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Open discussion on SEO


burt

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Also, request to all shop-owners. it doesn't matter that you don't know the correct words or terminology for "search engines" or "code". If you want to chip in and simply explain what you think could be made better in the basic oscommerce (with regards to search engine optimisation), no-one is going to laugh at you or tell you your talking rubbish. Your point of view will help to determine what happens next.

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Also, request to all shop-owners. it doesn't matter that you don't know the correct words or terminology for "search engines" or "code". If you want to chip in and simply explain what you think could be made better in the basic oscommerce (with regards to search engine optimisation), no-one is going to laugh at you or tell you your talking rubbish. Your point of view will help to determine what happens next.

 

Top op my head i'm thinking bulid in function for internal linking that carries the session id.

Will brainstorm it a bit more.

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@@kvadre

If you're talking about embedding links in product descriptions, I have a module that takes care of that, as well as some basic HTML cleanup. I'm willing to donate that to the cause, but there is a caveat: it needs some more testing and improvements. I'm not satisfied that it works correctly in all cases, and it does seem to have problems with Windows line endings in pasted text.

 

Let me know if you want a copy.

 

Regards

Jim

See my profile for a list of my addons and ways to get support.

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@@burt

 

I've been busy doing "other stuff", so where we at on this?

 

Adding:

- title & meta description for

-- products

-- manufacturers

-- categories

-- pages (eg shipping.php etc)

 

Adding:

- description for

-- manufacturers

-- categories

 

Adding:

- better facebook module

- better twitter module (twitter cards)

 

Adding:

- some system for viewing where people come from

-- I still think Google Analytics is the correct tool for this

- Google Adwords Conversion header_tag

 

Changes/Updates:

- canonical header_tag does not work in all cases

-- I have not checked this out, so cannot confirm at this point

 

If we do look at this bunch first then look at the other things at some point in the near future...

 

Hi Gary

 

big list of things to do.....was wondering if you were planning to add a method for SEO url's that was flexible enough to cover everyone's preferences/needs? ie: with choice over url path structure, and how multilingual urls are built, etc? As we know there are currently various ways of dealing with SEO urls in the current addons that differ a lot from one another.

 

Is it possible to add this kind of thing into the base, or would it have to stay an addon?

 

 

 

Hope I made myself clear and sorry if I said some stupidities (am just a shop owner).

~ Don't mistake my kindness for weakness ~

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Very interesting link, thanks Gary, it went straight into my bookmarks :) Will have to re-read it carefully and in depth though.

 

 

 

 

Like Steve, I too am looking at doing some further/better SEO work on my site, and one thing I cannot do at present is fix the missing alt tags for multiple images. Searching the forums I read that the issue lies with the bxGallery, but that doesn't help me fix it. :blush:

 

Hi isabella

 

You can do this directly in the product management page, with description, price and product image, all in BDD. (may be another idea). You're right, it is very important for seo, especially for specific shops like yours (very nice).

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I've been busy doing "other stuff", so where we at on this?

 

Adding:

- title & meta description for

-- products

-- manufacturers

-- categories

-- pages (eg shipping.php etc)

 

Adding:

- description for

-- manufacturers

-- categories

 

Changes/Updates:

- canonical header_tag does not work in all cases

-- I have not checked this out, so cannot confirm at this point

 

If we do look at this bunch first then look at the other things at some point in the near future...

 

I made an addon for me corresponds to the points mentioned with good management canonical url.

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@@sembrouille

Hi isabella

 

You can do this directly in the product management page, with description, price and product image, all in BDD. (may be another idea). You're right, it is very important for seo, especially for specific shops like yours (very nice).

 

Hi sembrouille,

 

you mean I can add the alt tags into the the "HTML content (for pop up)" box?

 

thanks for your kind words :)

~ Don't mistake my kindness for weakness ~

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That would not work, using the html input box in the image adder. This is for (eg) embedding youtube videos.

 

In any case, using alt tags for SEO is plainly wrong. It is worse (in my opinion) than keyword stuffing as not only is one adding rubbishy SEO'd text, but is also taking away accessibility from those who need it most.

 

Should one want to use alt tags properly per image, then this would need to be looked at deeper (and someone make the code) as those shops with multi languages would need to do this per language.

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I have just been reading about good seo for ecommerce websites and came across this. As a typical store owner and not a designer I have no real idea of what it is all about, but hopefully someone here will

 

For e-commerce websites there is one more thing you can do to help your products to perform better. Look into Schema.org and make your website compatible.

Schema is a way of labeling products on your website so that Google can “understand” what each bit of information means. You can label manufacturer, product image, price, description etc…

This is a great opportunity to stand out from the competition, especially since correctly labelled products can have enhanced listings when they do show up in search results. Your products may start showing up with product information shown and even with a thumbnail picture.

 

Would it be possible to incorperate something in relation to this into the core code.

REMEMBER BACKUP, BACKUP AND BACKUP

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@@14steve14

@@14steve14 - already done in 2.3.3

 

That is incorrect, rich snippets are NOT incorporated into 2.3.3

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I didnt think that I hade seen anything to do with this in the core standard oscommerce files, thats why I mentioned it. At least I am not going mad and missing somethuing that was in front of my face. maybe gary meant that it was already coded and planned in the next release.

REMEMBER BACKUP, BACKUP AND BACKUP

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In any case, using alt tags for SEO is plainly wrong. It is worse (in my opinion) than keyword stuffing as not only is one adding rubbishy SEO'd text, but is also taking away accessibility from those who need it most.

