Joomla 1.5 is a great CMS for any website, however there are still a few modifications you can make to further optimize your website for search engines. You can improve the output of joomla core by using html tables in joomla core, and also by changing the content header tags to h1, h2, h3, etc. Joomla 1.5 now allows you to create files in your templates folder that will override the Joomla core html output.
A great example of basic HTML overrides is inside the bee template that comes with every Joomla 1.5 installation. Inside the “bees” template there is a folder called “html”. You can find the “html” override folder in the “templates/bees” directory. This “html” folder contains the main override files. These files override Joomla’s core html output, allowing you to modify the html used in your joomla website. With custom core overrides, you can change the output of Joomla core code, which means you can change html tags like div class=”contentheading” and div class=”componentheading” to H1 tags for better SEO. You can also modify any table layout to div tags that allow tableless html output, this can be of great importance when optimizing your website. Since the core html override files are located in your templates folder, you can still upgrade your Joomla version while keeping your custom html override files intact.
This is a new feature only available in Joomla 1.5. If you’re not familiar enough with html or css to create your own custom html exit code, I recommend simply copying the “html” folder from within the bee template and placing it inside your current template folder. The bee template html override provides a great solution for a central output without a table.