[toyicebear]

First let me just say url formating is not the most important part of seo optimizing your store, but it might give you an extra edge if all else is equal between you and a competitor.that the

First take care of:

- Individual titles for all products (Alt. full individual metas)

Look in the contribution section for alternatives

- Site map, all products and/or google site map feed

Look in the contribution section for alternatives

- Well written and foccused content in your product descriptions

When all this is ready and functioning, well then its time to choose url formating...

1. Standard

www.myshop.com/product_info?products_id=1

2. osc sef

www.myshop.com/product_info/products_id/1

3. Seach Engine Friendly URL

www.myshop.com/my-product-name/

4. Ultimate SEO URLs

www.myshop.com/my-product-name-p1.html

5. SEF Link Transformer

www.myshop.com/product1/product_info.html

6. Nimmit Sef's

www.myshop.com/my-product-name.html

7. Yasu

www.myshop.com/my-product-name

8. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)- Advanced URLs for osCommerce

www.myshop.com/it-pi-n-my-product-name-pId-1.html

This post has been edited by Johnson: 06 August 2005 - 01:51 PM

[toyicebear]

1. Standard

www.myshop.com/product_info?products_id=1

Indexes well by all the big search engines today.

2. osc sef

www.myshop.com/product_info/products_id/1

Indexes well in all the search engines, but be aware this is in development and may not work on all servers.

3. Seach Engine Friendly URL

www.myshop.com/my-product-name/

Indexes well in all the search engines, uses catching for less server intensive impact.

Att. This contrib depends upon the original osc sef's , so test first if those do work on your server.

4. Ultimate SEO URLs

www.myshop.com/my-product-name-p1.html

Indexes well in all the search engines, uses catching for less server intensive impact.

5. SEF Link Transformer

www.myshop.com/product1/product_info.html

Indexes well in all the search engines, but is slightly server intensive so works best for shops with under 1000 visitors a day.

Att. Not compatible with gzip enabled.

6. Nimmit Sef's

www.myshop.com/my-product-name.html

Indexes well in all the search engines, but is slightly server intensive so works best for shops with under 1000 visitors a day.

Att. Not compatible with gzip enabled.

7. Yasu

www.myshop.com/my+product+name

Indexes well in all the search engines, but is slightly server intensive so works best for shops with under 1000 visitors a day.

8. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)- Advanced URLs for osCommerce

This one requires alot of manual modifications of files, but is also very flexibel in reagards to adding extra keywords to your urls.

Url example:

www.myshop.com/it-pi-n-my-product-name-pId-1.html

This post has been edited by Johnson: 06 August 2005 - 01:51 PM

[BlueYon]

Use:

http://www.oscommerc...y/contributions,2796

It will change URLS from:


http://www.yoursite....4&products_id=1

to:

http://www.yoursite....atrox-G200-MMS/

[toyicebear]

BlueYon, on Jul 8 2005, 03:46 PM, said:

Use:

http://www.oscommerc...y/contributions,2796

It will change URLS from:
http://www.yoursite....4&products_id=1

to:

http://www.yoursite....atrox-G200-MMS/

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This is a good contribution for seo/sef urls , but for potential useres here are some points to consider and test before proceding to instal it.

1. Test that your stores hosting/server works with the standard osc sefs set to true.

This can be done in your admin, configuration>>my store

Quote

Use Search-Engine Safe URLs (still in development)

After you have set this to "True" navigate around your site and check that there is no error messages. The most usual one is this:

Quote

Error: unable to determine page link

2. Test that you can use "Force Cookies" . (If you are using shared ssl, you can not use "force cookies")

You can find the setting in configuartion>>sessions

3. If you have a very modified store you should know that this mod merges product_info and index.php into one combined file and as such might require extensive customization to look the same as your already modded ones.


If these 3 conditions does not deter you, then this is the seo/sef url contrib to use.

This post has been edited by toyicebear: 09 July 2005 - 11:38 PM

[devosc]

Alot of effort is being put into rebuilding the sefu names post administration and as a consequence, for example, just to find the _cached_ name the enitre products cache is read into memory just for one link on one page.

IMO, the ideal thing to be doing is to pre-store the sefu names and cPaths at the time of administration, this simplifies alot of aspects and reduces the amount of computation required in the catalog side.

