Although Joomla does have some SEO tools included in the core application, they are turned off by default and even after these have been activated, the webpages are still not truely search engine ready, this is not the only issue though, there are other Joomla SEO problems that also play a crucial role in your websites lack of performance in the search engines.

The standard Joomla installation will not provide you with search engine friendly websites.  Here are the major Joomla SEO problems that need addressing:

Dynamic URL's

Joomla is a database driven website application and when adding a new article, Joomla will create a dynamic URL like this, www.mysite.co.za//index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=24&id=289.  This is called a dynamic URL because there is no static page at that URL, the page is rendered from the information stored in the database and various calls to template and CSS files when the URL is loaded.  This Joomla SEO problems means that the portion after your domain name, index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=24&id=289, in this case does not tell the search engine anything about the content on that page.

Title Tag

By default, Joomla uses the website name for each pages title tag.  A prerequisite of search engine friendly websites is that each pages title tag should be unique and descriptive of that pages content.  Imagine that you have a website about pets called Furry Fun, rather than have your title tag for your page on "The American Hairless Terrier" be "Furry Fun", it would be better for it to be either "The American Hairless Terrier", or "Hairless dog breeds".  This is one of the more serious Joomla SEO problems.

Meta Tags

Joomla does not use the Meta Tags effectively, they are somewhat hidden and most website administrators forget or don't see the benefit in completing Meta Tags.  The Meta Description is particularily important as it is this that initially tells the search engine what to expect on the page.  If the search engine finds what it expects, it uses the Meta Description as the page description in the search engine results pages, if not, it creates it's own description, based on the page content as it sees it.

Headings

One of the often overlooked Joomla SEO problems is that Joomla has a quirky way of handling its content and component headings. Joomla assigns a class to its headings that the search engines don't understand.  Think of your webpage as a page in your daily newspaper, now imagine removing all the headlines and just leave columns of small text, no headings.  Now thats what the search engines see when visiting your Joomla site, great content, but no headings.

Duplicate Content

I am not talking about content that has been copied from elsewhere on the web and pasted into one of your pages, that is also not good from an SEO point of view, but rather the fact that Joomla provides many paths to the same content.  Open a Joomla article and you will probably have the option to save the page as a pdf file, or view the page for printing.  These options are available via the "PDF" and "Print" buttons at the top of the article, each at a different URL.  The search engines see this as the same content duplicated over and over on your website.  There are other examples of duplicate content in all Joomla websites that also needs optimization.

Internal Links

Joomla does not offer an internal linking system, links need to be added manually, which usually results in the  'duplicate content' type scenario, where some links use one path to the content while other links will use a different path to the same content.  Additionally the keyword linking is not automated, resulting in many keywords being missed by the website administrator, when publishing new articles.

External Redirects

Each link, away from your domain looses you SEO effectiveness, this is one of the Joomla SEO problems that most people ignore totally.  The search engines prefer to see internal links rather than external links on your webpages, infact, they reward you for well structured internal links.

Default Footer

The default footer included in the standard Joomla installation provides links and information pertaining to Joomla, not your site.  To resolve these Joomla SEO problems, you would need to download the footer.php file in the includes directory, open it in a webpage editor and make the required changes, so as to reflect your websites information.

Code OptimiZation

Joomla uses bits of Java and CSS code all over the place, to facilitate the look and feel of the site and to perform other core functions.  As the search engines can only read text, they often misinterpret the Java and CSS and won't index the content below the offending script.  The search engines prefer to see all of the content together, with all the Java and CSS together, below the content.

These Joomla SEO problems need to be addressed if your website is to rank in the search engines results pages of Google, Yahoo and the other major search engines.