Contributions

Now that all the typos have been worked out of the documentation, this is probably one of the better SEO contributions out there. At the same time, it's one of the most difficult.

As the saying goes, "you get out - what you put in".

Common SEO Problems:
First, do a quick site search in Google.
site:yoursite.com
http://www.google.com/

You'll probably notice a few of your product pages with the "same title". This is a common osCommerce issue. You need custom Title, Meta Description, & Meta Keywords based on your categories and products. This will help theme the site and drive traffic. This is probably the most common issue that I've seen with osCommerce. Search the contributions for help with this Title/META tag issue.

Second, you might notice an osCsid name/value pair in most of your links on your homepage. This is a session id variable (osCsid) that osCommerce tries to pass thru the Url to maintain state (Shopping Cart- Session ID). This is not necessary if you require (or "force") a session "cookie" to be used instead. Most "robots" will not crawl URLs with these long session ID strings in them. So, when GoogleBot visits your site - it just leaves. Remove the session IDs from the URLs and you'll see a big difference.

Custom URLs are also a nice touch as they can reduce the directory levels in the URL and load it with relevant keywords. This isn't as effective as it used to be, but still has an effect in the search engines rankings, IMHO. This is what this contribution is all about...

Cheers,
Jeff Walters

**** osCommerce Admin --- PLEASE clean up the silly comments. ****

This contribution has been updated with all errors/typos corrected. It is also a complete contribution, yet ... unfortunately... it is not an easy installation and requires some thought. This is not intended and probably never will be a line by line search and replace contribution.

If you are looking for a line by SEO URL's contribution, please see my other SEO contribution: SEO URL's for osCommerce.

If you are having problems with this contribution, please feel free to contact me. I'll help out when I can find the time.

Enjoy,
Jeff Walters

Update: Another '] type found in search and replace section.

This is an update to the previous written article on advanced SEO URL's for osCommerce. There were two places in the code sniblets where unwanted repeats occured; such as '] '] '] ']. This was probably introduced accidentally with a global replacement. I appologize for the typos.

Please, don't hesitate to email me if you find any other typos in the document. Cheers!

Coming soon... I'm working on a custom URLs feature that can be integrated into the Admin section. This future mod will allow competely custom URLs for each product (language) and category.

This modification is not for the beginner. If you are not already familiar with Apache Mod ReWrites, PHP/MySQL programming and osCommerce you should probably stop here. This is not a search and replace, line by line tutorial. Rather this is an explanation with code sniblets that can help you get the job done.

If you are looking for a way to automatically customize your osCommerce category and product URLs, then keep reading. This tutorial will show you how to automatically include your category names and product names directly into your URLs! Including search phrases in your URLs has been a known search engine ranking factor for some time now. While some search engines weigh it heavier than others, it has been proven to help rankings.