Need help on a couple of things please???

[Allthingsgifts]

Hi

 

I have a couple of questions!

 

1. Do i need a robots.txt file in order to be ranked in google? I have added the sitemap to google but it says the robots.txt file '404 error not found'?

 

2. Does oscommerce support "htaccess with mod rewrite."

 

This would fix the issue of non search engine friendly urls, such as;

 

http://www.allthingsgifts.co.uk/product_in...products_id/322

 

to

 

http://www.allthingsgifts.co.uk/product-cl...-for-babies.htm

 

3. I have been told by search engine specialists that Oscommerce websites are done in a table format rather than DIVs, which makes it very difficult for robots to find keywords, is this true? Can I work around it?

 

I would be grateful for any help you can give me.

 

Many Thanks

Lianne

[spax]

1. You need a robots.txt to exclude robots from directories/files you don't want indexed.

 

2. osCommerce does - whether your server does is another question.

 

3. Tables per se, are fine for SEO - IMHO. Deeply nested tables are more difficult for robots, which osC has plenty of. DIVs are better but there is a lot of code needing change if you go that route.