Don't Slime Your Blog URLs with Poorly Crafted Slugs

Andy Beal over at Marketing Pilgrim has done it again! He Twittered a recent blog post, so I jumped over to check it out -

Blog Marketing Tips #2: Increasing Traffic with Killer Slugs

Whether you're a new or seasoned blogger, you may not have known about this excellent tip. Blog 'Slugs' are the default post URL strings or permalink settings. Andy explains it wonderfully and I picked up a new trick - while you may be crafting your blog posts to include keywords, Andy warns,

Warning: While you might be tempted to use a slug default that shows only your post title you may want to think twice, if you have aspirations of seeing your blog syndicated in Google News. One of the requirements for entry is to have at least three numbers in your slugs, so that Google can identify your posts from your other blog content. Using “myblog.com/my-post-title” would likely preclude you from Google News. At the very least, you should use “myblog.com/2008/my-post-title”.

If you're a WordPress user, you'll really love Andy's Slug tips. Those of us running Joomla have a bit of a difficult time accomplishing good Slugs.

Slugs in Joomla

By default, Joomla's structure won't help us craft good slugs. Joomla version 1.0.x usually crafts URLs with Page IDs and they're just messy. We can use a Component such as OpenSEF or SEF Advance - but that would mean creating a custom URL for each blog post we create - not too much more work than at Wordpress, but having something automated would be ideal.

I hear SEF Urls are much better in Joomla 1.5, but I've waited to upgrade until some critical extensions are also updated. Any Joomla 1.5 users out there that can help?

I'll go do some research and see what I can come up with... Any Joomla users out there who could give us some ideas on how to add 'Year/Month' to our blog posts? Please post your comments!

Oh, and you lived in the Seattle area in the late '80s - '90s then here's a little bonus!