Joomla is a free content management system. It has a huge number of developers and users. It is used for almost any type of website, including small corporate sites. For any additional functionality that you would like to have you can find at least one extension. Installing and managing Joomla website is easy and needs no expert knowledge. One of the most important aspects of any website is its optimization for search engines (SEO). This means that the website should not be only intended for human visitors, search engines should also find relevant data. In general, SEO elements are divided into two groups, on-page and off-page. There is one on-page element that is many times neglected. This is the format of the uniform resource locators (URLs), or in other words, the address of individual pages.
If we have a small site with static HTML pages we can name them according to their content or title and the same applies to directories. Joomla CMS is different. The pages are not static, they are dynamically created. This means that the web address of any page is in general a series of various parameters that tell Joomla what content to create. For a normal human visitor this is of minor importance because he is focused on the page content. Unfortunately, search engines look also at other parts of the website, they take into account also not so visible elements like meta tags and URLs. Therefore, it make sense to name pages according to the content or title of the page. This naming should not be some manual process, it should automatically reflect some existing parameter suitable to create URL. This applies in particular to content management systems where most tasks are or should be automated.
Joomla does not allow users to name page URLs arbitrary. The only possibility is to enable the setting “Search Engine Friendly URLs”. This feature converts “unreadable” page addresses to meaningful names. Having search engine friendly (SEF) URLs means having page addresses that clearly represent section, category and page names. This built-in functionality is somehow limited. You have no control over the creation of the new URLs. This is many times an annoying and limiting factor. Of course, there are solutions to this problem.
You can install one of the many SEF extensions that do the same job but have many parameters where you can adjust the look of page addresses according to your needs and taste. One of the very popular Joomla SEF extensions is the sh404sef. This is a component that rewrites Joomla URLs to a more friendly format. It also has the possibility to create custom meta tags. This means that sh404sef is also a SEO component. Its features do not end there. This component provides also some security features like prevention of flooding. In fact, sh404sef is a very complex Joomla extension. You need some time to make it work according to your wishes. But the end effect is well worth this effort.
Having friendly URLs is important for search engines, but also human visitors can benefit from clearly named web addresses. Therefore, using SEF URLs is recommended for every Joomla installation.
The author uses SEF addresses even on small sites like the http://johnlennonmusic.net/ website. For example, the address of the John Lennon Biography page consists of the page title. This makes it easy to determine the page content from its address.
