foz1234 Posted March 6, 2017 Share Posted March 6, 2017 Hi, For a while now i have been struggling with the main store/homepage with SEO. by this i mean i don't appear within the first 10 pages of a search on google, but my products appear on page 1 if they are searched by name etc. it's very odd, i have tried most things for about 5 months now but since i dropped my html index landing page so now i just have the store home / index page my SEO is no where to be found. i am aware its such a vast question, but i can get my other html website on page 1/2 all the time so i think i know what i am doing (to a degree) with keywords etc but i can not figure why i am struggling with my store index to get anywhere. the head title is made up of the two settings from documents and store settings search engine tag's and show correctly 60 characters total, and setting is merge with global meta recommended. so i suppose i am asking is Merge with global meta data the best option? thanks for any input Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havenswift-hosting Posted March 6, 2017 Share Posted March 6, 2017 Almost impossible to say without an in depth examination of your site but a few key pointers : 1) For good SEO never use Merge - it should not be the recommended method. Always use "Replace" and then ensure that all documents, categories, products etc have unique meta title and description (dont waste any time on keywords as not used) 2) Know what your 50 to 100 target keyword phrases are and write content and meta information to suit (this is the hard part !) 3) Register with Google Search Console (Google Webmaster Tools) and check all errors and warnings and fix where indicated. Create a good sitemap both for pages and for images on a regular (weekly is fine for most stores) basis and submit to Google and Bing 4) Ensure you dont have duplicate content - most commonly found on the homepage where most stores have at least four different urls displaying the same content. 5) Always use a SSL - Google are already ranking SSL sites slightly higher but during this year will increase that even more and are already prominently highlighting sites with logins that arent secure 6) Ensure your site is using microdata - https://www.cubecart.com/extensions/plugins/google-schema-org-microdata-plugin 7) Dont create situations where 404 errors are happening - always use 301 redirects - Google doesnt like them and you are losing link juice Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foz1234 Posted March 6, 2017 Author Share Posted March 6, 2017 Thanks for your reply i appreciate its almost impossible to say, i think the merge maybe why i am struggling this.. i have no errors on google webmasters, i only tend to do sitemaps when i change content so i will start doing more often once a week. regarding.. 4) Ensure you dont have duplicate content - most commonly found on the homepage where most stores have at least four different urls displaying the same content. what do you mean by this Ian? this is very interesting this may be why i am struggling? yes we have ssl and your microdata plugin, but as i said in op the products always at the front of google when searching, its really the website not showing up relating to the products if that makes sense, all this seems to be since removing the html landing page and now just having the store as index. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havenswift-hosting Posted March 6, 2017 Share Posted March 6, 2017 Merge is a very poor choice because it uses the same global meta data on every single page and will add that to whatever is entered on each individual page (which many people then dont do leading to every single page having exactly the same meta title and description) but as you are limited to 66 characters for the title, if you enter 66 or more characters in the global setting and use merge, you still end up with the same 66 characters for every single page - meta titles should be unique for every single page on the site and should contain a few selected keywords that are good for your site and relevant to the content of the page. Point 2 is also extremely important and something most people dont look at Point 4 - if your site is domain.com then http://www.domain.com ; http://www.domain.com/index.php ; http://domain.com and http://domain.com/index.php will all return the same content but Google treats them as different website pages and hence four duplicate content pages. Add in incorrectly formatted https behaviour (which should happen with CubeCart now if SSL is switched on but I have seen poorly configured server settings causing problems as well even then) then double that to eight pages. You say that when searching for products you have better rankings than the homepage - that totally depends on what search terms you are using (hence the vital importance of point 2 !!) and if you are searching for a product then finding the product page is exactly what you want ! Did you add a 301 redirect when removing the .html file - unfortunately a massive mistake if you didnt and unless it was done in the last few weeks, then it is probably too late for that. A lot depends on what content was on that page in comparison the the store homepage now and what searches you are doing (back to point 2 yet again but this is the most important aspect which most people dont even look at !). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foz1234 Posted March 7, 2017 Author Share Posted March 7, 2017 (edited) Thank you for your in depth reply, i will correct the merge choice and set up separately over the coming days now i know what to do with that, i only went with that choice because it was recommended in the drop down menu in Cube cart to start with, i did my best with it as it was. regarding Point 4, how is this corrected? i have added eg. http://domain.com, https://domain.com, http://www.domain.com, & https://www.domain.com to google webmasters, is not the correct thing to do? i was unable to decide if this is correct or not. I've not added the index.php on the end of any of the 4 domain ways in google webmasters some guidance would be appreciated with this as its always confused me. Also a question regarding ssl, should the sitemap contain the ssl links or is this ok just http? Quote* You say that when searching for products you have better rankings than the homepage - that totally depends on what search terms you are using (hence the vital importance of point 2 !!) and if you are searching for a product then finding the product page is exactly what you want ! i agree if a customer searches for a brand name / make and model it shows on page 1 or 2 of google that's great but if people are first doing a general search for companies that sell an item that is manufactured or sold buy by lots of different sites this is where i feel i am missing out. eg if someone