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TYPO3 extension for search engine optimization

Extension Key: tq_seo

Please note

The development of tq_seo has been discontinued in the meantime. There is still the direct successor extension metaseo from the same developer, but this has also been discontinued for some time and is no longer available for TYPO3 9 or newer.

In TYPO3 9, however, many functions are now covered by TYPO3 standard tools. You could use cs_seo or yoast_seo as additional extensions. Please refer to the documentation of the respective extension to find out whether it is suitable or necessary for you.

General information

Entire books could be written on the subject of "search engine optimization" (in fact, there are many books on this subject). However, there are also many misunderstandings and half-truths.

We don't want to offer a basic course on search engine optimization here, as that would go far beyond the scope of this project.

But the topic can basically be divided into two areas: off-page and on-page optimization.

Off-page means measures that are carried out outside of your own website, for example link building.

On-page, on the other hand, describes measures that you can carry out yourself on your own website.

The extension tq_seo can support the administrator/editor of a TYPO3 website with part of the on-page optimization. To this end, it extends the functions of TYPO3 in a number of areas.

Among other things, tq_seo offers the following features:

  • automatic generation of an XML sitemap
    (useful, for example, in Google Webmaster Tools)
  • Output of meta tags from the page properties
  • Generation of other useful meta tags
  • automatic generation of a canonical URL (canonical URL)
  • Extensive manipulation of the page title possible
  • Three new backend modules for controlling and adjusting the settings
  • Integration of Google Analytics and Piwik
  • Support for multi-domain setups
  • Support for multilingual websites
  • and much more

In the following we describe the installation of the extension and show a few of the features.

Note from September 2014:

The tq_seo extension will probably no longer be developed. The direct successor is the extension metaseoextension, which currently has the same range of functions. Please use metaseo for new installations.

Installation

Install the extension as usual via the extension manager, the extension key is tq_seo.

You must then integrate the static template of the extension.

Configuration in the constant editor

You can then make the basic settings using the constant editor.

The most important settings are briefly described here:

Category: PLUGIN.TQ_SEO.METATAGS

  • Canonical Tag
    Automatic generation of the canonical meta tag, should normally always be activated.
  • Meta description
    The standard description text from which the meta tag description is generated. If no separate text is stored on a page, this is used again.
  • Meta copyright info
    The copyright holder of the website can be entered here. The placeholder %YEAR% can be used to automatically insert the current year.
  • Meta Author
    The name of the author of the page content can be entered here, for example.
  • The other meta tags are optional and only useful on certain websites.

Category: PLUGIN.TQ_SEO.CRAWLER

  • Crawler index
    Here you can generally prevent the website from being indexed by search engines. This creates the robots meta tag with the values index or noindex. However, this can of course also be set individually for each page.

Category: PLUGIN.TQ_SEO.SERVICES

  • If you use Google Analytics or Piwik, you can make various settings in this category. tq_seo can then generate the necessary tracking code automatically.
  • Google Analytics Anonymize IP
    If you use Google Analytics, you should definitely activate this parameter to anonymize the data transfer to Google.

Category: PLUGIN.TQ_SEO.SOCIAL

  • Google+ Direct Connect
    If you have a Google+ profile page, you can store the ID of this page here.

Category: PLUGIN.TQ_SEO.PAGETITLE

  • Sitetitle position
    Here you can define the position of the page name and the website name in the title tag. The setting "Pagetitle-Sitetitle" is usually recommended.

Fields in the page properties

In addition to the familiar "Meta" tab, you will also find the new "SEO" tab in the page properties.

Meta" tab:

Here you should at least use the Description field and enter a short description of the page content. Although this text does not help to improve the ranking in the search results lists, it is displayed in the results lists. A meaningful text can therefore encourage potential visitors to actually click on the link to your website.

Please note: the text should be a maximum of 140 characters long. Longer text will simply be truncated.

SEO" tab:

tq_seo adds some new fields here.

Page title" area

  • title-TAG (absolute, without prefix/suffix)
    Here you can completely replace the automatically generated page title with a freely selectable text. This can sometimes be useful on the homepage of a website or certain landing pages.
  • Prefix (inheritable) / Suffix (inheritable)
    You canprefix (prefix) or add(suffix) words to the page title. You can also have these words "inherited" by subpages. If you do not want inheritance, you can change this in the "Inheritance mode" select box below the text fields.

Search engines" area

  • Exclude page from search engines
    You can exclude individual pages from indexing by search engines. If you check this box, the robots meta tag is set to noindex.

Sitemap" area

  • Priority (0-100)
    Here you can set the priority of a page for the information in the XML sitemap. If you do not change anything here, all pages will receive the same value.

The "SEO" backend module

Metatags" area

Here you will find an overview of the meta information that has already been edited, such as the description. You can also edit all details directly here by clicking on the corresponding field.

Search engines" area

Here you can see the priority assigned to a page and whether it is excluded from indexing or not. Here too, you can edit all details directly by clicking on the corresponding field.

Page title" area

This area provides you with an overview of the settings for the page titles.
If you want to manipulate the page titles (overwrite, add prefix/suffix), you can also do this directly here.

Page title simulator" area

Here you can display a simulation of the page titles of the frontend. Attention: this may take a while for large pages!

The "Control center" backend module

Here you can set whether a sitemap and a robots.txt file should be generated for each page tree in your TYPO3 installation. The screenshot shows the display in a multidomain setup. If you only manage a single website in your TYPO3 installation, you will only see one line here.

Click on the pencil on the right-hand side to open another dialog in which you can make detailed settings for creating the XML sitemap.

IMPORTANT: For the module to work properly, the "Use as start of website" option must be checked for the root page of each page tree in the "Behavior" tab of the page properties!

The "Sitemap" backend module

In the sitemap module, you can display all URLs in the sitemap and delete individual URLs if necessary.

A sitemap is also generated here for each page tree.

New tasks in the task planner (scheduler)

tq_seo brings three new tasks for the scheduler.

  • TQ SEO Cleanup
    This can be used to remove obsolete or invalid URLs from the sitemap
  • TQ SEO sitemap.xml builder
    Generates an XML sitemap, for example for Google Analytics
  • TQ SEO sitemap.txt builder
    Generates a sitemap as a text file

Please note:
both the XML and the txt sitemap are packed directly using gzip and are then available as .gz files.

You will then find the files in the directories uploads/tx_tqseo/sitemap-xml/ and uploads/tx_tqseo/sitemap-txt/respectively.

For more information, we recommend our video.

Updated: 17.07.2024