Project Idea: SEO Project Link
Initial Project Workplan: Initial Workplan Link
My Project Repository: Repo Link
Weekly Reports: Reports Link
Blog: Blog 1 Link
Joomla CMS Repository: Repo Link
Original Scope covers 9 tasks (Joomla Core Updates):
- New SEO tab
- Dofollow / Nofollow checker for outgoing links
- Performance check on PageSpeed Insights
- Paragraph structure
- Sentence Structure
- Content analysis
- Reading ease rating [Flesch Kincaid]
- Adding open graph data
- Article Image Compression
Bonus work completed:
- Social Media Share buttons (added to Joomla core)
- Content Analysis Plugin
- Open Graph Plugin
- Previews Plugin
- Meta data Plugin
| S.No. | Task | Project Repository PR |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | SEO Tab | PR #1 |
| 2 | Nofollow-Dofollow Link checker | PR #3 |
| 3 | Page Performance Analyser | PR #4 |
| 4 | Paragraph structure | PR #5 |
| 5 | Sentence Structure | PR #6 |
| 6 | Google SERP preview and Content Analysis | PR #7 |
| 7 | Reading Ease Rating | PR #8 |
| 8 | Open Graph | PR #9 |
| 9 | Image Compression | PR #14 |
| 10 | Social Media Share buttons | PR #15 |
| S.No. | Task | Link to Plugin |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Content Analysis Plugin | Link #1 |
| 2 | Open Graph Plugin | Link #2 |
| 3 | Previews Plugin | Link #3 |
| 4 | Meta data Plugin | Link #4 |
The following image shows the first 4 features added to Joomla's core.
Link to PR
This new feature gives Joomla content creators an idea of how their article will appear to the end users on search engines. It becomes extremely important for the content creator to customize this piece of information as there is limited space available.
It can also be thought of as a small advertisement for the Joomla user’s content to attract potential leads.
Link to PR
This feature is related to the previous feature (SERP Preview). It highlights the aspects of the article that need improvement and also provides suggestions for refinement. Some of these parameters include the article title, meta description, and article word count. Fixing these can boost the article’s click rate significantly.
Link to PR
A simple way to measure the page’s core web vitals with a single click. It provides insights on the page’s loading speed and ratings for the article based on multiple criteria while also providing suggestions to fix the issues.
Link to PR
This allows the admin to monitor the external links of the article and categorize them as dofollow and nofollow. It will enable developers to prevent ‘link juice’ from flowing out to unwanted sites based on the external site's credibility. Admins can choose to retain or change the ‘rel’ directive (from dofollow to nofollow or vice versa) by going to the 'Content' tab on the same page. They can even choose to remove the link altogether.
The following image shows the next 3 features added to Joomla's core.
Link to PR
This feature provides a rating based on the article’s difficulty level. It also highlights where the rating falls in the difficulty range. Rather than simply relying on a rating, the target audience should also be considered before making changes.
For instance, an academic article may typically have a lower rating (a significantly high difficulty level for average readers) but the target audience (university grads) won’t find it too difficult to comprehend.
Link to PR
Having a concise paragraph structure is ideal for SEO and also improves the article's readability especially on smaller screens. Nowadays, people prefer audio/video content over text content. Attention spans are dropping. This makes it crucial for text content creators to capture the reader’s attention. One way to do that is by including crisp and short paragraphs as opposed to long and tedious ones that are difficult to read.
Having an ideal paragraph structure improves an article's discoverability on search engines. This feature assists in keeping article paragraphs short and easy to read for viewers. It lists down the top 5 paragraphs that exceed the word limit along with the word count in brackets. Currently the limit for each paragraph has been set to a maximum of 200 words
Link to PR
This works similar to the previous feature with the difference that it works for sentences as opposed to paragraphs.
This feature helps identify the first 5 sentences that are too long to avoid clutter and lists them. The admin can then switch to the Content tab and make the desired changes. Currently the limit for each sentence has been set to a maximum of 20 words
Link to PR
Images are among the biggest ‘on-page’ factors for a slow loading page. This new feature helps compress large, unoptimized images to improve the page load time.
Currently the proof of concept works for
- The image fields under the Images and Links tab in Article Edit view
- Two formats, 'png' and 'jpeg'
The compression feature is optional (controlled using the enable/disable toggle) and gets triggered when the user saves the article. For a successful compression operation, it also stores a backup of the original image as filename_orig.
The compression feature is optional (controlled using the enable/disable toggle) and gets triggered when the user saves the article. For a successful compression operation, it also stores a backup of the original image as filename_orig. It provides the user with 3 compression options
- Low Compression - High quality
- Medium Compression - Medium quality
- High Compression - Low quality
Link to PR
It gives Joomla content creators the ability to customize their article previews when it’s being shared on social networking sites. It provides users the flexibility to modify each article's open graph data, which in turn can be used by social media platforms to display rich objects. Some of these parameters include
Article Type
Article Title
Article Description
Article Image
Published Date
Article Author
Link to PR
Social media is one of the most popular ways to gain visitors to any website. But currently Joomla doesn't offer any sharing feature.
This feature attempts to bridge that gap by offering options for single-click sharing to the most commonly used social media platforms.
Currently this feature allows sharing to only 3 social media platforms. This feature can then be extended to include additional social media icons as required.
Instead of providing a rigid set of options, the Social Media Share tab offers several settings that allows the user to select the preferred list of social media icons to display on the article page. This is done as follows.
- Clicking on show sharebox will display all the available social media platforms for sharing
- The user can then choose to enable social media sharing for the selected list of platforms
- If the user chooses to hide the sharebox options, no social media icon is displayed on the article's frontend
These settings can be updated by going to System->Global Configuration->Articles->Social Media Share.
Link to Plugin
It has five different features combined into one plugin. It highlights the aspects of the article that need improvement and provides suggestions for refinement.
The article's title and meta description are important parameters. These are the first to be noticed by end users when an article shows up on search engines. So it becomes extremely important for the content creator to customize this piece of information as there is limited space available. This plugin helps the Joomla content creator improve these parameters.
Link to Plugin
This gives Joomla content creators the ability to customise their article previews when it’s being shared on social networking sites
Here’s how Facebook uses open graph data when an article is shared.
After the plugin has been installed and enabled, move to the article's frontend and click on View page source. Here's what it'll show. All the additional open graph data can be seen in the highlighted section (all the meta tags beginning with 'og:' and 'article:').
In the backend, the plugin creates a new tab called Open Graph where the following parameters can be updated.
Link to Plugin
This plugin Provides Joomla content creators a glimpse of how the article will appear to the end users on Google search engines.
Link to Plugin
It helps customise a page’s metadata so that it’s easier for search engines to determine the relevance of articles before displaying them in search results.
Thank you to my mentors Elisa Foltyn, Phil Walton and Benjamin Trenkle for being pillars of support and encouraging me to push my capabilities beyond what I could have done on my own.
Special note of appreciation to Richard Fath and Christiane Maier-Stadtherr for the motivation and words of encouragement.
Since our portfolio of SEO features would be a new addition to Joomla, the idea was to first demonstrate the proof of concept (with a minimum viable product). Based on the feedback from users on what works and what doesn’t, these features can be streamlined and polished.