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osCommerce

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Open discussion on SEO


burt

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Not too sure if it is related to SEO, but something oscommerce could do with is short descriptions. These can be on the categories, manufacturers and product listing pages, not the product info pages. Something could also be added to the modules listings like whats new, specials and others like that.

 

Just a thought, it may not be what is really meant by SEO, but having keywords and the like in these places cannot hurt, can they.

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If I understand @@14steve14 suggestion correctly it would be nice to have the descriptions added to the product listing pages too....as it stands now (with the help of the category descriptions add-on) you can add them to categories so if you are selling fruit for example you can add a description to the fruit category but if you have sub-categories for say apples, oranges etc. you can't add descriptions to those since clicking on them brings up the product listing...for my purposes I created a hack to get that done but it would nice have this in the code base.

 

@@burt - does the commit you referenced include the product listing pages?

 

Dan

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A category or sub category simply includes the product listing module, the product listing module has no relevance here. It's the elephant in the room.

@@burt

I'm still running on RC2.2 so maybe the way it works changed in 2.3 or will change in 2.4. In 2.2 when you click on the final or last sub-category the product listing is displayed so getting the category description on that page, along with the list of products, is helpful for SEO purposes. Maybe as you say the elephant is not longer in the room in later versions.

 

Dan

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You are over-analysing the situation. Please forget the "product listing", this has NO relevance to this topic at all, in any way shape or form in terms of "description". ;)

 

Even in 2.2 it had no relevance. Bear in mind that whatever you installed for category descriptions did not ever work properly if it did not show in ALL cats, subcats, subsubcats and so on. In coder terms; a "pos".

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Just want to make sure it shows up on the right page @@burt. It sounds like you're saying it does so lets just leave it at that.

 

Dan

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Request to all shop-owners. it doesn't matter that you don't know the correct words or terminology for "search engines" or "code". Please chip in and explain what you think could be made better in the basic oscommerce (with regards to search engine optimisation) ... your point of view will help to determine what happens next...

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Meta Keywords.

 

 

So, according to Matt Cutts, Google takes zero notice of meta keywords for their main search.

 

Question: Is it worth having Meta Keywords anyway for other search engines, or should we just say "lets move with the times and forget keywords".

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Request to all shop-owners. it doesn't matter that you don't know the correct words or terminology for "search engines" or "code". Please chip in and explain what you think could be made better in the basic oscommerce (with regards to search engine optimisation) ... your point of view will help to determine what happens next...

 

- There is the XML sitemap...and the sitemap that if visible to humans and helpful to site navigation by the visitor (and crawlers?). For SEO obviously the XML sitemap is a biggie, but what about the other sitemap. If it makes the site more crawlable then how about that?

 

- What about h1 h2 h3 tags. More than one h1 per page is apparently verbotten but the engines encourage use of h2s and so on? If that's valid how about that? I note that "What's New" is h2.

 

For example Gary, I took the the category description core code you've done on GitHub and incorporated that on a site I have. I tweaked it a bit to have it show as h2 which a crawler would find more interesting I suppose especially with strategically placed keywords.

 

- Gary on ClubosC you have the "Other products you might like" modification. Seems to me that's not only good for human visitors but it would provide links for the crawlers to dot their thing. Maybe make that modular in that the concept may not appeal to everyone.

I am not a professional webmaster or PHP coder by background or training but I will try to help as best I can.

I remember what it was like when I first started with osC. It can be overwhelming.

However, I strongly recommend considering hiring a professional for extensive site modifications, site cleaning, etc.

There are several good pros here on osCommerce. Look around, you'll figure out who they are.

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Meta Keywords.

 

Question: Is it worth having Meta Keywords anyway for other search engines, or should we just say "lets move with the times and forget keywords".

 

If that's the case and they are not used by any other technology that would improve SEO and they are pointless then dump them. As long as there's no chance Google decides to have a mood swing and throw them back in the mix somehow later on.

I am not a professional webmaster or PHP coder by background or training but I will try to help as best I can.

I remember what it was like when I first started with osC. It can be overwhelming.

However, I strongly recommend considering hiring a professional for extensive site modifications, site cleaning, etc.

There are several good pros here on osCommerce. Look around, you'll figure out who they are.

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Meta Keywords can be dropped from a SEO stand point. BUT because of all the misconception about their importance out there, leaving them out might drive some potential new oscommerce users away.

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looks like you are addressing a lot of these with the core code work that's going on....

I am not a professional webmaster or PHP coder by background or training but I will try to help as best I can.

I remember what it was like when I first started with osC. It can be overwhelming.

However, I strongly recommend considering hiring a professional for extensive site modifications, site cleaning, etc.

There are several good pros here on osCommerce. Look around, you'll figure out who they are.

