13 replies to this topic

[WebDev22]

I'm looking for evidence to support osCommerce as a viable shopping cart program with the potential to rank well in search engines. One of our partners is convinced we should quit developing osCommerce stores. His argument is that by the time we've added contributions to maximize SEO potential and secure the site, we've already put 10+ development hours into the project.

[DunWeb]

Brett,

10+ hours into a cart is minimal if you take into account the flexibility and configuration possibilities of OSC. Now, if you are selling your carts for 100.00 each, I can see your partners point but a custom cart is worth the added time and effort and is deserving of a higher cost to the client.

Just my opinion. But I can say that I started my business as a one man show and now have 5 working in my office. OSC counts for probably 60% of sales for us and I have dropped Zenca*t, J*omla and *restashop from our line up because OSC can be configured to do just about everything every client has asked for.


Chris

[WebDev22]

Chris,

Thanks for the post. What I meant was that it takes 10+ hours just to get a new osCommerce site to the same level as some other carts where you don't have to worry about security, SEO-friendly URLs, etc. Some of our stores are on the Yahoo Store platform, which doesn't require all this pre-development work. We always start our stores using Fantastico to install the basic program and customize from there. I suppose if we created some sort of assembly line or system for the first part of development, that could shave off some time up front. It could work something like this:

1. Install osCommerce using Fantastico
2. Install Header Tags SEO
3. Install Ultimate SEO URLs
4. Install Site Monitor
5. Install UPS XML
6. Install Google XML Sitemap
7. Easy Populate
8. Configure admin

Those are automatic for all sites. Since we're not a development company, but are online merchants, we need all the efficiencies we can get.

Brett

[puddlec]

brettg22, on 21 July 2010, 12:28, said:

Chris,

Thanks for the post. What I meant was that it takes 10+ hours just to get a new osCommerce site to the same level as some other carts where you don't have to worry about security, SEO-friendly URLs, etc. Some of our stores are on the Yahoo Store platform, which doesn't require all this pre-development work. We always start our stores using Fantastico to install the basic program and customize from there. I suppose if we created some sort of assembly line or system for the first part of development, that could shave off some time up front. It could work something like this:

1. Install osCommerce using Fantastico
2. Install Header Tags SEO
3. Install Ultimate SEO URLs
4. Install Site Monitor
5. Install UPS XML
6. Install Google XML Sitemap
7. Easy Populate
8. Configure admin

Those are automatic for all sites. Since we're not a development company, but are online merchants, we need all the efficiencies we can get.

Brett

If you install of those on all sites why don't you download oscommerce locally then install each of those addons to it.
that way each time you have to crate a new site instead of installing the same addon's each time you FTP the local version of oscommerce files accross so they are already installed (you would also need to copy the database as well), instead of installing it through Fantastico. as that way the only files you would need to change for each install would be the two configure.php files.
and if the client requires any more additions you just install them over that.

[WebDev22]

puddlec, on 21 July 2010, 14:22, said:

If you install of those on all sites why don't you download oscommerce locally then install each of those addons to it.
that way each time you have to crate a new site instead of installing the same addon's each time you FTP the local version of oscommerce files accross so they are already installed (you would also need to copy the database as well), instead of installing it through Fantastico. as that way the only files you would need to change for each install would be the two configure.php files.
and if the client requires any more additions you just install them over that.

Craig,

That is a great idea. We'd need to determine what all would be unique. We've actually thought about trying to manage multiple osCommerce sites using the same base code but are short in development resources and haven't really been able to pursue it.

[DunWeb]

Brett,

I do exactly what Craig mentioned. I have a 'base' install which I consider to be version 2.2 RC3 and then I only have to add the specifics according to the customers requests.


Chris

[WebDev22]

DunWeb, on 23 July 2010, 13:02, said:

Brett,

I do exactly what Craig mentioned. I have a 'base' install which I consider to be version 2.2 RC3 and then I only have to add the specifics according to the customers requests.


Chris

Are you able to roll out updates (i.e. install new contributions) just one time and roll it out across all your sites?

[Roman_Pod]

Quote

1. Install osCommerce using Fantastico
2. Install Header Tags SEO
3. Install Ultimate SEO URLs
4. Install Site Monitor
5. Install UPS XML
6. Install Google XML Sitemap
7. Easy Populate
8. Configure admin

Do you really think that these add-ons are really necessary for good search engines rankings?
Is it just a suggestion or it is based on real experience?

