SEO - GENERAL ADVICE NEEDED

[AHTaylor1968]

joomla 2.5.24
php 5.4.43
vm 2.6.10

I have had my site up a while now but still not perfected it.  I now have some time to look at it in more detail so would like some advice on SEO and how I can have my site set up properly in this regard.  I am aware this a general question but if anyone could give me some basic pointers I can then look into them in more detail.  I have searched the forum but the questions are more detailed and precise to their particular problems and dont really give me the basics.



Thanks

[VMTemplates.net]

Hi,

maybe you will find it useful

1. Try to prepare logical stucture for your website (headings, paragraphs, descriptions for images) if possible +try to rich your content
2. Use some fast VPS and Content Delivery Network (if you are selling to more than 1-2 countries), optmize (compress) images, compress JavaScript and CSS - speed is very important
3. Register to Google Analytics and Google Web Master Tools - it is worth to use data highlither in GWMT
4. Take care of some high PR backlinks

There is a number of tips however above is the "must do"

[AHTaylor1968]

HI thanks for the information - which seems very complex?

I will do some research on what you have detailed.   Are there any straight forward settings in VM which I should set in a particular way?

[jenkinhill]

First update your versions for security reasons. It is a waste of time optimising a site if it then gets hacked!  Last in the "older" series were Joomla 2.5.27 and VirtueMart 2.6.22   http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=118683.0  Note that you must also apply a security patch for Joomla 2.5.27 - http://virtuemart.net/news/latest-news/475-critical-security-leak-in-all-joomla-versions-please-update-immediatly

Most SEO is common sense, making sure that the site is easily navigated, that content is authoritative and well laid out in an orderly manner, with key phrases or key words appearing early in an article or in the first sentence of a product description. Pay attention to the meta description content for you article pages, make sure that they make sense and they may appear in SERPS if the precise searched phrase is not within the page text.

Some people spend hours working on SEF urls, but there is no real need or benefit in that, except the urls may look prettier. Turning on SEF in Joomla and VM with mod_rewrite enabled is all that is usually necessary.

When a site is initially built it is preferable that it is optimised for SEO rules applying at that time (something I have always done), so in future only minor on-site tweaks may be needed. This allows more time to be spent on other aspects of SEM, such as attraction incoming links and expanding the presence on social media.

Hopefully there is enough here to get you started.