SEO SiteMap and Multi Language stores

[Guest ballesdegolf.fr]

Hi there CCers

I am currently running a store based in France with mainly French and English customers, so our store is set to French (default) with English as the other language option. We have a range of products which are all available in both languages. We have some reasonable success using Adwords, an Ebay Store and plain old fashioned good customer service! However I am now looking more long term and I am trying to unravel the following problem, which seems to get more complicated the deeper I dig!

I am in the process of translating the site into 4 other European languages in order to take advantage of our geographical location in the middle of Europe. I will therefore end up with 6 languages and 6 target markets. Whilst I will use Adword campaigns in each territory I am obviously looking to also creep up the organic listings too (after all its free!) as our products are all brand names - they are often searched for very specifically. I have paid attention to the text I am creating in the new languages - so that they are keyword and keyword-phrase rich BUT I am not sure what good it will do.

I have the SEO Friendly mod being installed on the site in order to help both customers and crawlers etc and I have also the Automated Sitemap for Google et al from Robsta. However in discussion with him on this subject we realised that the both the Sitemaps, SEO Friendly URLs and the crawlers (bots - I lose track!) will all only be for/look at the default language text.

So the question is: How to get a CC store, which has multiple languages and multiple target countries well listed organically on Google etc?

I have read about multiple stores (URLs) running off one DB - but I assume that that would mean they would all have the same language?

I would love to hear from anyone who either has experience of this or anyone who has a better understanding of the DB issues to see whether this too could be a solution (this will be alot of you as I have no idea!)

It does however seems to be a hidden downside to CC that, whilst it offers dynamic language changes within the store, they are all ignored by the search engines except for the default.

Many thanks in advance

Jim

[bsmither]

OP> I have the SEO Friendly mod being installed ... the crawlers will all only be for/look at the default language text.

I believe the meta keywords in the stock code are saved in the config database. Please correct me if I am wrong. If that's the case, then the multi-variant hack as discussed on CubeCartForums.org may be of value to your situation. I have no knowledge of the SEO mod, feel free to ask the author if the data managed by that MOD is stored in the config database.

OP> I have read about multiple stores (URLs) running off one DB - but I assume that that would mean they would all have the same language?

My experiments show that whatever is stored in the config table [and that there are now distinct config tables for each respective store variant as discussed in the hack], then each store will have its own default language.

[Guest ballesdegolf.fr]

OP> I have the SEO Friendly mod being installed ... the crawlers will all only be for/look at the default language text.

I believe the meta keywords in the stock code are saved in the config database. Please correct me if I am wrong. If that's the case, then the multi-variant hack as discussed on CubeCartForums.org may be of value to your situation. I have no knowledge of the SEO mod, feel free to ask the author if the data managed by that MOD is stored in the config database.

OP> I have read about multiple stores (URLs) running off one DB - but I assume that that would mean they would all have the same language?

My experiments show that whatever is stored in the config table [and that there are now distinct config tables for each respective store variant as discussed in the hack], then each store will have its own default language.

Thank you bsmither for your reply - I shall set up a dummy store and try and figure out exactly what you mean here - My DB knowledge is VERY limited. I will also try mailing the Modder or course - I just assumed that the forum would throw up a few more experiences / opinions on the subject.

I would obviously rather not go down the multi DB route as I don't need multiple URL's as I am not trying to disguise the fact that all the stores are "the same" - I am just a bit frustrated to discover the limitation of the CC format in the respect. Having discussed the Sitemapping with Robsta it is clear that this only uses the default language for its maps - making it that much harder to SEO the store in the other eurozone countries in which we are going to be operating.

Does no-one else have any similar experiences?

[Guest Brivtech]

This is an interesting post that I'll be following for CC4 development purposes.

As some of you know, CC4 has the SEO MOD built-in (and originally programmed by the same author), and I've done some language tests to find that languages are not fully supported within areas like. I'm making my list with regards to this, and any information you guys find for the CC3 version may come in very useful for CC4. A lot of this could easily be fixed, but it's knowing exactly what has been affected and why.

The problem we have here for both CC3 and CC4 with the SEO MOD is that when a page is fetched, it uses the default meta data for the store, which is not editable in other languages. If a store administrator changes the default language (Say from English to French), then the administrator changes the default meta data to French, the English will be neglected.

Following on from that, the products and site docs have additional meta data specific to each item. Again, the default language is used, and there's no opportunity for this to be edited when a language version is created.

Finally, when a link is fetched to create a page, it looks for the document ID (or product, or category, etc). When it makes the page, it fetches the translation to build the page with (and there's an opportunity to replace the meta data). Unfortunately, this is done on the fly, using either the default store language or the user's preferences, with no language discrimination built into the URL.

Here's some examples:

www.website.com/vegetables/peas/prod37.htm - In English, and French!

Really, in this example, ideally, it should read:

www.website.com/legumes/pois/prod37.htm

The problem exists here as the category and product names are merely academic, and don't actually serve a function other than promoting the SEO indexing.

I don't have a programmable solution for this yet, however, here's a line of thought that could work...

In my examples above:

www.website.com/en/vegetables/peas/prod37.htm

www.website.com/fr/legumes/pois/prod37.htm

Where a 2 letter country code is popped in at the beginning, and extracted from the string to set the language (overriding the default) when the page is generated.

If there's no language code, the default language could be used. Wouldn't be too hard to program, and as for generating the category product name in these examples (and also ensure that the languages have their own meta data), some simple change to code and minor database additions would be all that's necessary.

