The result of my research was that Wordpress is just, for my purposes, a better CMS. It's more user friendly, more consistently coded (not as much legacy stuff to force an old version on you), and more SEO friendly out of the box.
This is a summary of my learning process as I tried to figure out how to make Joomla Search Engine Friendly.
The least I want is:
- proper titles (title of article or category - followed by general title)
- url's that stay the same even if I change something
I would prefer url's that include keywords, but I think I may have to skip that option for the project I'm working on.
Just the most useful links I've found on Joomla SEO
Which is most Search Engine Friendly? A WordPress, Joomla and Drupal SEF Comparison.
Each of the Open Source Content management systems like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal need work to make them Search Engine Friendly before you can start to Optimize the site for better placement in the search engines, read more about those options here...
Most popular SEO extension for Joomla 1.5: sh404SEF - ALSO Joomla security
Commercial: will hopefully be updated for Joomla 1.6.
- makes Joomla more secure
- custom titles (automatic title use default?)
- creates 404 pages that include links to relevant articles!
- user friendly URL's
SEF Title Prefix and Suffix - Joomla! Extensions Directory
This plugin adds prefix and suffix to title in metatags. Suffix especially would be good.
Instruction:- install plugin;- change plugin parameters (add prefix ans suffix);- publish plugin;
No more ??? in your urls - HP Router
HP Router takes the URLs of the core of Joomla! and removes the IDs from the non-menu parts. You can now create URLs without disturbing numbers in them and it even helps with duplicate content in some special cases. It implements some improvements in the URLs, too.
Alias for Page Title Plugin >SEO without core hack
Title tag will consist of the article's Alias instead of using the regular Title. & set a prefix and/or suffix to your page title
SEO & Metadata - Joomla! Extensions Directory
Just a list of all the extensions that claim SEO help.
Other helpful hints
Google Analytics extension 1.5 - what to do without knowing your traffic?
Will this be updated for Joomla 1.6?
This Plugin will add the Google Analytics Tracker Code to your site automagically.This Plugin was created as a better alternative to the several "module based" solutions that are out there. As far as I know this is the first and only Joomla! 1.5 Native Plugin that does this.
JoomlaStats - Joomla! Extensions Directory
JoomlaStats is a USER AWARE statistics component for Joomla. Features: OS, browser, bots/spiders, referrers, last visitors, last bots/spiders, page hits, visitors by country, average visitors/bots, search engines, and keywords.
Don't forget to... redirect domainname.com to www.domainname.com
Or the other way around
This can be done in Apache, but there is also a plugin