Joomla is one of the most popular open source content management systems (CMS) over the internet. Many website designers and owners use it once they understand how it works as it might need a little knowledge about website structure and maybe some HTML.
I have been using Joomla for a short period of time. In the beginning, I found it time consuming to chase after all those modules, extensions and plugins but once I got used to it, I am satisfied and confident to bring any Joomla website to the next level.
I need to say Joomla has drawbacks in terms of SEO but there are solutions for that issue so let’s create a pros and cons list for Joomla.

Joomla Pros:

- Fast and easy to use once you understand how it works.
- There are hundreds of support extentions, plugins and modules.
- It is very easy to create and operate a multilingual website with Joomla.
- It is an open-source platform and the website can be extended easily.
- It is free.

Joomla Cons:

- Joomla is not SEF in terms of URL’s. You need to purchase SEO plugins in order to optimize your URL’s or do some hacking in with code. I will tell you how to optimize your URL’s effectively without using any plugin in my next post about “Joomla SEO Steps”.
- It is not very easy to understand the section, category structure in the very beginning. You might need to read some Joomla lessons to overcome this issue if you have enough drive.
- You need to rearrange your modules etc. when you change the template so it is better to decide your template before you create the whole website.
- You need to spend some money if you want continious support for most modules, extentions and plugins.
- Those are what I’ve already thought about Joomla. I would love to hear your comments on this issue so the list could be extended with your support.

Twitter is testing a new feature called “retweets” on a small percentage of accounts currently. I felt lucky to see my account has been included in to this Beta Retweets testing so I can write about it promptly.

New “retweet” button is displayed at the end of each tweet. We only see retweets of the people we follow. Retweet button enables people to forward interesting tweets to their followers. You can undo your retweets from the retweets page and get the message “your followers will no longer see the tweet as retweeted by you” message. There are retweets by you, retweets by others and your tweets, retweeted sections in retweets page. To make retweet easy to spot, they have added an icon at the beginning of retweets.

Retweet button screen shoot

Twitter is planning to see the performance of retweets and release the feature once it is ready. Social media is growing as those guys are leading people to communicate, share and spread the word around. Twitter, as a micro blogging platform became so powerful by just asking people the most simple question “What are you doing?” and today the biggest search engines like Google and Bing are racing to sync with it to use it’s power of “real-time search”. Good job Twitter!

Google and Bing revealed their integration to real-time search and social media by announcing their agreements with Twitter during the Web 2.0 Summit on October 21. Google is aiming to give a better real-time search experience by including real-time Twitter updates in their search results hence users will be able to learn what others are saying about what they’ve been searching for under the same roof. Consider you perform a search about “x brand of freezer”. You will not only see relevant search results but also public opinion about your topic that will give you quick and better understanding about your query.

On the other side, Bing didn’t go far beyond than developing a Bing Twitter search facility similar to the other Twitter search engines in the market. Bing’s new Twitter search feature is currently available in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Indonesia, Ireland, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Arabia, South Africa, and the United States. Those guys are aware of the power of real-time web and took their step in to the social media not later that Google.

All these changes are tangible success of social media. In terms of SEO, companies should socialize, use social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and keep an eye on what others tweet about themselves. I believe there is no better tool on the web that Twitter to monitor the real-time reputation of a company. Both Google and Bing index tweets and updates so it’s our job to explain our clients the importance of each comment and the consequences they might bring. Keep yourselves open to changes….

Last week, I read Michael Arrington’s interesting interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt on TechCrunch regarding the future of search. The questions were simple and cool. The answers were inspiring. I just can’t wait to read the rest of the interview.

So, what people on internet business would ask or tell to Eric Schmidt regarding Google and internet if they are given a chance to do so. If you have questions or anything to say, write them down here now.  I will bring all comments together and maybe we might get the answers of our common interview later.

First question is coming from me: What do you think about the future of SEO?

Come on, say your word.

According to comScore, 113 billion searches were conducted in July 2009 globally.

Google sites had 58 percent increase compared to last year and ranked as the leaders within search engines in global search market with 76.7 billion searches conducted and 67.5 percent market share. Google sites are followed by Yahoo sites with 8.9 billion searches and 7.8 percent market share. Yahoo had just 2 percent increase compared to last year and closely followed by Chinese search engine Baidu sites with 8 billion searches 7.0 percent share. Microsoft sites ranked forth worldwide with a 41 percent increase compared to last years data which seems promising for next year.

The overall July 2009 data represents a 41-percent increase versus July 2008 in global search market that is a positive indicator for future search marketing opportunities and e-business.

As a result of a sudden opportunity, I am moving to Turkey soon. By the end of July, Future Searches will be operating from Ankara, Turkey. I will be exploring Turkey search market closely and helping companies to show off in the first pages of search engines result pages.