 

The proper usage of "alt" attributes (not "tags") is to provide a text replacement for non-trivial graphics* for those who cannot see the images. This would include blind users with a screen reader, users with graphics turned off for speed (e.g., Lynx browser), and search engine spiders. "alt" text should be a short, concise entry appropriately describing the graphic (e.g., an American flag could have alt="Made in USA" or alt="US flag" or, for "this is what the US flag looks like:", alt="7 red and 6 white horizontal stripes, with a rectangular blue field in the upper left and one 5-point star for each of the 50 states"). If you want to see some text pop up ("tooltip") when you hover over the image (or any particular element), you should add a "title" attribute. Note that older versions of IE will use "alt" text as a tooltip if no "title" is provided (this is an error). Search engine spiders will read and process both alt and title attributes, so be truthful in your text selection and don't use it to do "black hat" keyword stuffing. I don't know how much weight is given to alt and title text compared to in-line text, or if the penalties for keyword stuffing are different.

 

* "trivial" graphics with alt="" would include fancy list bullets, fancy dividers, rounded box corners, shadow effects, etc. that are <img>s. Anything else should have an "alt" descriptive text.

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@@MrPhil

exactly. Using Alt tags for SEoptimisation is plainly incorrect.

 

@@14steve14

@@toyicebear

I should have been more clear:

https://github.com/haraldpdl/oscommerce2/blob/master/catalog/product_info.php

 

Thats not included in 2.3.3 , so i guess its meant for 2.3.4

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  • 2 weeks later...

Love this topic, since I live this topic!!! Since SEO as much about about your competition, as Google, there are rarely easy answers when it comes to SEO. The thing about SEO is that it is very simple to "reverse engineer" the techniques of just about any website. I could sit here and list all of the things I would do first, but it wouldn't amount to an "SEO for dummies" type document. The best SEO people I have meet are the result of the trial-and-errors they have done, very rarely does a rookie really get it.

 

I have been doing SEO for many years, and the most successful sites I have worked on were a result of a true understanding of the business that is being marketed to. Only by immersing yourself into the business and understanding their business model, can you start to understand the business enough to actual choose valuable keywords and write quality Meta content.

 

Buyer Persona; this is one of the biggest keys to understand the target demographic and writing content and meta that will get clicks and quality visitor behavior. Find a standard questionnaire to use, it is easy to find one from a large company online and tweak for your use.

 

I always say that SEO is part "art" and part "science." Without both parts, you cannot properly market a site. The science comes from doing the due diligence on your research, the art comes from the actual selection of the targeted keywords and demographics. Once your keywords have been selected, it goes back to being science; Experimentation, organized strategies, and patterns for repetition. I always recommend a Development Site, and if possible Ultimate SEO with Header Tags. Unfortunately the tags don't always work without some extra tweaking of the permissions. Use the Dev-Site and a third-party paid system for crawling on the dev-site; I use seoMoz, but only because I am used to it. Try lots of things and crawl it with your chosen system, using the dev site before every trying it on the live site.

 

Link building is also very important, so being a part of many SEO communities is important for quality link exchanges. It just takes time, and too many links too quickly is bad for your site. Buying links from "Fiverr" is not recommended...LOL.

 

Don't try to optimize you entire site instantly, take your time and create a reusable strategy that you can teach to a monkey to repeat. Once your strategy is good, create live spreadsheets or use a project management system to list and track your optimization of the pages. Once you finish the list, start again at the top and do a content refresh and additional improvements on the pages. Focus the bulk of your time on your main keywords, plus work in some new pages and keywords each month.

 

Canonical Tags----learn them and use them, always!!!

 

Don't spend as much time on individual products, until the categories and sub-categories are very well optimized; category pages are generally getting the bulk of the traffic and a well configured osCommerce website will almost always rank well from the SEO addons for individual products. This relies on properly configuring the SEO modules and addons correctly for building out the pages, URL, and Meta...once again try on a dev site first.

 

I would always help out any way I can with SEO questions in the osCommerce community. Please PM me or email me(matt@@atwoodz.com) if you have a specific questions about SEO or optimization. I also write on-page content, so I can give feedback if needed for on-page content; it is always tricky to sound good AND support keywords. I would prefer the requests to come from community sponsors and partners, but I will try to help with anyone who needs it. Thanks!

 

Matt D.

Atwoodz.com

Atwoodz

osCommerce Experts

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Thanks for the offer of PM/email Matt - this thread is for an open discussion on the merits of SEO, and what can be done in osCommerce to enable best practice.

 

I'm presently working on the Categories area and will release the code shortly.

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Sorry Gary, I will make sure to keep it open...it was meant more as a gesture to anyone that didn't want to discuss a specific situation. I encourage anyone reading this with a real-life example to submit it and we can openly discuss some solutions.

 

I think content and visitor behavior are the strongest items for Google, once a website's Meta has been properly done. I do content and Meta improvements almost exclusively once I have a site being recognized by Google. Webmaster Tools, Analytics and AW Stats(cPanel) are the systems I live in to help improve the content and visitor behavior. Content on-page placement is almost as important as the content itself, so checking out what Google is caching and making adjustments is important. Great content is only great for SEO if Google is recognizing it, this is often missed on osCommerce websites.

 

Time, Patience, and Planning.....if you don't have all three, then SEO is likely not the answer. If you like instant results and you like to change things a lot, try Adwords and a big budget for them. For long term relationships and cost-effective, targeted traffic, nothing beats organic right now.

 

You did the hard work fixing or building their site; the earning potential of SEO work done properly far out ways the hourly rate you can get for most development jobs. For business owners, learning SEO and doing your own content and meta is the most cost-effective traffic you can get; but you must have the time to look at your stats and make educated changes to improve visitor behavior.

 

Thanks, Have a great weekend!

Atwoodz

osCommerce Experts

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