In this chapter, we've seen that Joomla! 1.6 takes some great steps forward in helping you create a site that should be able to be picked up and ranked well by search engines:
The new semantic layouts are a big step forward towards a SEO-friendly site. Joomla! now outputs well-structured pages following current standards, which improves the search engine's ability to effectively index web page content.
Use proper heading elements when writing and editing articles. Joomla! already uses
H1
andH2
tags for the site title and page heading, so you should use onlyH3, H4, H5
, andH6
headings in article text.If you want to manually control a specific HTML Page Title, you can set this in the Menu Item details.
In Joomla! 1.6, you can enter metadata on four levels: site-wide, for individual menu links, for individual categories, and for individual articles.
Search Engine Friendly URLs are now turned on by default.
Joomla! 1.6 enables you to add a site map, using a new menu item type called List...