Page 2 - Google envy?

I think your main problem (apart from the lack of back links) is that every page has the same title and description (if your 'web person' did this then sack him).

I'm confused as to which version of Joomla you're running as some of the url's look as if you're running 1.5 while others look like 1x or have you got both? Assuming that it's joomla 1x download and install this http://www.joomlatwork.com/products/free_products_for_joomla/sef_patch_joomla.html or better still if you don't mind paying 8 euros or so get the extended verison. Once installed edit each page's title and description and again for all your menu items except for ones that link to an individual article. Then turn off the meta tags under global config.

If you don't install it or you have 1.5 you still need to edit each article and update the meta descriptions.

Thank you for your input. The title of each page, it has been pointed out to me, needs to be fixed. I filled in an individual description for all of the pages that I wrote. Now that I look at it, it appears that he filled in the title, description, and keywords repetitively.
I had been adding my own keywords and description for each page that I created in the metatag menu. However, they were just added after the ones he already input. Thank you for the catch.

Three questions:

For the title: What would be an efficient use of keywords for this catagory? Should I use all the relevant keywords for that page in the title?

For the Description: I have tried to keep keywords in the description near the beginning. Is this correct?

For the Keywords: I have read that repeated keywords should have buffer words after they have been used once. Is this a good practice?


As far as sacking the webdesigner: I don't believe he is terribly experienced with search engine optimization techniques. In truth, I only paid around one thousand euros for the whole site.. (assuming exchange is 1 euro to 1.5 U.S. dollars.) which I think is relatively low. You get what you pay for.

Thank you for your input. I will not forget about the back links.

Maurice

One thing that I would do is renew your domain for as long as you can possible afford. I see that your domain expires in one year. I've had a big jump in serps just by renewing my domain for an extended period of time. If you want to make the investment, renew your domain up until 2012, 2014, 2015. It won't jump you to page 1, but it will definitely help! Also one way links help big time, but build it up slowly. Patience is the key.

Thank you. I will look into it.
Maurice

That's something that never dawned on me! Does anyone else have evidence that this is positive?

Thank you again for the information on the patch. I should very much like to take care of writing out all of those title fields as soon as possilbe. It seems that the ones that my webdesigner added indeed were repeated across all of the pages.
I understand that I should turn off the metatags and use the patch to then add individual titles per page.
My problem is this. I am currently using Joomla version 1.0 15. ( the parts that you see done in 1.5 must have therefore been done by my webdesigner- I am assuming) However, the patch that you sent me is only good for versions 1.0 9 to 1.0 13.
I tried looking at the download section to see if I could find an equivalent patch made for my version, but could not.
Any ideas what I can do to get into the title fields?
Maurice

The 1.15 version is on the downloads page here: http://www.joomlatwork.com/content/blogsection/9/45/ you'll need to scroll down to find it, I'd go with the extended version though as it allows you to specify tags just by url which is useful.

Also not sure if it's intentional/unfinished but your site map needs sorting out as all the links are broken and seem to open in new windows... what SEF component are you using or is the default Joomla one?