Best Joomla seo plugin?

Hi,

Joomla is new to me, I started to create my own template, I wanted to know what plugin free or paid would you recommend for SEO, url rewriting.

I would like my url to be like /mykeywordpage.htm.

Also what can I do to secure Joomla.

Any tips is welcome.

Thanks

I will recommend the following
SEO:
1. Joomla built-in SEO. Go to "Global Configuration" on joomla backend and enable all options on "SEO Settings" box. You must also rename htaccess.txt in your hosting to .htaccess
2. sh404Sef. This is the best free SEO plugin but now you have to pay for it because it's becomes commercial component. You can build your own rewriting url if you learn how to write the plugin. This plugin also have honeypot protection so your website can be more secure. You can get the latest free version here:

Security:
1. Install jSecure plugin to secure your admin url.
2. Install sh404sef for honeypot
3. Fix joomla permission issue by installing suPhp if you have access to WHM. Depends on your server, this is the biggest joomla problems because you have to enable 777 permission to folder and 666 permission to files. This is not secure. The way to fix it is to install suPhp for your server.
4. Install LazyBackup (for daily backup) and JoomlaPack (for full backup) and place the backup folder outside your root folder.

Hope this helps. Contact me if you need freelancer to help your joomla website

Thank you jay2success you post is really useful.

I will start implementing them ASAP.

Kikou

i vote sh404sef as well

i would also install jsecure as well to mask the administrator login page

make sure when you use sh404 you turn on the advanced settings and familiarize yourself with the settings, you will need to select an option for it not to do friendly urls without index.php at the front of the url...

i like joomcloner for doing backups and moving sites as an alternative to joomlapack

hth

Recommending 3 useful extensions.

1. use sh404SEF component. perfect for Joomla SEO. Enable it in the advance tab and use this with .htaccess to disable index.php in your URL. (Ex. http://yourdomain.com/index.php/article1.html will be changed to http://yourdomain.com/article1.html)

2. use SEF_Service_Map as your sitemap component. Install it with its extension (Ext_SEF_Service_Map) to work well with sh404SEF. Useful for quick indexing with Google. Also included is a Pingback feature. Just add more Host.

3. use JomComment component as an added feature to your site.

bonus:
also install JoomSEO plugin for better read more performance.

It's all free. Get them here.

May not be 100% on this, but doesn't .htaccess require you being on a linux hosting??

In several web servers (most commonly Apache), .htaccess (hypertext access) is the default name of a directory-level configuration file that allows for decentralized management of web server configuration. The .htaccess file is placed inside the web tree, and is able to override a subset of the server's global configuration; the extent of this subset is defined by the web server administrator. The original purpose of .htaccess was to allow per-directory access control (e.g. requiring a password to access the content), hence the name. Nowadays .htaccess can override many other configuration settings, mostly related to content control.

Click to expand...

most of the time .htaccess is used in Apache Server and is present to protect your files from being hacked.

Thank you all, I have being busy customizing. This will be really useful.