5 replies to this topic

[celluloidsnake]

Hi there,

Currently I run a site that does product dumps from wholesalers on the 2 weekly basis to keep the correct stock by them. I ship my own products, but also use dropshippers and its vital that I only ever have on the site what they have in stock, hence the product dump.

Every 2 weeks we delete all products from these suppliers and then readd what they have in. It might be that a product they had 2 weeks ago is taken down and then readded.

The problem we will come up against is the changing URL for each product. There is no effective way of ensuring that we use the same product ID everytime that that products are taken down and the latest product base is added. This means that the URL for any product will keep changing. Disasrterous for the SEO of single products.

One way I have throught would get round this would be to use one of the SEO friendly URL packages. The thing is that some of them still use a product id in the URL, others don't, some get a good write up and others get slagged off by SEO guys. I am lost in what to do here.

My requirements are as such.

1. I need the product ID left off the URL and for it only to use the product name, giving the exact same URL when the products are uploaded

This...........

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

And not this.......

www.myshop.com/category-name/product-name/cPath/1/product_info/products_id/1

2. I need the sitemap to display the SEO friendly URLs

3. No nasty side effects like this.........

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2796

SEO Warning


This contribution allows all server errors(404 and others) to only return to the content of the homepage of your site and using the same url that the error happen on. In the sense of SEO this is very bad.

I have went into this contribution pretty deep and finally after days of trying to find a solution to it I have came a point where I know there isn't a solution.
Well, that is there isn't one for this contribution.
I just made a bad choice in assuming that the previous programmers knew better than to allow it to work this way.

What does this mean?
Well, I'll tell you...

Your index.php page will be used for every wrong url that is accessed by search engines
This wrong url is kept in the address bar and the content of index.php used
This means that you will have many many duplicate content pages.

This contribution takes a 404 return code and changes it into a 200 return code. Search engines will think that this no existent page is a good page.

A person could type anything they want to get your site and showing the front page

domain.com/porn
domain.com/porn.html
domain.com/anything_here/more_stuff


This contribution was a waste of my time to try to update and make work.
In the end is was very SEO unfriendly if a site owner has to deal with a duplicate content penalty.
A competitor could easily submit your site to directories with false title, description and place an obscene url with it that validates and have your site related to things that your site has nothing to do with.


I suggest you go with Ultimate SEO URLs at http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/2823
The download from member "FWR Media" works just fine with osCommerce 2.2RC2a.
It allows the errors that are supposed to happen naturally.
The developer made the scripting to work with the .htaccess file the way it should have been used.

I am totally lost in which one to choose and would love some advise on this.

James

[celluloidsnake]

Someone must know about this.

[toyicebear]

click on seo/sef urls for your shop in my signature

[blackwater]

Quote

Every 2 weeks we delete all products from these suppliers and then readd what they have in. It might be that a product they had 2 weeks ago is taken down and then readded.

The problem we will come up against is the changing URL for each product. There is no effective way of ensuring that we use the same product ID everytime that that products are taken down and the latest product base is added. This means that the URL for any product will keep changing. Disasrterous for the SEO of single products.

Instead of deleting all products you could change them all to inactive; this will keep the product ID.

If you use Easy Populate to add/update your products, ensure that the "product_model" is unique in the incoming data and the database.

The "product_model" field is not unique in the database so you might consider changing that.

Easy populate updates using the "product_model" field to find the record, so if it exists, the update will be done and the status set to "active" if set in your csv.

An issue you might have is if the supplier starts using a product_model previously used for one product and then for another.

[FWR Media]

celluloidsnake, on 19 July 2010, 07:56, said:

I need the product ID left off the URL

James

You can forget the original Ultimate Seo Urls by Chemo .. you can also forget my Ultimate Seo Urls 5.

Basically my thoughts on this are ANY seo url whether for a product or a category or a manufacturer ( or whatever ) MUST have a unique id that refers to an auto incremented value in the database .. this is the only way it can possibly be 100% reliable.

Having said the above I understand your issue and the only addon I can think of which may help is SEO-G, I have to confess that I have never so much as glanced at it but seem to remember that it relies on text strings as opposed to a unique id.

[blackwater]

Quote

Basically my thoughts on this are ANY seo url whether for a product or a category or a manufacturer ( or whatever ) MUST have a unique id that refers to an auto incremented value in the database .. this is the only way it can possibly be 100% reliable.

I would agree that it must be unique but it does not have to be auto incremented. The product_model can be alphameric and unique and used for all updates by Easy Populate currently. The product_id will remain in the url , but the problem of product_id changes would have been solved.

In the way osc 2.x is implemented you will not be able avoid the product ID in the url. OSC 3.0 is implemented in the manner you would like by using a separate unique product_keyword in the url and the auto incremented database unique product_id is also used behind the scenes.

Osc 3.0 needs additional work, so i'm not suggesting that you use it.