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sh404SEF facilitates URL renaming and redirection with or with an .htaccess file. It also provides you with per page fields for entering custom titles and meta information. In this article we’ll cover installation, configuration and implementation of the sh404SEF component.

Installation:

Before you install any components, I highly recommend backing up your site, and your database. You’ll be overwriting core files during the installation, and it’s critical to be able to restore your site if something goes wrong.

Download the component from the sh404SEF site. Make sure you’re downloading the right version to correspond with the version of Joomla you have.

To install the component in Joomla 1.5, use the top menu to browse to ‘Extensions’ then ‘Install/Uninstall’. In Joomla 1.0.x, use the top menu to browse to ‘Installers’ then ‘Components’. Use the file uploader to browse for the compressed file on your desktop, and load the component.

Configuration:

Once you’ve installed the component, there are a few global settings in Joomla you’ll need to do to get it working.

In the top menu choose ‘Site’ then ‘Global Configuration’. In ‘Global Configuration’ select the SEO tab. Change the item that says ‘Search Engine Friendly Pages’ from ‘no’ to ‘yes’ (ignore the alert that pops up). Then locate and change the item that says Dynamic Page Titles from ‘no’ to ‘yes’.

Next, locate the Metadata Tab. From here you can control the meta:title and the meta:author tag. Neither of these tags are valuable for SEO, so it’s recommended to set them to say ‘no’.

Configuring sh404SEF

One thing I like about sh404SEF is that it works with or without an .htaccess file. If you choose not to use the .htaccess method, you’ll have to deal with your pages starting with index.php/.

First, enable the component. Browse to the sh404SEF configuration screen via the top ‘components’ menu. Activate the component by changing the item that says ‘Enabled’ to ‘yes’. Then move onto ‘META/SEO’. You’ll be provided with some instructions to activate the meta:information tags. Browse to the sh404SEF Custom tags module and follow the instructions. I publish it in the ‘debug’ position with the ’show titles’ option set to ‘no’.

Implementation

I recommended working in advanced mode while using sh404SEF. You’ll need it to add all of the meta information and manage custom redirects.

sh404SEF will create URLs as it crawls your site. These can be found in ‘View SEF URLs’. Browse through the links that have been created, naming them to the search engine friendly URLs.

Once you’ve completed, add titles and meta information to each page by browsing to ‘Meta Tags Management’. Click on ‘Create New Meta’. Enter the page name followed by the meta information you want on that page.

sh404SEF supports aliases, a feature that allows you to list known duplicates of certain pages. When you become aware of duplicate pages on your site you can manage them really effectively using the alias function.

You can also back up your URLs. To do this from the main sh404SEF area click on ‘View Custom Redirects’ and select the ‘export’ function.

Summary

sh404SEF is a powerful tool for managing URLs and on page SEO strategies. It is a little more complex in set up and configuration than other components and solutions but it’s quite easy to use once it’s installed and you can’t beat the free price tag. Don’t forget to read our Joomla SEO roundup on the Hosting Nation blog for a side by side comparison of the top three SEO Extensions for Joomla.

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