[FWR Media]

brettg22, on 21 July 2010, 03:11, said:

I'm looking for evidence to support osCommerce as a viable shopping cart program with the potential to rank well in search engines. One of our partners is convinced we should quit developing osCommerce stores. His argument is that by the time we've added contributions to maximize SEO potential and secure the site, we've already put 10+ development hours into the project.

osCommerce is a PHP cart and that in itself is irrelevant to "ranking well" .. what matters is the "human readable" html that is eventually output to the browser and whether that output has been written in such a way as to be attractive to the search engines ( and probably more important the users.

This is dictated by a whole host of factors which I cannot answer here in a timely manner.

There isn't a shopping cart .. anywhere .. that will "rank well" it's a case of crap in crap out.

osCommerce operates a bit like a "starter framework" in that it works out of the box yes .. but .. needs a lot of "addons" to bring it to what most users would call an "exceptable state" for a live shop.

In it's favour there are more free addons available to it than any other cart on the web, literally thousands.

Read some of the SEO posts, there is a wealth of information on these forums. An answer to every question.

In conclusion, of course osCommerce can rank well .. it can rank as well as any html on the web .. but you have to take the time and effort to ensure that your shop is an attractive site to the search engines.

[cannuck1964]

I would add to this list the canonical link contribution as well.

This contribution will lower the duplicate links within the site (well not really lower them but tell google it is a duplicate and google is ok with this).


4. Install Site Monitor
7. Easy Populate
8. Configure admin


these three are not related to SEO,

as well another issue is duplicate content from the index.php and the non use of the index name, ie :

www.domain_name.com/index.php

and

www.domain_name.com

both point to the same page. This is an issue and is easy to fix on Linux server via a two line addition to the htaccess file :

# Eliminates www vs. non-www 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain_name\.com 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain_name.com/$1 [R=permanent,L] 

cheers

[WebDev22]

FWR Media, on 03 August 2010, 19:44, said:

osCommerce operates a bit like a "starter framework" in that it works out of the box yes .. but .. needs a lot of "addons" to bring it to what most users would call an "exceptable state" for a live shop.

In it's favour there are more free addons available to it than any other cart on the web, literally thousands.

Read some of the SEO posts, there is a wealth of information on these forums. An answer to every question.

In conclusion, of course osCommerce can rank well .. it can rank as well as any html on the web .. but you have to take the time and effort to ensure that your shop is an attractive site to the search engines.

That's exactly it. We used to run a bunch of Yahoo Stores, which at least gets you started with the proper architecture. With osCommerce, we've had to react several times to security and optimization issues that were nowhere on our radar. An recent example is our realization that we might have an issue with duplicate content.

[terfex]

brettg22, on 21 July 2010, 12:28, said:

Chris,

Thanks for the post. What I meant was that it takes 10+ hours just to get a new osCommerce site to the same level as some other carts where you don't have to worry about security, SEO-friendly URLs, etc. Some of our stores are on the Yahoo Store platform, which doesn't require all this pre-development work. We always start our stores using Fantastico to install the basic program and customize from there. I suppose if we created some sort of assembly line or system for the first part of development, that could shave off some time up front. It could work something like this:

1. Install osCommerce using Fantastico
2. Install Header Tags SEO
3. Install Ultimate SEO URLs
4. Install Site Monitor
5. Install UPS XML
6. Install Google XML Sitemap
7. Easy Populate
8. Configure admin

Those are automatic for all sites. Since we're not a development company, but are online merchants, we need all the efficiencies we can get.

Brett

Nice list!

[satish]

why not take oscommerce add seo module and other contribs you feel are required and create a set of code that you can reuse elsewhere.



Satish

[datalink]

osCommerce web sites rank pretty well in Google and Yahoo. We have a number of customers @ positions #1 or page #1 of Google for some VERY competitive keywords.

But even 10 hours may not be enough to make a web site (any site, actually) rank well. It takes much more time, requires a plenty of content to be written, external
links to be built, etc. It is not just about the modules, although having a well structured and linked web site is a must have for a good SEO.

Edited by datalink, 09 December 2010, 20:56.