help to catch the reader's attention.
Optimize Images by Adding Alt Tags
Image optimization is also an art. You need to be very careful when you are uploading images in your articles.
Always, use the Alt tag on your images. Why?
Google can’t read an image. It reads the text. Apart from this, it is most important for web accessibility so the physically challenged people can also understand what the image is about.
Apart from this, when you are naming images, name it correctly. If you are naming an image like image01.jpeg. This is a very big mistake. You should always use the correct name for the image.
Suppose if you are uploading a Global configuration screenshot and naming it dashboard.jpg. It is again wrong. The name should be global-configuration.jpg so search engines can accurately understand that this image is about global configuration. And when the user will search for a global configuration on Google images, it will show in the result.
One more thing, you can always use a caption on the image. It also makes your image more discoverable.
Add Meta Title, Description & Keywords
Thanks to Joomla, to add Meta Title, Description or Keywords, you don't need to install any third-party extension. Joomla provides this feature at its core. You just need to fill the information.
How to add Meta title, Description & keywords
To add Meta title is also known as Browser Title. So before we are adding a meta title, you need to make it fully SEO Optimized. Here is how:
- Keep it under 70 Characters including spaces.
- Add your Primary and Secondary keywords.
- Add CTA in the Title.
To add Meta or browser title to your article, navigate to the Options tab, and find Browser Title. Just add your title here and you are done.
Now, we have to prepare the meta description so we can also add that as well as the article. Here is how you can prepare:
- Keep it under 160 characters using blank spaces.
- Add CTA terms to your descriptions.
- Add your keywords in your descriptions.
- It should be meaningful and match with your content.
- Most importantly, you should make your description unique so users can notice it.
- Try to pitch with your USPs (Unique Selling Point). It will help you to increase the CTR.
To add Meta Description to your article, navigate to the publishing tab of Joomla's article. There you will find the Meta Description input field. Simply add your description there and you are done.
Apart from the description, there you will find the Meta keywords input field as well. Here you can put all your targeted keywords for the particular article. This will help you to rank your article on search engines.
Wrapping up…
So, this is how you can optimize Joomla articles for better SEO. If I have to prepare a checklist to create SEO optimized content for Joomla site, this should be like this:
- Make a detailed research about the topic.
- Find out targeted keywords.
- Write content using your targeted keywords.
- Optimize your title
- Optimize the article alias
- Optimize content by adding questions, keywords, LSI, Internal and external links, images, videos, heading, subheadings, etc.
- Add alt attributes to your images.
- Fill out the meta title, description, and keywords.
Let us know if you have any questions or if you have any other SEO writing suggestions. Share your thoughts in the comments section!
