Ethical SEO company - Web Designer - Emarketing Consultant - New Jersey : New York

Sh404 SEF Alias - Twitter

Question: I'm having problems using Twitter. I can't get it to accept my long SEF urls, nor even the long dynamic URLS. The only solution I can think of is to use .htaccess and 301 redirect, but that sure takes time and not very efficient.

Answer: Twitter, as you know, has character limits when making a post. If you have more than a couple words to say plus a long search engine friendly URL based on section/category/title, then you can run into a problem. With Joomla and sh404 this is a quick and easy fix.

Just log into the back end and navigate to the components > sh404 > View/Edit sef URL.

(We assume you have sh404 installed. If not, you should.)

Search for the URL you need to shorten.

In the ALIAS box in the edit URL window, just create a shorter URL.

For example:

If you URL is section/category/article.html just type in article.html in the alias window.

Now, test it. http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/article.html

It automatically redirects to the long URL.

Additionally, sh404 sets the server header information correctly, which is 301 permanent redirect. This is perfect for SEO, as well as achieving smaller URLS for twitter.