It is not that difficult to implement, what it does affect is how much of the site then gets updated accordingly and can then alleviates the need for cPath=1_2_3 to simply category_id = 3 since the associated cached array will already know whats its cPath is.

[Sean416]

toyicebear, on Jul 6 2005, 08:37 PM, said:

First take care of:

- Individual titles for all products (Alt. full individual metas)

Look in the contribution section for alternatives

- Site map, all products and/or google site map feed

Look in the contribution section for alternatives

- Well written and foccused content in your product descriptions

When all this is ready and functioning, well then its time to choose url formating...

With due respect I disagree with the above.

1) It's not a good idea to launch a site with said URLs and then switch them over to a different type of URLs at a later date. Althought this isn't a terrible thing, google could index 100's or 1000's of your osCommerce default URLs and then come back to find all new URLs, during the switch you will lose all positions in the SERPs and it could be assumed (in cases like using SEF #3 in your post) that google would assume your new links are a complete restructure of your site and this could result in temporary penalties by search engines like Google.

2) Keyword density/weight in your URLs is far more important then things like meta tags. While I agree its important to have a content (text) rich site with good title tags, the power of having strong keyword URLs should not be down played.

Remember folks, just because most SE's can crawl and index dynamic pages (read: URLs), doesn't mean that having keywords in your URL are any less important.

This post has been edited by Sean416: 22 July 2005 - 03:53 AM

[toyicebear]

Sean416, on Jul 22 2005, 03:52 AM, said:

With due respect I disagree with the above.

1) It's not a good idea to launch a site with said URLs and then switch them over to a different type of URLs at a later date. Althought this isn't a terrible thing, google could index 100's or 1000's of your osCommerce default URLs and then come back to find all new URLs, during the switch you will lose all positions in the SERPs and it could be assumed (in cases like using SEF #3 in your post) that google would assume your new links are a complete restructure of your site and this could result in temporary penalties by search engines like Google.

2) Keyword density/weight in your URLs is far more important then things like meta tags. While I agree its important to have a content (text) rich site with good title tags, the power of having strong keyword URLs should not be down played.

Remember folks, just because most SE's can crawl and index dynamic pages (read: URLs), doesn't mean that having keywords in your URL are any less important. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The importance of key words in the url are an issue still under discussion by seo experts around the web, and i guess they will not come to anny agreement soon...lol

But the latest trend in this discussion is that the value of key words in the url are now loosing more and more importance.

The latest revisions of the major search engine algorithms all strive to get the best possible relevance to the search and filter out as much of the spam/black hat sites from the results. (Since keywords in the url are very easy to manipulate their importance also do get affected by these changes)

The result is that content gets more and more important aswell as that the bots try to read the content in a more "Human" way to be able to filter "Real" content from "Search engine food" content.


That said...its nothing wrong in starting with a seo url contrib....but this in itself will not get you tons of traffic and great rankings.

The other mentioned factors also have to be filled too.

And if they are filled you might get tons of traffic and high rankings without using any seo url contrib at all......

And ofcourse, do not forget about the importance of having a lot of relevant inbound links to your site.

This post has been edited by toyicebear: 23 July 2005 - 04:05 AM

[Sean416]

toyicebear, on Jul 23 2005, 12:04 AM, said:

The importance of key words in the url are an issue still under discussion by seo experts around the web, and i guess they will not come to anny agreement soon...lol

Personally I dont think there's much to discuss. Do a search for the following keywords on google.com

Shoes
Clothing
Apparel
Fishing
CDs
Stereos
Cars
SUV
laptop
travel
casinos
hotel

etc The #1 results all have the keyword in the url.

toyicebear, on Jul 23 2005, 12:04 AM, said:

And ofcourse, do not forget about the importance of having a lot of relevant inbound links to your site.

I completely agree with you here. Good content, title tags and relevant inbound links are all equally important factors in terms of optimizing for google.

