Search Engine Optimization

[Guest tylerstaszak]

As you all know, when you use CubeCart, you are generating paging dynamically (ie from a database). I've been reading how search engines (especially google), can't/won't index dynamic links. In otherwords, an link with a "?" in it. What ends up happening is only your main page gets indexed.

I know there are several different ways to get around this. One method manipulates your link and changes it from:

www.example.com/prod=?int+7=2&2&4

to

www.example.com/prod/int/7/224/

Has anyone done anything like this? Have you used another method to get around this problem? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

http://fragrancesandmore.biz

[Guest]

I used the mod_rewrite on an Apache server to do this. The best explanation I can give is found here.

It was a real pain. I don't mind giving pointers on it, but if you decide to go that way, you very much need to learn and understand it thoroughly. Done incorrectly or haphazardly it can really mess up a site.

Now, as to the bigger question does it help? My opinion then was and still is, yes. Possibly not alot though. It seems the spiders are getting better at handling the structure with '?". Multiple variables do seem to cause more problems than a short 'index=php?cat_id=1'.

Google has its own set of issues at the moment. If it were possible to kill a bot, it definitely needs to be put out of its misery. There are many tales of woe with the current iteration of the Googlebot. Mine included. For a reason known only to a supreme few beings, Google has decided that it doesn't really need to index pages anymore. For instance, this month to date MSN has cached 2517 pages on my site. Google has cached only 88. My site does not have 2517 pages, so that means MSN has completely gone through at least once and is on its second or third trip. 88, that's beyond sad.

A focus on the standard rules may garner better results than ridding '?' from the url. Content and links, links and more links. Eventually, I hope, Google will come in line with the other search engines.

On a side note, MSN seems to cache pages with a session ID attached on the url. It is conceivable that the same page would be cached an infinite numbers of times with a different ID. I have a small bit of borrowed code that seems to work nicely if anyone is interested.

[Guest]

Google does read dynamic links.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html

..... and i have had NO problems by getting it to read cubecart.

(as far as i have read somewhere, google have no problems with up to 4 variables in a link)

I also read an interview with one of the "bosses" at Google, and he confirmed it and prommised they would constantly be better, and that is about a year ago.

I also checked my own pages, for a live store i have online (been online for about 5 mounts), and they are all indexed.

and google send from 400 to 1000 visitors to my pages a day, directly to diferent categories and products.

(And my pages is not in english, but in a much "smaler" language, spoken just by about 4,5 million people.)

some good sugestions here:

http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/google.shtml

.... and one could also use the "alt tag" better in the images, like alt='$tiitle' both in the index page and in the boxes. or alt='$product' if you have a descriptive product number/name. or make a little mod taking random words from the product description or category description like alt='$somthing'

Google indexes alt-tags.

And it is verry important to write a good and long product-description and title when you are adding products. Search engines dont think, they just read what you give them.

(I am saying this, because in som of the stores i have seen here, there is "hardly" any product description at all ........ often just a few words that is not very descriptive.)

For CC 2.0x there is a mod somwhere for giving each site a title according to the product that is on it. (titlemod) That should easily be adapted to CC3.

I have that installed, and a few other "homades".

What is the newest at Google, is that it now read the meta description tags.

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/001769.html

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=5034

I am satisfied of how cubecart is read by Google.

.... but it is even better read by the new msn search, where my "cubecart" got top ranking in most of the test-searches i did .........

So, msn / Bill: Welcome to take up competition with google !

omt

[Guest tylerstaszak]

Thank you both for your responses. They have been very helpful.

Well, I attempted to follow the instructions mentioned to remove the "?". Aparently I did not do something right, because about half an hour into the project my entire site was destroyed, and I had no idea what was causing it. I was getting a whole slew of weird SQL errors. Luckily I followed one direction correctly and had everything backed up.

Anyways, maybe I'll put this off and give it a shot sometime in the future. I think I'll just focus on getting links and improving my content.

Again, thank you both for the tips.

http://fragrancesandmore.biz

[Guest]

I know of two mods i used which helped my rankings greatly on my new project store

Title mod - puts product title in the title bar when customer is viewing that page

Alt tag mod - automatic makes product titl2 alt tag for image

I am also working on another one which seems to be working rather well at the moment still in testing

results so far seem to be with in 2-3 weeks achieving page 1 ranking on google

got to try and find a way to automate this as im having to make all the changes by hand to do it

Will keep you posted!!!!!

ps i have 2 mods mentioned above if ne 1 wants them and cant find them

[roban]

I use only the title mod and have a PR 5

[Guest tylerstaszak]

Okay, so I've got...

1. good titles on all of my product pages

2. Alt tages with the product name on all of my pictures.

3. A site map that is on my main page. This is just a plain .html page, so it should be easy for google/yahoo to index.

So far, I've only had my main page indexed. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get my other pages indexed. Thanks for the help.

http://fragrancesandmore.biz

[Guest OskMedia]

I am working on getting my site nice on the search engines. Basically my suggestion anywhere you can put a link to the site do it. use a program called WEB CEO free...donate keep it free, best thing to use hands down. i knwo google says they use ? and all that bit if you could i would suggest using a mod re write or the php level mod rewrite i am looking for , well ta ta for now