SEF URLs in Joomla! 1.5

The primary reason for having search engine friendly URLs is to force keywords to appear in the URL which, from a search engine’s point of view, increases the page’s relevance for these keywords.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to implement SEF URLs in Joomla! 1.5.

1. In Global Configuration, set Search Engine Friendly URLs = Yes and save.

This is the main Joomla setting for search engine optimization so it’s important to get this part working first, before anything else. When turned on, this setting will use an article’s Title Alias to form the URL. If the Title Alias is missing, the article’s Title is used.

If you encounter problems, try modifying the $live_site setting in configuration.php. If Joomla! is installed in the root (ie, inside public_html or htdocs), set $live_site to / or http://www.example.com or http://example.com. If Joomla! is installed in a subdirectory (ie, /joomladir), set $live_site to /joomladir or http://www.example.com/joomladir or http://example.com/joomladir. See also Why does your site get messed up when you turn on SEF (Search Engine Friendly URLs)?

If this step is successful, your URLs will change from

http://www.example.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=19&Itemid=27

to

http://www.example.com/index.php/joomla-overview

2. In Global Configuration, set Add suffix to URLs = Yes and save.

I think this setting is for cosmetic purposes only, but I’m not an SEO expert so don’t take my word for it. If you successfully set this to Yes, your URLs will change from

http://www.example.com/index.php/joomla-overview

to

http://www.example.com/index.php/joomla-overview.html

3. In Global Configuration, set Use Apache mod_rewrite = Yes and save.

Before completing this step, rename the file htaccess.txt to .htaccess. Doing this is a necessary part of this step.

Like step 2, I think this setting is for cosmetic purposes only. Again, I’m not an expert so don’t take my word for it. If this step is successful, the URL gets shortened from

http://www.example.com/index.php/joomla-overview.html

to

http://www.example.com/joomla-overview.html

4. Enable ‘System – SEF’ plugin

This plugin adds SEF support to links in your Joomla articles. It operates directly on the HTML and does not require a special tag.

Finally, I’d like to make the following recommendation: Take control of your search engine relevance by specifying a Title Alias for all your articles. By doing this, you get to choose exactly what appears in the SEF-optimized URL. I suggest using alphanumeric characters (no special characters or punctuation marks) with hyphens as separators. For example, joomla-overview is a good title alias.