CCV4 SEO URL'S ERROR?

[Guest perlinajewellery]

I have just downloaded and installed a fresh copy of the CubeCart Version 4 and have set URL's as search engine friendly, in the admin panel but when I view the site, the URL of, for instance, a category is 'bracelets/cat_1.html' and the products URL's are bracelets/apples-cream-bracelet/prod_1.html.

How can I get rid of the prod_1.html part and cat_1.html as this defeats the object of search engine friendly URL's.

Oh and just so you know yes I am using a template that came with the version 4 download, I haven't touched or downloaded anything.

[Guest hennaboy]

At the moment that is how the seo is setup. which is how it was setup in CC3

[Guest perlinajewellery]

Thanks for the reply, do you know if this is going to be fixed? I have done a search in the forums but I couldn't find a solution or any news on this subject.

[Guest hennaboy]

There isnt anything to be fixed. Its not a bug. Its based on the SEO written originally for CC3 (3rd Party Mod) which worked like this.

I dont know if down the road there will be an updated version of this. But th SEO mod has been running in CC3 for quite some time with great success. Personally I think it works very well and indexes my products on the search engines.

[Guest perlinajewellery]

Thanks for your input hennaboy.

Can any of the admins shed some light on this? Will this URL structure remain?

[kinetic]

The URL structure IS Search engine friendly

what isnt friendly is index.php?act=ViewCat&cat=Bracelets&product=2

thats not SEO friendly

what ruki has created is a proper url sturcture that can be bookmarked and read

as it doesnt carry a string of variables

Im not sure where you got the idea that the SEO urls were unfriendly

it lists the category name and the product name and the final "page" name is a friendly prod_23.html or what ever the product id is of the product

this is no bug

this IS SEO friendly

this is HOW it is supposed to work

and works quite well

[Guest]

'bracelets/apples-cream-bracelet/prod_1.html.'

That's normal. The SEO bits that get seen by Google are bracelets apple cream bracelet.

The end makes no difference at all.

It used to be index.php?act=ViewCat&cat=Bracelets&product=2. Now thats what I call unreadable by Google.

[Guest Brivtech]

'bracelets/apples-cream-bracelet/prod_1.html.'

That's normal. The SEO bits that get seen by Google are bracelets apple cream bracelet.

I can't see any problem with that - Product descriptions don't always contain a word from the category, so:

/camping-accessories/deluxe-gas-stove/prod_37.html would be seen by google as "camping accessories deluxe gas stove", which probably hits a few targets when people are searching for something, that combines with relevant keywords in the meta tags, as well as in the actual page content (product description) go a long way to ensuring that those keywords show as havign a high importance to the page.

I think the trick of SEO here is to order things in a way that you know you'll best be picking up popular search keywords with.

The thing that worries me is people here talkiig about duplicate content which search engines can apparently penalise:

bracelets/apples-cream-bracelet/prod_1.html

being the same as

index.php?act=ViewCat&cat=Bracelets&product=2

gives a duplicate page as far as Google would be concerned. What could be done to address this? As far as I see it, this is the only SEO flaw.

[kinetic]

I would venture if you create a sitemap.xml however you choose (theres several online sitemap generators or get a mod from one of our knowledgeable mod authors) and add that sitemap to google (get yourself a google webmaster account) and when you do make changes to a category name or a product name you would UPDATE your sitemap.xml and notify via google sitemaps that it has been updated

and googlebot will follow that and re index the new changes and shouldnt have penalilzed you for duplicate content as it is following the sitemap and all other "links" wont be accessible to googlebot

other than that you would have to rewrite the mod_rewrite rules and code to give a 404 or redirect to the new cat or product SEF URL

sitemaps are your FRIEND!!!!!

[Guest vp-ftv]

As mentioned previously there is nothing SEO friendly about CC4, and a sitemap certainly will not fix it.

For example clicking the review link breaks the SEO friendly URLs, leading to a page with repeated product description and user reveiws on it. This is instant duplicate content.

If I link manually to a page and mispell something, in the examples above CubeCart delivers content to both of the following:

bracelets/apples-cream-bracelet/prod_1.html

bacelets/apples-cream-bracelet/prod_1.html (missing r from bracelets)

All in all this is the principle feature that has made my investment in CC4 stagnate, as I just cannot use such a harmful implementation of SEO Friendly URLs, especially after experiencing products being indexed by Google with the wrong URL from my CC3 install.

[kinetic]

As mentioned previously there is nothing SEO friendly about CC4, and a sitemap certainly will not fix it.

For example clicking the review link breaks the SEO friendly URLs, leading to a page with repeated product description and user reveiws on it. This is instant duplicate content.

I agree reviews an comments if published should be visible w/o clicking a link or button or if the link is kept

it should be a simple onCLick show div and review content should already be pulled along with the product information from the database as search engine spiders cant click the link to show it. So we need the review or comment content already in the parsed page. which takes care of the fooked up URL issue on reviews and comments

If I link manually to a page and mispell something, in the examples above CubeCart delivers content to both of the following:

bracelets/apples-cream-bracelet/prod_1.html

bacelets/apples-cream-bracelet/prod_1.html (missing r from bracelets)

again the mod_rewrite rules and linking php needs to be rewritten to address this till then just try not to make mistakes in manual links... and use a sitemap...