This post has been edited by Sean416: 23 July 2005 - 06:22 AM

[toyicebear]

Sean416, on Jul 23 2005, 06:20 AM, said:

Personally I dont think there's much to discuss. Do a search for the following keywords on google.com

Shoes
Clothing
Apparel
Fishing
CDs
Stereos
Cars
SUV
laptop
travel
casinos
hotel

etc The #1 results all have the keyword in the url.
I completely agree with you here. Good content, title tags and relevant inbound links are all equally important factors in terms of optimizing for google. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That is a very non-conclusive test, why...

Because the sites which shows at the top usually are sites/pages with is seo-optimized and since its not considered negative to add keywords in the url and it might be benificial, most seo companies does put it just to be on the safe side.

The premier reason most of the pages/sites have their placment is more related to the other seo optimization parts as well as linking strategies.

Mind you this is as mentioned not a one or the other situation, to maximixe the search ranking of your site its important to take into consideration all the factors and not just one.

And even if you are on a hosting/server solution where you are unable to use .htaccess, then you can still get top rankings without rewriting the urls.

And if you want to use rewrited urls, you can see from the list i have shown above that you have many choices regarding which style and metode you wish your osc shop to have.

[Sean416]

toyicebear, on Jul 23 2005, 05:01 AM, said:

its not considered negative to add keywords in the url

toyicebear, on Jul 23 2005, 05:01 AM, said:

it might be benificial

toyicebear, on Jul 23 2005, 05:01 AM, said:

most seo companies does put it

With the above quotes in mind, why are you still disagreeing with me that it's a good idea to have seo urls right from the get-go?

toyicebear, on Jul 23 2005, 05:01 AM, said:

Mind you this is as mentioned not a one or the other situation, to maximixe the search ranking of your site its important to take into consideration all the factors and not just one.

Never once in this thread did I mention that only having seo urls will get you great results.

I'm going to stop replying to this thread because it seems like you're just out to defend your original statement regardless of what I say.

[xearoth]

i did the whole instlalation and i also have header tags generator installed also, how do i get the product title to show up for each product information page?

[toyicebear]

Sean416, on Jul 23 2005, 06:38 PM, said:

With the above quotes in mind, why are you still disagreeing with me that it's a good idea to have seo urls right from the get-go?
Never once in this thread did I mention that only having seo urls will get you great results.

I'm going to stop replying to this thread because it seems like you're just out to defend your original statement regardless of what I say.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No, its not a defense of the initial statement....its for not confusing newbees....

Why...if you look through this forum you will find a lot of post from people who have installed a seo url contrib and then do not understand why their web site traffic does not sky rocket........

Ie. there seems to be a general misconception that to add seo urls is all they need too do.

I am not advising anyone not to use it and/or implementing it first, and your points about adding it first in regards to spidered pages ranking does have merrit.

I will not dwelve to much more into this subject, since this tread was started mainly just to show the different urls formats for osc available in the contribution section....

And last but not leased, no advice is perfect for all and every situation, there is always individual needs and conditions in play.

So use your own judgment to devise a seo strategy which is adapted to your site and products.

This post has been edited by toyicebear: 25 July 2005 - 04:17 AM

[toyicebear]

xearoth, on Jul 25 2005, 03:30 AM, said:

i did the whole instlalation and i also have header tags generator installed also, how do i get the product title to show up for each product information page?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If the header tags contrib is installed correctly it should show the tittles for the products automatically.

The exeption is Seach Engine Friendly URL by BlueYon/Daniel Kerr.

Where you will have to modify the header tags meta file to adjust for the fact that the products now is shown from index.php and not product_info.php.

Or you can use Meta Tag Controller , which is spesifically made to be used with Seach Engine Friendly URL .

This post has been edited by toyicebear: 25 July 2005 - 04:28 AM

[toyicebear]

More orderly list of formats:

1. Osc Stock urls: www.myshop.com/product_info?products_id=1

2. Osc Sef urls: www.myshop.com/product_info/products_id/1

3. Seach Engine Friendly URL: www.myshop.com/my-product-name/

4. Ultimate SEO URLs: www.myshop.com/my-product-name-p1.html

5. SEF Link Transformer: www.myshop.com/product1/product_info.html

6. Nimmit Sef's: www.myshop.com/my-product-name.html

7. Yasu: www.myshop.com/my+product+name

8. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)- Advanced URLs for osCommerce: www.myshop.com/it-pi-n-my-product-name-pId-1.html

This post has been edited by Johnson: 06 August 2005 - 01:54 PM

[Figster]

Ok, so I can not get SEF to work on site. I have a shared ssl. At least now I know part of the reason why.
Will Ultimate SEO work? And will SEO allow me to use Page Editer, and site map.
( both require SEF TRue) .
In other words, is there a work around for SEF?

