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. Install Joomla! 1.5.

Joomla! 1.5.1 introduced a new setting in configuration.php which may help solve problems associated with turning on SEF URLs. For some information about the new setting $live_site (and a potential problem when upgrading from Joomla! 1.5 to 1.5.1), read this topic.

2. 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 / orhttp://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 orhttp://example.com/joomladir.

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

3. 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

4. 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 3, 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

Personally, for my own Joomla! sites, I perform all 4 steps. I consider steps 1 and 2 as required, steps 3 and 4 as optional for good SEO. Unless someone provides a compelling reason, I think steps 3 and 4 are for cosmetics only and don't greatly affect search engine optimization.

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. I alluded to this in step 2. 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.