Affordable, Manageable Joomla! Websites for your church or non-profit.

As you might imagine since we search by key words, search engines pay a lot of attention to key words. Thus, part of any good search engine strategy is to build a lot of key word repetition into your site.

First you need to decide what your key words will be. What are the most important words you want people to associate with your site. For churches these would include your city name, church, Bible, and other religious words, plus words that identify specific ministries. Location may also be important for businesses, plus products, type of products, type of customers, etc. And non-profits will want to include what type of organization they are and perhaps the names of similar organizations. Don't select too many key words or key words that don't really fit your site or they will be too difficult to build into the context of your site. Just select a small number, probably less than 10 for most sites, that are important to how you want people to identify you.

Then, you simply need to make a habit of including these words often in your articles and pages. Don't overdo it or take them out of context, because you want it to appeal to real people and not just search engines. Don't try to "beat the system", just make sure both search engines and people are consistently reminded what your site is about by repeating the keywords.

Many churches and businesses call our support line with the question, "How can I get my site to show up on the first page of Google or Yahoo?" Unfortunately the answer isn't as easy as most people hope. Joomla! makes managing websites easier, but it still has to compete with everyone else when it comes to search engine ranking.

There is an easy way, it's just very expensive. Most search engines have programs where you can pay to have your site show up among the top sites, but most churches and businesses cannot make this continual investment.

But there is another way. Search engines try to give an accurate picture of the sites that best match the search words that are entered. So the key is knowing what criteria they use to evaluate sites and make sure your site excels in those areas.

The next several posts will deal with some of the most important search engine criteria and how to move your site closer to the top of the searches. But keep in mind, there is constant competition, because nearly every other site wants the same thing. It will take some work and continued work to keep your site near the top of the list, and, in most cases, no one can ever promise that it will always stay there.

In the recent Trinity Web Hosting Newsletter there was an article regarding the fact that Joomla! no longer supports Joomla! version 1.0. Trinity Web Hosting will continue to support Joomla! 1.0 as long as we have customers who are using it, but we are strongly recommending that our customers upgrade to Joomla! 1.5.

Joomla! 1.5 has been out since 2007. The Joomla! engineers paid attention to user feedback from Joomla! 1.0 and created in Joomla! 1.5 a friendlier, more robust Joomla!. Plus, there are hundreds of extensions for Joomla! 1.5 to extend its features and functionality. Developers have stopped creating extensions and new features for Joomla! 1.0, and, as mentioned above, Joomla! is no longer actively supporting it--meaning that there will be no more security releases or updates and it will eventually become more vulnerable to hackers.

Unfortunately the upgrade from Joomla! 1.0 to Joomla! 1.5 is not simply copying in some new files. The database structure was significantly changed between 1.0 and 1.5 so a data migration is required. In addition, Joomla! 1.0 templates will not work with Joomla! 1.5 without customization.

Trinity Web Hosting is offering it's customers a Joomla! 1.5 Migration Package which includes the data migration, setup of a new Joomla! 1.5 site, and a new 1.5 website theme from Rockettheme.com. Rockettheme is one of the premier designers of professional Joomla! templates. You can view these templates at http://demo.rockettheme.com. Essentially our customers get a brand new website at a fraction of what it would normally cost.

If you are interested in the Trinity Web Hosting Joomla! 1.5 Migration Package, please contact the TWH Support Team.