SEO my OS Commerce site

[Djfreema]

Hi,

On our site we have installed 'Ultimate SEO' module to change the dyanmic pages to static search engine friendly pages, this was done on Monday.

However sometimes when I click on one of the new static pages it still displays the dynamic URL! and when i type into google "site:neatdesignerclothing.co.uk" to bring up our pages that are indexed they have the dynamic URL's. Hopefully this will change when google crawls the site next time.

My worry is that dynamic url's are still showing up and the results in Google of "site:neatdesignerclothing" when clicked on, go to the page with the dynamic URL.

Maybe a solution is to 301 redirect all the dynamic urls to the static ones?? I am not sure and I thought static URL's would just replace the dynamic ones.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Darrell

[DuaneJackson]

It seems your site is already 301'ing dynamic urls.

Look here (http://www.keyone.co.uk/tools-source-viewer.asp?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.neatdesignerclothing .co.uk%2Findex.php%3FcPath%3D57%26osCsid%3D2a3f841 f46205c7b103e39d6e49d9337&Button=View+Source) to see what your server does when someone request this page (http://www.neatdesignerclothing.co.uk/index.php?cPath=57&osCsid=2a3f841f46205c7b103e39d6e49d9337).

google should pick this up and display the new URLs at some point over the next few days.

You shoudl turn off the osC session ids though.

Glad to see there is now a working SEO mod for OSCommerce. When I last looked at it for a client (http://www.porta-charge.co.uk) a couple of years ago it was useless so we re-wrote the entire site.

[Djfreema]

Thanks for the info Duane.

What would the effect be of taking off the sessions id though?

For example, would turning off the session ids mean http://www.neatdesignerclothing.co.uk/hugo-boss-m-43.html?osCsid=218cc1734b2be2f902d3d1c0c00a7704 becomes http://www.neatdesignerclothing.co.uk/hugo-boss-m-43.html ?

From what I gather session Id's track visitors on your site, would taking off the session ids miss up my stats in Google Analytics or am I talking rubbish.

Thanks,

Darrell

[DuaneJackson]

For example, would turning off the session ids mean http://www.neatdesignerclothing.co.uk/hugo-boss-m-43.html?osCsid=218cc1734b2be2f902d3d1c0c00a7704 becomes http://www.neatdesignerclothing.co.uk/hugo-boss-m-43.html ?


Yes, exactly that.

Turning off session ids may cause problems for the small minority of visitors to your site that don't have session cookies enabled. It shouldn't mess up anything else though AFAIK.

[darren atkinson]

Hi

I have alot of experience with modding an OsCommerce site for one of my clients. We also used SEO Url's. Be aware it will take longer than just one google crawl for it to update your url's.

Turning Session ID's off will not mess up any analytics software, don't worry. It just stops google and other spiders from thinking that you have duplicate content as it could think that url1.htm?dfjkdfkdfk is a different page to url1.htm?uidfjdfdf (Well you get the idea ;))

You will also need to look at your title's and meta tags and get some mods for them to change on each page.

One big piece of advice I will give you is to find a way to increase the amount of text of pages such as categories and product pages. This will help you quite a bit.

Darren

[Djfreema]

Hi Darren,

Thanks for the advice.

In regards to getting a module to change titles and meta tags in categories and products were looking at the 'header tags controller' to do this for us.

In regards to getting text on the product and categories pages, is this to give the search engines more searchable content on these pages? I was thinking of having (if possible) a small text box at the top of the products pages with a bit about the manufactuers etc...

Thanks,

Darrell

[Djfreema]

Just need to clarify, if I need remove session ids, for example a URL will from

http://www.neatdesignerclothing.co.uk/hugo-boss-m-43.html ?osCsid=abeecd7baf7f8d9dd34dda65012a8c2e (http://www.neatdesignerclothing.co.uk/hugo-boss-m-43.html?osCsid=abeecd7baf7f8d9dd34dda65012a8c2e)

to

http://www.neatdesignerclothing.co.uk/hugo-boss-m-43. (http://www.neatdesignerclothing.co.uk/hugo-boss-m-43.html)
html (http://www.neatdesignerclothing.co.uk/hugo-boss-m-43.html)



Sorry, im a bit of novice when it comes to this.