I know the Turkish internet market is evolving and there are many opportunities out there. I am so excited and can’t wait to sort things out, settle down and start my Turkey SEO journey!

I am open to any profitable opportunity on the internet so feel free to send me your business ideas if you would like to work with me and grab a bite of this raw market. Please see below figures of Facebook users by country to assess Turkey market better.

(Data from http://www.nickburcher.com/2009/07/latest-facebook-usage-statistics-by.html)

Economic downturn is leading every organization in to cost-cuts and find new revenue channels. As long as companies set up a clever e-strategy, e-business is an effective business model since it is cost-effective and brings many opportunities together. This is why many companies are transforming in to e-business, exploring and taking advantages of revenues generated online while succesfully integrating in to social media for brand reputation and recognition.

Internet integration also brings search engine marketing opportunities, which is strongly accountable and flexible compared to other mediums of advertising. Spending on online ads is expected to overtake expenditure on TV ads by the end of this year and even in these economic climate, internet-based advertising will grow by 10.1 per cent during 2009 according to a new study. That is so promising for SEO’s and search marketers while pointing the success of online business.

What ever business you are involved in to,  get yourselves in the water and start benefiting from online world. Do you need help? Give me a shout now!

I’ve had many SEO job interviews and I want to share the most common SEO interview questions to keep some light to those who are getting ready for interviews in this field. My first advice is always be ready for the first question as it is the main step in the beginning of most interviews whether it is in SEO field or not. So here they are:

1. What do you know about our company and can you define who we are?
2. How would you define SEO and SEM?
3. What is your previous SEO history like? Can you give examples of rankings you’ve achieved.
4. What is your biggest mistake and biggest success in SEO?
5. What are the most important initial SEO steps on a website?
6. Which methods would you use for link building?
7. What is your strenght in terms of SEO?
8. How would you monitor rankings?
9. Which verticals have you worked on before?
10. Which side of SEO would you like to be involved? Either link building, coding or whatever?
11. What if your client is not open to ideas to make changes on their website, what would you come up with?
12. Which blogs and websites do you follow daily to keep up-to-date and why?
13. Do you know who Matt Cutts is?
14. Which Google products do you use?
15. Which SEO tools do you prefer?
16. How is your copywriting skills? Can you give some examples?
17. Do you use any type of web analytics?
18. What is a pagerank?
19. What is “nofollow”?
20. How do you see the future of SEO?
21. How do you define your HTML hand-coding skills?
22. Why is a sitemap important and how would you make search engines find it quickly?
23. Do you know anything about robots.txt?
24. What is your opinion about paid links?
25. How would you track the number of outlinks of a website?

I will update this list as I long as I have new interviews coming through so bookmark me for your future needs.

It is crucial to have a Sitemap(s) based on the Sitemap protocol to tell search engines all pages of your site and to be indexed quickly.

What is a Sitemap?

Sitemaps consists of a list of your website’s URL’s. According to Google, a sitemap should’nt have more than 50.000 URL’s in it. If you have more than 50.000 URL’s, (some SEO’s believe it’s best to keep number of URL’s in a Sitemap up to 500) then you should have multiple Sitemaps and have a Sitemap index file.

How to create a XML Sitemap?

You can either create your Sitemap manually which can take time and effort all the time or use an automated Sitemap Generator. I use XML-sitemaps.com as a Sitemap solution. It’s free and easy to create Sitemaps but there are other tools on the net, just make a search to find anything suitable to your needs.

Once you have your Sitemaps ready, you should submit them to search engines by using webmaster tools to make the best of them. Also put them in your robots.txt file to direct search engines in to your Sitemaps.

Last week, on 25th of June I went to Facebook and saw one of my friends flash post about Michael Jackson’s cardiac arrest. What a shock! As a fan of M.J. since I was a teenager, I felt so sad and hoped he was happy in his last minutes.

Anyway, I made a search and found out there were not many posts yet on the internet, especially in Google.com.tr news page. There was only one news about Michael Jackson’s death so I thought it is a good time to implement some tests on line.

I create a post on my Turkish bookmarking site Linkopedi and avoid using the main keyword for M.J. death “Michael Jackson öldü” and used synonyms instead. Next day, my post ranked #1 for “Michael Jackson vefat etti” term in Google.com.tr, which is another synonym of “Michael Jackson öldü”, although I never used that “exact match” in my post but used other synonyms instead. I guess if I have used both terms in my post and used the most common terms “Michael Jackson öldü” in my title, I would have traffic coming from the main keyword and synonyms.

After one day, I created another post with the main keyword and content but it did’nt get any traffic from search engines cause it was too late!

From this experience, I came up to the result that timing is very important for SEO. If you want to rank high for any upcoming event or news, make sure your website will feed search engines before other websites does. Secondly, using synonyms generates good traffic. Use your main keyword as the king but apply your synonyms whenever possible.

Rest in Peace Michael Jackson! I love you.