[TYPO3] <- Prev | Next -> Article Navigation and SEO

[Christopher Torgalson]

Hi,

On 5/28/07, Morten Kjems <mortenkjems at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi. I am looking for an extension that will allow me to create a basic
> article navigation for my pages.
>
> Something like: << Prev |2|3|4|5| Next >> would be fine but a dropdown
> menu with "table of contents" between "Prev" and "Next" would be nice
> (as seen here http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2996).
>
> There are several extensions that does something like that but many of
> them are limited in many ways and they all lack one important factor.
> None of them takes SEO (Search engine optimization) into consideration.
>
> Here a list of extensions that provides article navigation without
> considering SEO:
> 1. "Articles", is limited in a number of ways.
> 2. "Article pages", limited - have not been updated in four years.
> 3. "Content Navigation", No documentation.
> 4. "Page Navigation", from 2004 does not seem to work with Templa Voila.
> 5. "Content Browsing" Works fine, but for some reason it does not work
> with "page comments" (the comments just dosn't show up when the page is
> build with "Content Browsing")
>
> The first thing you learn when working with SEO is that the page title
> is the most important factor when search engines are indexing a site.
>
> The problem with with the extensions above is that the page title will
> remain the same for all pages in the article. So will the meta tags
> "keywords" and "description" Especially "description" is important here
> since it will be the appetizer describing the content of your article
> right beneath the page title in Google.
>
> If you for example have a long article on how to install TYPO3 on a server.
>
> The page title would properly be something like this: "Installing TYPO3
> on a server". And that would be the page title of all sections.
>
> But if you divide the article into sections one of the sections might be
> about how to find a prober host. So all the content is about finding a
> host but the page title will indicate that it is about installation.
> This will confuse Google and the site will not rank well. If an
> individual page title could be set For example "finding a host for
> TYPO3" Google would have no problem in understanding the meaning of the
> section/page. Therefor it would rank higher and more people would find
> the relevant information.
>
> There are two extensions that makes this possible.
>
> 1. "Page browser". An individual page title can be set since it creates
> navigation between pages and not content elements. The downside is that
>   it is build around an index page that I will have no need for. Also
> the navigation is dead simple: <- Prev | Next -> with no options to
> access the pages in between.
>
> 2. "Relational link elements". I am not sure about this one. It is new
> and I find the documentation hard to understand. Please enlighten me if
> this is what I need.
>
> So what is the question? Is there an extension that provides article
> navigation with a bit more options than just <- Prev | Next -> and also
> addresses SEO.
>
> So far the best option is the extension "Page browser" since it allows
> individual page titles. But the navigation part is almost to simple.
>
> All suggestions and comments are most welcome


HMENU is more than adequate to this task. You have built-in capability
for < prev | current | next > style menus, and virtually anything else
you can think up. You can see a simple variant on what you're
describing at the beginning and end of this page (click the '+' beside
"Contents"): http://www.typo3apprentice.com/howto/rtfm/

Besides that, HMENU has the 'userdefined' property that "Lets you
write your own little PHP-script that generates the array of
menuitems" [1].


-- 
Christopher Torgalson
http://www.typo3apprentice.com/