With regard to running a sitemap generator (I wrote my own hacked out from a piece of existing CC4 code), it should search by language, fill in the results, move onto the next language, and so on. It may be a good idea to completely delete languages that are not supported, so that content duplications are not made. They can be added back in easily if they are needed later on.

[Guest ballesdegolf.fr]

This is an interesting post that I'll be following for CC4 development purposes.

As some of you know, CC4 has the SEO MOD built-in (and originally programmed by the same author), and I've done some language tests to find that languages are not fully supported within areas like. I'm making my list with regards to this, and any information you guys find for the CC3 version may come in very useful for CC4. A lot of this could easily be fixed, but it's knowing exactly what has been affected and why.

The problem we have here for both CC3 and CC4 with the SEO MOD is that when a page is fetched, it uses the default meta data for the store, which is not editable in other languages. If a store administrator changes the default language (Say from English to French), then the administrator changes the default meta data to French, the English will be neglected.

Following on from that, the products and site docs have additional meta data specific to each item. Again, the default language is used, and there's no opportunity for this to be edited when a language version is created.

Finally, when a link is fetched to create a page, it looks for the document ID (or product, or category, etc). When it makes the page, it fetches the translation to build the page with (and there's an opportunity to replace the meta data). Unfortunately, this is done on the fly, using either the default store language or the user's preferences, with no language discrimination built into the URL.

Here's some examples:

www.website.com/vegetables/peas/prod37.htm - In English, and French!

Really, in this example, ideally, it should read:

www.website.com/legumes/pois/prod37.htm

The problem exists here as the category and product names are merely academic, and don't actually serve a function other than promoting the SEO indexing.

I don't have a programmable solution for this yet, however, here's a line of thought that could work...

In my examples above:

www.website.com/en/vegetables/peas/prod37.htm

www.website.com/fr/legumes/pois/prod37.htm

Where a 2 letter country code is popped in at the beginning, and extracted from the string to set the language (overriding the default) when the page is generated.

If there's no language code, the default language could be used. Wouldn't be too hard to program, and as for generating the category product name in these examples (and also ensure that the languages have their own meta data), some simple change to code and minor database additions would be all that's necessary.

With regard to running a sitemap generator (I wrote my own hacked out from a piece of existing CC4 code), it should search by language, fill in the results, move onto the next language, and so on. It may be a good idea to completely delete languages that are not supported, so that content duplications are not made. They can be added back in easily if they are needed later on.

Hi there Brivtech

And thank you for your great reply! You have, unsurprisingly for someone obviously at the heart of the project, understood exactly the problem we are grappling with - both from a SEO and SteMap point of view. I think that your idea for a 2 digit "country code" as part of the SEO freindly URL would work perfectly from a users point of view and from a BOTs too. The only place it might have some sort of problem is where a single language term has become the generic reference (In our business for example Tees (the thing you put a golf ball on) is not translated accross different languages so you coud have www....../FR/Tees/wood.htm and www....../EN/Tees/wood.htm - would this not be confusing and possibly damaging to page ranking (as it seems like duplication) or will the "country code" be succient?

Since we no longer live at the beginning of web based sales, it is (and will probably become even more) important that we rely less on the undoubtably effective Google adwords and the like. As we have found the customers that are generated by these means are often browsing customers - at the very beginning of the shopping cycle - and therefore someway off from actually making a purchase. The need to generate good copy within the site, well index in ALL languages that the site uses/needs - alongside unique language sensitive URLs will be your very best freind in the long term. Customers who want to buy a "Multi Lingual SEO Mod for CubeCart" for their CC store will almost always search for just that - whereas someone who is think about finding a cart system, but is unaware of each carts pros and cons will search for "E-commerce solution" or such like. Good organic page ranking and search results can only be acheived through well written and referenced content - plus a good few links!! But then again they are free - and proven to be probably better trusted by shoppers than sponsored links.

If anyone familiar with core code, you included Brivtech , has a feeling about how this concept might be made a reality... I have a very basic understanding of MySQL, DB's and php so what is suggested here seems logical (and probably not too complicated?) but I do not have the first idea about how it would be done. I am sure that it are a large minority of CC customers who use the multi language aspect of the store and it would surely be a great feather in the cap of CC4 to have this fuctionality at it core - and maybe available as a MOD for CC3!

Does anyone see any obvious flaws in this approach?

Thanks again Brivtech - I love this forum

Jim

Just reading through my own reply I realise that the example of the tees is not really a valid one as it could easily be Tees/bois.htm for the french version - however where a page was an international brand or product such as /40gbipod.htm for instance their might still be a problem!

Sorry!!

[Guest Brivtech]

There's quite a few areas where languages have not been fully implemented, such as product options.

I'll make a complete review and submit it to Al for consideration in future CC updates within the next few days as a bug report (feature request).

I haven't been able to see what additions have been made into CC 4.2, perhaps some of this has already been addressed, but I need to backwards engineer the product options text boxes to work with CC 4.1.1 (and then still have it work when a 4.2 is upgraded over it) and I'll be doing something to resolve that next week.

[Guest kufflinkz.com]

There's quite a few areas where languages have not been fully implemented, such as product options.

I'll make a complete review and submit it to Al for consideration in future CC updates within the next few days as a bug report (feature request).

I haven't been able to see what additions have been made into CC 4.2, perhaps some of this has already been addressed, but I need to backwards engineer the product options text boxes to work with CC 4.1.1 (and then still have it work when a 4.2 is upgraded over it) and I'll be doing something to resolve that next week.

This is a necessity

I'm tired of seeing my competitors having the option of having multiple languages in the search engines And I'm in Canada, I absolutely need the French option to be seo friendly.

thanks!

[Guest meandre]

cubecart happens is a change for which problemme and urgent for me