All in all this is the principle feature that has made my investment in CC4 stagnate, as I just cannot use such a harmful implementation of SEO Friendly URLs, especially after experiencing products being indexed by Google with the wrong URL from my CC3 install.

I would refrain calling it "harmfull" as I have seen great increase in ranking and traffic on sites I have installed the SEO Mod (CCv3x.x) for clients vs not having it installed if this is what is keeping you from using CCv4 best to just wait till it has been resolved to your satisfaction or better yet why dont you rewrite the code for the seo stuff to suit you and your issues then post the changes as a hack or sell it as a mod???

Im sure others would love to see it addressed and most people here if they know their stuff will code the hack and post it or create a mod and sell it instead complaining

[Guest vp-ftv]

did have a reply but managed to lose it and cant be bothered to retype.

i am just seeking clarification from the developers of the version number 4.1 and 4.2 which are being assigned to bug reports.

for $200+ outlay i would like to know.

[Guest vp-ftv]

What is wrong with people, this IS a community issue, the topic was started by another user. I was merely adding that these concerns HAVE been raised privately via the support channels and the bug tracker.

I then referenced my public request for information relating to the 4.1 and 4.2 versions being referenced in the bug tracker.

It was community support that got the developers to update the blog. That was in direct response to a post in Cube Cart 4 General Support.

Also as Cubecart is now a commercial product the forums should also be routinely monitored, in case some owners have failed to recognise that the correct route to support is via the ticketing system.

I find it amazing how everyone is having difficulty losing the community mentality when the latest version is free trial only and requires a $200+ layout for the software license and copyright removal license.

I reiterate we are no longer in a community project where things can slip, people are paying proper money and deserve proper support and certainly a clear road map.

[kinetic]

Im actually writing a hack for the review/comments dupe content issues you have raised

its almost complete and I will post the files here for anyone to modify their stores with

Ive implemented so far the following

• any product with comments or reviews will have them displayed instead having to click a button or link to display them
  
• Implemented write a review comment onClick to show the form instead of having it do a new seo unfriendly URL
  
• Implemented if no reviews or comments link to use onclick ajax
  
• Implemented when there are reviews the link on the number of reviews link which also shows the write a review/comment
  

All thats left to do is make sure the success or error messages show up again

Ill post more here when I have it completed

[Guest Brivtech]

If I link manually to a page and mispell something

In reality, how often is everyone going to be doing that though? I can understand the point, but I don't see that in reality such a thing would become a problem of any significance.

All in all this is the principle feature that has made my investment in CC4 stagnate, as I just cannot use such a harmful implementation of SEO Friendly URLs, especially after experiencing products being indexed by Google with the wrong URL from my CC3 install.

You're entitled to your opinion, but these forums are not to be used as a sounding board. I'm sure many people here are happy with CC4, and perhaps their opinions may differ to yours.

[Guest perlinajewellery]

So far I'm very happy with CC4, I'm still testing it so I'm not sure how it will cope as a live site.

I never said that apples-cream-bracelet/prod_1.html wasn't SEO friendly, I was just wondering if it was going to remain as the page structure. As my own preference, I would prefer not to have the prod_1.html extension so it would match my currently indexed pages, but if that's the way it will stay then that's fine.

I have been using WordPress which is obviously not a shopping cart script but the page structure uses just apples-cream-bracelet so I thought it might be easy to implement.

Anyway, thank you to those who submitted useful information.

[Guest topdotter]

Unless I'm misunderstanding the problem with tellafriend and reviews, etc. the easy way to avoid Google seeing double content is to have a robots.txt file in your store's root. In it, include lines such as

User-agent: *

Disallow: /index.php?

Disallow: /admin/

Disallow: /cache/

Disallow: /cgi-bin/

Disallow: /classes/

Disallow: /docs/

Disallow: /extra/

Disallow: /images/

Disallow: /ioncube/

Disallow: /includes/

Disallow: /install/

Disallow: /js/

Disallow: /language/

Disallow: /modules/

Disallow: /pear/

Disallow: /skins/

Disallow: /tellafriend/

Disallow: /shop.php/tellafriend/

Disallow: /shop/tellafriend/

Disallow: /cart.php

Disallow: /confirmed.php

Disallow: /download.php

Disallow: /offLine.php

Disallow: /spiders.txt

Disallow: /switch.php

Some of these were from v3 and are now irrelevant.

[Guest]

The reason that 'apples-cream-bracelet' is not the best idea is that CubeCart can and will easily support tens of thousands of products. The likelihood that a product name will be duplicated is extremely high in that scenario. There is nothing to prevent duplicate product names as each product has a unique ID. So the only way to deal with it is to have the ID as part of the url. It could realistically be put anywhere, but the most efficient is how it's done now. Other methods would be slower for Apache to parse and for CubeCart to look up.

Just because things may not be to your liking doesn't mean they're wrong.

Another thing to keep in mind is that a LOT of people have well-indexed stores already running the original CC3 SEO mod. To change the naming convention now would most likely hurt their search rankings. So the best idea was to maintain the existing structure.

Now, that said, there are certainly some improvements that could be made to the SEO code itself, but for now, this is the way it is. It'll change when it changes.

:)