Joomla! is a wonderful open source CMS. But the performance of content on Search Engine Results is not good enough.
Some SEO (Search Engine Optimize) hacking should be taken to make it better on SERP.
The first one is H1 tag.
Joomla does not take H1 on it template. So the Search Engine can not find the important part of the page.
To add H1 on the page title, article title, you need to do following html hack.
Use whatever html editing tools you like, I use Dreamweaver now.
The template files are sitting here.
\website root\components\com-content\views\frontpage\tmpl\default_item.php
\website root\components\com-content\views\article\tmpl\default.php
\website root\components\com-content\views\category\tmpl\default.php
\website root\components\com-content\views\section\tmpl\default.php
Find “contentheading”
Then add <h1> </h1> around the heading tag.
Save them and upload them to site.
When you browse the page after H1 hacking, the title will looks bigger than before.
You can also use css to add H1 style for them.

David Yin

David is a blogger, geek, and web developer — founder of FreeInOutBoard.com. If you like his post, you can say thank you here

11 Replies to “SEO hacking for Joomla 1.5.2

  1. The big players such as Wonga, PaydayUK and Quick Quid are spending tens of thousands a month on SEO, PPC and Affiliate campaigns to battle for position on these high value keyword phrases.

  2. The big players such as Wonga, PaydayUK and Quick Quid are spending tens of thousands a month on SEO, PPC and Affiliate campaigns to battle for position on these high value keyword phrases.

  3. Hi,
    Just though I would mention the better option, as used by top ranking Joomla sites managed by MyallDesigns. Change the componentheading into h1. This means your page title, which should be the best source of the onpage title if you have done your site right.
    These edits are done in…
    \components\com-content\views\frontpage\tmpl\default_item.php
    \website root\components\com-content\views\article\tmpl\default.php
    \website root\components\com-content\views\category\tmpl\default.php and blog.php
    \website root\components\com-content\views\section\tmpl\default.php and blog.php
    Changing the contentheading to h1 will give you more than one h1 tag on a page which is poor SEO because the importance of the H1 tag is diluted. It also looks like a spammy SEO technique and is likely to have a negative effect on your rankings.
    In fact even W3C states that you should never have more than one H1 tag!
    Happy SEOing!

  4. in my last comment I realised I was not very clear after I submitted.
    in each of those file find…
    around line 6 but certainly near the top!
    add tags around this. I.e,
    any chance of a link for that gem?

  5. Why don’t ytou use template override for the hack? If you change core code you must redo the changes if there is an update. By using template override you can save the default.php files in the html directory of the template. This way your changes are more lasting

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