Search engine optimization

[Guest OSKicks]

ok have done somehting to my cucbe cart to help me in search engines such as the title bar thing, but like google they don't care about meta tags , they jus read the first part of html they see, in cube carts case it is catagory , store home, and all ur catagories that u have in your store, how do i change this . would some hidden html work, thanks let me know - Josh

[Guest OSKicks]

anyone?????

[Guest]

I just had a similar discussion earlier today. The short answer is everything helps, just a matter of energy expended versus return. Hidden html is tricky because that can lead to penalties in the search engines (sometimes). I am not an SEO professional, but like everything else since I decided to hit the net I am on a steep learning curve. There will be those that argue some tactics are out of bounds or unethical, but in reality it is all just shades of gray. Anything done to a sight that changes its search ranking without changing its content is manipulation.

Without resorting to hidden html, there is another option that accomplishes the objective. For some reason spiders and bots do not like ? in the url. By using mod_rewrite you can trick the spider into believing they don't exist. Have a look at my site http://www.generalrentalstore.com. Notice that all links from the main page have been converted. This is by far the best thing I have done to my site. Googlebot was coming by everday but never hit more than a page or 2. I have now had 3 deep scans on 3 consecutive days. By deep I mean 100 or more pages hit in a single pass. The spider has fallen in love.

This is not for everyone. First and foremost your server has to have the mod_rewrite module installed. Second, it is a real pain. On a scale of 1 to 10, this is a solid 9 for difficulty. Aside from the obtuse syntax of mod_rewrite itself, all the links and images in the cart have to be rewritten to an absolute url. But again, it is all about energy expended versus return. The return is too great to ignore. For those that are capable, this is a must.

If anyone is interested in more specifics, pass me a note.

[Guest OSKicks]

where can i get this mod at, i am trying to get as high as possible in the search engines, thanks----- Josh

[Guest]

mod_rewrite is an apache module. There is a version for windows servers also I believe. I'm not a server kind of guy, I lease mine and luckily it was installed. If you are on an apache server you can look through the Cubecart admin. Login, then click server setup, somewhere in there will be the apache heading and its loaded modules.

If you Google aound for "mod_rewrite" you can get a feel for it.

[Guest OSKicks]

i sitll don't get it what do you have to do to get this to work, want some money PM me, i am trying to take my stuff to the top and they brought that little ???????? thing to my attwntion about google. so get at me , Josh

[Guest]

Nah, money I got, its time I run short on.

Have you checked to see if your server has the module installed?

If yes, you will then need to check if you can access and modify a .htaccess file. If you have Cpanel access, you can for sure. If not, try playing with whatever FTP program you use and see if it can see and rename . files. Do not name it .htaccess until you are sure you can gain access. Then proceed.

Take a look here and see if this helps.

http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/mod_rewri...generator.shtml

The plan here is to avoid any ? in urls. To do that the urls must be rewritten. What is actually happening is the .htaccess file you make is filtering the urls as they are entered.

Example:

http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?cat_id=1 - is the normal link

http://www.yoursite.com/index/cat_id/1/ - what you change it to

When you click the link .htaccess looks at it and recognizes this is a type of link it needs to restructure. It does the converting back to the normal syntax and passes that along to the server for processing. From the outside it looks like you are connected to http://www.yoursite.com/index/cat_id/1/, but really you are at http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?cat_id=1.

Like I said, this is a BIG job. Difficult and frustrating. The good news is once you get the hang of it, the possibilities are almost endless.

For starters I would recommend making a test page. A simple html will do:

<html>

<body>

<a href="http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?cat_id=1">Testing and Learning</a>

</body>

</html>

Then using notepad make a file called htaccess.txt. Using the link above and the site structure in the examples, it returns the following code:

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule index/(.*)/(.*)/$ /index.php?$1=$2

Save the file, then upload to your server in ASCII mode. Very important, must use ASCII. Once you have it uploaded, rename it to .htaccess. Oh, if by chance you have a .htaccess file already be sure to amend it rather than just overwrite it. At the very least make sure there is nothing important in there, like Frontpage stuff (if you use that sort of thing). Anyway, once you get your .htaccess file set and upload your test page, first make sure it works like it is. This should go smooth. Now edit the html test page, change it to:

<html>

<body>

<a href="http://www.yoursite.com/index/cat_id/1/">Testing and Learning</a>

</body>

</html>

Save, upload and pray. If it is all working, when you click the link, you won't notice anything different than before. If it doesn't work, start at the beginning and try again. The format used in the edited html test page is that way because that is what is compatible with the code output from the website that was linked earlier.

Once you get a grasp of the basics you can move in to the modifying the cart.

Before you start , back up everything. the database all files, everything. You will be changing alot of stuff, if it goes bad those back ups will be life savers.

The main rule:ALL references must be absolute.

What that means is all hrefs and image links must start with http://. If you look in the cart, you will notice most links are relative. That is not a bad thing, it makes things so much easier normally, just happens that in this case it is exactly the wrong thing.

Example:

\"images/hulahoop.jpg\" becomes

\"http://www.yoursite.com/images/hulahoop.jpg\"

\"index.php?cat_id=$cat_id\" becomes

\"http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?cat_id=$cat_id\"

But wait you say? There is still a question mark there. Correct. Take it in steps. First work on making all links absolute. Once you get that done and everything is working, then work on changing the structure. But ok, in the end it would be:

\"http://www.yoursite.com/index/cat_id/$cat_id/\"

Change all references to $PHP_SELF to the page name it needs to call.

Double check, triple check, have a friend check. If you miss even one it will result in a 404. Before you get done you will be intimately familiar with your site, because you will need to crawl the whole thing.

Here is what my .htaccess looks like:

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule index/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/$ /index.php?$1=$2&$3=$4 [L]

RewriteRule index/(.*)/(.*)/$ /index.php?$1=$2 [L]

RewriteRule view_doc/(.*)/(.*)/$ /view_doc.php?$1=$2 [L]

RewriteRule view_product/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/$ /view_product.php?$1=$2&$3=$4&$5=$6&$7=$8 [L]

RewriteRule view_product/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/$ /view_product.php?$1=$2&$3=$4 [L]

RewriteRule view_product/(.*)/(.*)/$ /view_product.php?$1=$2 [L]

RewriteRule search/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/$ /search.php?$1=$2&$3=$4 [L]

RewriteRule search/(.*)/(.*)/$ /search.php?$1=$2 [L]

RewriteRule ^.htaccess$ - [F]

Good Luck. I cannot stress this enough. Backup before you start, take things in steps and test constantly.

If you notice any spelling errors, then you need to read faster, they become less noticeable. :D