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Meta keywords have been ignored for a long time by Google (and perhaps other search engines), due to abuse. Supposedly, some lesser search engines still use them. From what I hear, there's no harm in having meta keywords, but there might be a penalty if the tag is used inappropriately (black hat usage). My take would be to go ahead and use meta keywords, but use them properly (just in case there's a penalty for misuse). Just don't expect any major positive impact on your SE rankings by using them.

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I read on the web that social media is getting more important for SEO.

In my mind social media is mostly facebook still (eg in our little country out of about 11 mill, there are 5 million fb accounts and only 250 000 twitter)

Then I find the facebook connect add-on

http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/7577

download the latest pack and see it being hijacked by a loginradius submission (the "social login" add-on).

I visit the facebook developers page, navigated to the web section like here

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/web/

and find out you can do loads of neat stuff to get your webshop into the facebook friends world.

 

Isn't there something more we can do in the oscommerce core with this ?

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Hi,

 

Would suggest the option to add keywords tag limited to 4 - 5 keywords per product would be a nice compromise. ( ie: 25 characters) with a warning

in admin if to many !!

 

A meta tag description limited to 256 characters think for me means max 20 words again with warning again in admin if to many....

 

We used to have a manufactures link when uploading a product why not use for a social media link to take advantage of the changing world directly on the product upload ?

 

Easy Peasey let us have the possibility to add a social media link with each individual product using the manufactures code / link which has

disappeared anyway

 

maybe changing the field to be an input / text description field

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

 

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@@MrPhil @@toyicebear I'm erring towards including keywords. It sounds like they are not presently important to Google, but who is to say that won't change. And they are used by other search engines, apparently, notably Bing.

 

@@bruyndoncx - Facebook OG module for products is coded and committed. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/

The other bits on the page to which you linked are not particularly SEO stuff, but can be looked at another time.

 

@@joli1811 - have you been on the Home Brew :D Could you explain it again "let us have the possibility to add a social media link with each individual product using the manufactures code / link which has

disappeared anyway" - I don't understand for what you asking...

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- There is the XML sitemap...and the sitemap that if visible to humans and helpful to site navigation by the visitor (and crawlers?). For SEO obviously the XML sitemap is a biggie, but what about the other sitemap. If it makes the site more crawlable then how about that?

 

I've never been a fan of sitemaps. What are other peoples take on them ?

 

- What about h1 h2 h3 tags. More than one h1 per page is apparently verbotten but the engines encourage use of h2s and so on? If that's valid how about that? I note that "What's New" is h2.

 

2.3.3 is pretty well set out in terms of h structure. We can easily go through it page by page though in another thread, why not :)

 

For example Gary, I took the the category description core code you've done on GitHub and incorporated that on a site I have. I tweaked it a bit to have it show as h2 which a crawler would find more interesting I suppose especially with strategically placed keywords.

 

Depending on the length of the description, a h2 I think would be incorrect. For me a "h" should be a title, probably not more than 4 or 5 words max.

 

- Gary on ClubosC you have the "Other products you might like" modification. Seems to me that's not only good for human visitors but it would provide links for the crawlers to dot their thing. Maybe make that modular in that the concept may not appeal to everyone.

 

233 goes with the "also purchased" module...

 

I can easily bring some other things into the mix at some point.

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@@MrPhil @@toyicebear I'm erring towards including keywords. It sounds like they are not presently important to Google, but who is to say that won't change. And they are used by other search engines, apparently, notably Bing.

 

 

if that's the case, i'd switch my vote and say keep them

 

it may not just be the keyword factor but one of my shops has improved on bing after some product listing work including modifying the keywords to show category keyword | product keyword

I am not a professional webmaster or PHP coder by background or training but I will try to help as best I can.

I remember what it was like when I first started with osC. It can be overwhelming.

However, I strongly recommend considering hiring a professional for extensive site modifications, site cleaning, etc.

There are several good pros here on osCommerce. Look around, you'll figure out who they are.

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Bing will use keywords only where the keyword is not found anywhere else on the Internet. Everything else it ignores.

 

I personally find keywords very useful. I look for them on every competitor's site I can find. That gives me a target list of keywords to optimize for. Your competitors will thank you for providing this valuable information.

 

Regards

Jim

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Bing will use keywords only where the keyword is not found anywhere else on the Internet. Everything else it ignores.

 

I personally find keywords very useful. I look for them on every competitor's site I can find. That gives me a target list of keywords to optimize for. Your competitors will thank you for providing this valuable information.

 

Regards

Jim

 

Well..geeeez...if that's the case..... :wacko:

I am not a professional webmaster or PHP coder by background or training but I will try to help as best I can.

I remember what it was like when I first started with osC. It can be overwhelming.

However, I strongly recommend considering hiring a professional for extensive site modifications, site cleaning, etc.

There are several good pros here on osCommerce. Look around, you'll figure out who they are.

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