Truth is, I agree SEF is not the be-all in search engines, really makes little difference. However Site Map Makes a huge difference! Posting my Articles, and size charts in linkable pages also makes a HUGE difference, those are things I care about.


Thanks
Jim

This post has been edited by Figster: 17 September 2005 - 12:28 PM

[toyicebear]

Figster, on Sep 17 2005, 12:24 PM, said:

Ok, so I can not get SEF to work on site. I have a shared ssl. At least now I know part of the reason why.
Will Ultimate SEO work? And will SEO allow me to use Page Editer, and site map.
( both require SEF TRue) .
In other words, is there a work around for SEF?

Truth is, I agree SEF is not the be-all in search engines, really makes little difference. However Site Map Makes a huge difference! Posting my Articles, and size charts in linkable pages also makes a HUGE difference, those are things I care about.
Thanks
Jim

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi.

1. As far as i know the pages contrib do not require SEF set to true.... (That is if you are talking about Page Editor )

2. Most site map contributions do not require SEF set to True.

The different contributions does interact with other pages/contribs in different ways.

The seo url contributions work for the most part togeter with all the allprods, site map and category box contrib versions....

Sef link transformer, changes product and category links to a new url format and for the other pages on the site it replaces .php with .html the same goes for nimmit sefs.

Ultimate seo url , does give the product and category links a new format, while leaving the rest of the pages of the web site in original format.

That is the latest version has added support to also rewrite the urls for the article manager and for the infopages unlimited contributions too.

This post has been edited by toyicebear: 17 September 2005 - 02:40 PM

[Figster]

toyicebear, on Sep 17 2005, 02:38 PM, said:

Hi.

1. As far as i know the pages contrib do not require SEF set to true.... (That is if you are talking about Page Editor )

2. Most site map contributions do not require SEF set to True.

The different contributions does interact with other pages/contribs in different ways.

The seo url contributions work for the most part togeter with all the allprods, site map and category box contrib versions....

Sef link transformer, changes product and category links to a new url format and for the other pages on the site it replaces .php with .html the same goes for nimmit sefs.

Ultimate seo url , does give the product and category links a new format, while leaving the rest of the pages of the web site in original format.

That is the latest version has added support to also rewrite the urls for the article manager and for the infopages unlimited contributions too.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thank you, you are being very informative. however, Page editer works when I have sef true, doesn't when I have sef false, and sit map.. I just don't know why thats not working yet, but, from following the contribution it definately has to do with sef.
I am one baffeled fellah. I still don't understand why sef works for half my catalog, but, not the rest... I'ts just crazy.
i guess the only real option for me at this time is to install Ultimate SEO and see what happens.
I already have one meta tag generater installed and I am not sure if they will conflict with one another or not.
But I do appreciate the information, you have been very helpful.

[toyicebear]

Hi,

I can not say more about your particular case, without looking at your site and set-up...

But what i can say is that i have set up several sites with both the page editor and different site-map contributions and they have all worked with SEFs set to False, which is not surprising since that is the default osCommerce setting.

This post has been edited by toyicebear: 17 September 2005 - 10:47 PM

[sarafina]

toyicebear, on Sep 17 2005, 10:46 PM, said:

Hi,

I can not say more about your particular case, without looking at your site and set-up...

But what i can say is that i have set up several sites with both the page editor and different site-map contributions and they have all worked with SEFs set to False, which is not surprising since that is the default osCommerce setting.

Evrytime I set FEF to true, my products aren't found when clicked on. Is there something I can do to make my urls SEF?

[toyicebear]

sarafina, on Nov 18 2005, 11:08 AM, said:

Evrytime I set FEF to true, my products aren't found when clicked on. Is there something I can do to make my urls SEF?

Go to the top of this traed, and read every post from the start and you will find your answear....

This post has been edited by toyicebear: 18 December 2005 - 02:04 PM