searched petrol chainsaw i wouldn't show up but if they put Stihl MS181 it would be on page 1 or 2 of google that's just as example not to be taken literally. i understand point 2 and i feel i must know these words to a degree, i am no expert obviously lol but as my none ssl html website (not cubecart site) is ranked very well in google i feel i am sorta just missing something with my ssl cubecart site. it maybe the merge setting, it maybe point 4 it maybe a combination of both i am unsure and until i correct these i guess i wont know. Quote* Did you add a 301 redirect when removing the .html file - unfortunately a massive mistake if you didnt and unless it was done in the last few weeks, then it is probably too late for that. A lot depends on what content was on that page in comparison the the store homepage now and what searches you are doing (back to point 2 yet again but this is the most important aspect which most people dont even look at !). i moved host back in November last year and decided to go with no landing page and swallowed the fact all the links from Google will no longer work, my previous host had the ssl port on 8844 so all links were going to be wrong anyway, all google searches now show the correct links all links with ports on the end now seem to have gone from all google searches and all show correctly now. i really appreciate your help with this Ian thank you once again Edited March 7, 2017 by foz1234 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havenswift-hosting Posted March 7, 2017 Share Posted March 7, 2017 2 hours ago, foz1234 said: i will correct the merge choice and set up separately over the coming days now i know what to do with that, i only went with that choice because it was recommended in the drop down menu in Cube cart to start with, i did my best with it as it was. I agree that it shouldnt be the recommended choice https://github.com/cubecart/v6/issues/1543 Using Replace forces you to think more about creating the content and the correct meta data but you do need to know your target keyword phrases. Quote regarding Point 4, how is this corrected? You need to choose whether you want to use www. (we generally setup all our customers this way - if it is good enough for Google to use themselves !) or not and then add the correct 301 directives to your .htaccess file Quote i have added eg. http://domain.com, https://domain.com, http://www.domain.com, & https://www.domain.com to google webmasters, is not the correct thing to do? You shouldnt need to do that if you have the 301 directives in place and working correctly. We also have HSTS configured on our servers which helps with SSL as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foz1234 Posted March 8, 2017 Author Share Posted March 8, 2017 may i ask is this correct ? i don't see any 301 re-directs ### Apache directory listing rules ### DirectoryIndex index.php index.htm index.html IndexIgnore * full .htaccess attached .htaccess Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foz1234 Posted March 8, 2017 Author Share Posted March 8, 2017 (edited) i assume the below is what i am after? but how does this work with the index.php ? i assume the ssl is still ok to be handled by cubecart? if now force it to www, if i understand this correctly it would this still have 2 https://www.example.com & https://www.example.com.index.php how do i correct that? thanks for your help Force www: RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC] Edited March 9, 2017 by foz1234 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foz1234 Posted March 10, 2017 Author Share Posted March 10, 2017 Could someone please post a good .htaccess redirect for cubecart forcing www. removing .html extensions and what ever else i need regarding .index.php etc Please? i am confused, some sites I've read say don't use more that 1 redirect, i am baffled to what string i would use to combine what i require. i would have thought this must have been covered before on here but cant seem to find it with a search ? thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foz1234 Posted March 13, 2017 Author Share Posted March 13, 2017 (edited) will search engines google bing etc etc see https://example.com & https://example.com/index.php? as separate pages? or would this be seen / classed as duplicate page? also https://example.com/shop/product.html & https://example.com/shop/product.html?page=2 & .html?page=3 etc classed as the duplicate / same or separate ? thanks Edited March 13, 2017 by foz1234 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirty Butter Posted March 13, 2017 Share Posted March 13, 2017 I can tell you for sure that Google sees the page=2,3,etc as duplicate pages. But I added ?page= to my Disallow in robots and that stopped being an issue. I think 6.1.5 changed the way the pages urls are done that may have solved this one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keat Posted March 13, 2017 Share Posted March 13, 2017 I use this for my 301's. I've no idea if it's correct as there's a hell of a lot of conflicting info. However, it seems to pass when i run it agianst any checkers. RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80 RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L] http://www.ragepank.com/redirect-check/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foz1234 Posted March 13, 2017 Author Share Posted March 13, 2017 Thank you both for your replies, DB do i need to enter one for each product or will Disallow: /?page= work ok? Great tool http://www.ragepank.com/redirect-check/ thank you Keat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirty Butter Posted March 13, 2017 Share Posted March 13, 2017 2 hours ago, foz1234 said: Disallow: /?page= Works for me. But as I said, the pagination urls are different now - so may not be necessary any more. I still have the Disallow in my robots.txt file, though. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirty Butter Posted March 16, 2017 Share Posted March 16, 2017 Sorry, but I had forgotten that I still have this in my robots.txt as well: Allow: /*page=all Google was complaining that I was blocking a large number of pages, so I added this to my robots.txt after the Disallows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foz1234 Posted March 17, 2017 Author Share Posted March 17, 2017 Hi DB This is my robots.txt now User-agent: * Allow: /*page=all Disallow: /?page= is this correct now thanks Again Dirty Butter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirty Butter Posted March 17, 2017 Share Posted March 17, 2017 You'll know soon enough if you keep watch on Google Webmaster tools: Add your store url to the end of this: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/html-suggestions?hl=en&siteUrl= Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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