Thanks,

Darrell

P.S Hyperlinks will not work as had to put them on 2 lines so they would show properly, just paste and copy into browser if you wish to follow

[awebapart.com]

Yes, I'd recommend switching off session ids too.

I noticed that you're not on the live/msn search engine yet.

If the upgrade you put in only changed from dynamic to static htmls, then it couldn't really be classed as an 'ultimate' SEO upgrade, since your change is normally done to make your site more spiderable, but as you say google was spidering your site anyway. A good SEO upgrade would at least involve static urls, no sesssion id, and changing title (and perhaps keyword and description) tags.

If anyone is reading this thread and is being put off by osCommerce, thinking it is a bit too techie, too complicated (and expensive to get custom work done), I have a couple of tips:

1. If you opt for a template solution, dont choose one just based on looks, but also see what other features it has included, e.g. SEO, auto thumbnailing etc. Also, is your template based on an older version of osCommerce, the latest version 2.2 MS 2 has features that allow you to switch on static urls (called Use Search-Engine Safe URLs). Sometimes you can end up with a template which is based on old code, and because it's a one-off sold-as-seen purchase the supplier wont be giving you free upgrades or keeping it up to date as part of the deal.

2. There are other ways of getting your store online without having to become financially responsible for maintaining your own custom osCommerce code and hosting. For instance my company offers a fully managed sitebuilder service including hosting, which includes our own professionally customised version of osCommerce for the shop part of the sitebuilder, which we are responsible for keeping up to date. Our version of osCommerce already has most of the important SEO work applied to it, and we are continually improving this and keeping it up-to-date as part of the service.

[darren atkinson]

2. There are other ways of getting your store online without having to become financially responsible for maintaining your own custom osCommerce code and hosting. For instance my company offers a fully managed sitebuilder service including hosting, which includes our own professionally customised version of osCommerce for the shop part of the sitebuilder, which we are responsible for keeping up to date. Our version of osCommerce already has most of the important SEO work applied to it, and we are continually improving this and keeping it up-to-date as part of the service.

There's nothing like blowing your own trumpet is there?


In regards to getting text on the product and categories pages, is this to give the search engines more searchable content on these pages? I was thinking of having (if possible) a small text box at the top of the products pages with a bit about the manufactuers etc...

Yeah, thats the kind of thing you need. There is a mod called categories description which will enable you to do this on category pages as well as product pages.

OsCommerce isn't too bad for optimisation purposes if you put in the work. There is pleny of stuff you can do with it.

Good luck,

Darren

[Djfreema]

Awebapart.com - Yes, you are correct, I am not in the MSN search engine yet, but I am in Google and Yahoo. I might submit the site url to msn, would this be the best method to get into MSN? I wonder why I am not in MSN but I'm in Google and Yahoo.

Also we will install to 'Header Tags Controller' module to get titles and meta tags for product and categories.

Darren - Thanks for the advice about 'categories descrioption' module. I'll look into this as this seems like something we will need.

The contributions for OS Commerce hopefully mean I will be able to effectively carry out on site SEO.

Thanks,

Darrell

[awebapart.com]

I'm quite surprised your site isn't on msn/live too. Yes you should submit the site to be safe, but also msn/live should pick up your site by trawling sites like this one which has your link in it.

This site (ukbusinessforums) is a good example of the fact that you don't really need static urls (i.e. not dynamic ?p= parameters urls) to get spidered by the main search engines nowadays, although I'd still recommend using static URLs on your site if you can.

I agree with Darren that osCommerce is good for SEO if you put the work in, but that work does require technical skills, and remember that each change or module you add can make it more difficult to add the next one, and can make it more difficult when you want to upgrade to the next version of osCommerce (v3).

[Djfreema]

Just checked my control panel and it seems that MSN bot visited yesterday so I should be MSN soon (hopefully).

How do I check if my site is indexed in Yahoo and MSN. For example when I check in Google I would type: site:neatdesignerclothing.co.uk

Is this the same case for Yahoo and MSN?

[awebapart.com]

site: works in all 3, although from experience the results aren't always accurate, they might say less than you expect, but when you search for some text phrase that you know is on a page not in the search engine's site list, sometimes you find that page is returned in the results and is therefore indexed too.