Change the URL

You must alias this category for each structure of your website (admin ==> site structure). Instead of the standard url ‘index.php?index=4,6,0,0,1,0′ you can use the url ‘index.php?testcategory’.

Rather than using this complicated number sequence, you can easily use the  url  in links.

For SEO, the ‘index.php?’ part of this url should be changed to a unique url such as testcategory.phtml.

The apache module mod_rewrite is necessary to rewrite this url. You need to change the file ”config/phpwcms/conf.inc.php” on your phpwcms configuration .

Please enable the parameter rewrite_url here ($phpwcms['rewrite_url']=1;).

If your phpwcms is installed in a subdirectory, your last step will be the editing of the  _.htaccess file of your phpwcms installation and the renaming to .htaccess. This file must be located in your phpwcms installation path and not in the web root directory.

Here is an example of a modifed configuration file:

# Check that you have set Options FollowSymLinks

#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

# maybe you need this

# Default ReWrite settings for phpwcms

# This will rewrite mypage.phtml => index.php?mypage

# If phpwcms is installed in a subdirectory,

# If you want to set rewrite logging

#</IfModule>

SEO

This part of the article doesn’t give any tips and tricks for your Search Engine Optimizations but focuses on changing your meta tag in your phpwcms.

Description

You need to update the site structure to change the meta name “description”. Select the admin menu and edit each category to which you want to add a description. Please do so for each category. Add your description to  the field category infotext.

Please have a look to the html header. That’s where your browser will show the result.

Example:

<meta name=”description” content=”Germany-Translation-Service also provides certified translations of German documents into English for English-speaking Authorities.“>

Keywords

Anyway, providing the right keywords is a challenge, and only a SEO specialist knows how it works. In order to add the right keywords, open the artile center and edit the article which you want to change. Edit the article in “article information” and add your keywords in the field “keywords” (who would have thought so ?)

Example:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”Certified translations, Email, Germany Translation Service”>

Title (tag <title>)

At this point, you can change the title of your website. The title should also reflect to the content of your site. Add the title to the field page title. This action overwrites the your layout default title settings.

Example:

Certified translations | Germany Translation Service

Title (tag meta name=”title” )

This will not happen automatically. However, Adrian Röttinger from LeadPeople recommends to send out the title in a meta tag as well. This change requires a code change. An easy way of changing it is to add the snipset of code to the index.php in the section in which the header is printed out (around line 100).

Example:

$content['page_start'] .= '<!--

SEO Optimization meta name="title", created by Torsten Brosow,

http://www.ntuition.com.au/blog/'.LF.'//-->'.LF;

$content['page_start'] .= '  <meta name="title"

content=" '.html_specialchars($content["pagetitle"]).' ">'.LF;

$content['page_start'] .= '<!--

SEO Optimization, end of change'.LF.'//-->'.LF;

Pictures

This is not a phpwcms related issue. However, handling pictures correctly will optimize your result.

Pictures cannot speak themselves, but they can speak with their tags. Always use the alt and title tags to describe the content of each picture.

Example:

<img src=”http://www.test.com/images/logo.gif” alt=”test Logo” title=”test Logo”….