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Is OSC ignored by search engines


Jack_mcs

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I've seen posts here that search engines aren't supposed to have trouble with dyanmic sites but that doesn't seem to be the case for me. I've followed all of the tips for optimizing (title tag, meta tags, using h1, external links to me...) but can't even get indexed. I've been open for two months now. Originally I had shop/catalog as part of my url and that did get indexed but I removed it, mainly due to dmoz and google saying they don't like redirects. Now, even though I've been searched by google and other SE's on a regualr basis, I'm still not indexed.

 

I was told by a list I'm on that deals with SEO techniques, that I need to get rid of the dynamic pages since they will prevent me from being listed, at least not listed high. Even googles instructions at google guidleines states they accept a limited number of dynamic pages and those urs's should be kept short.

 

I can't use the search engine safe option, if it even works, since I am on a IIS server and it is for Apache, from what I understand. That means my only other option is to get rid of OSC completely. I'm really happy with OSC but if I can't get listed all of my work on the site is wasted effort.

 

So I'm wondering if there is anyone here that actually has a site that is ranked high and they didn't pay for placement? If so, would you please post your url. Maybe I can see something I am doing wrong or least have proof that it is worth sticking with.

 

Jack

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I have been working with osc for about two months converted a store that already existed to osc and was already listed after checking right now i am not sure how many pages i have listed on google oh i am going to say about 1000. these are all new dyanmic pages i am still optimizing for rank but they are listed in google all over the place.

i just made my title a little more dynamic along with meta tags so they all change according to where you are on my site.

So i will see if the rankings improve.

Its my bet you havent given the search engines enough time you will get listed how well still depends on optimization.

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Jack,

 

Check and see how Google is seeing your page by using this link:

http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php. Check to see if the spiders/bots are getting any errors on your pages.

 

I had a similar problem, it was caused by having the 'prevent spider sessons' option turned on. Since there was no session there was a variable getting a blank for the language rather than the language name, thus causing an error on my pages for Google and other spiders. I went through and made corrections to my code and now I'm getting traffic from the bots. I had this problem because when I'm using a development version of the software, or one of the mid-releases from late last fall.

 

Put a link to your website in your profile, that way when you ask questions people can look at your site.

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Thanks for the reply Sam. Hopefully this is the case. If you go through the posts here dealing with this subject, the general answer is "Yes, it works fine for the search engines." But no proof of those claims is ever given. I would have thought that if the stores using OSC were that successful, at least in the rankings, that their owners would have been eager to show off their handiwork. But since no one has, I wonder if that means there are none?

 

Jack

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Jack,

 

Check and see how Google is seeing your page by using this link: 

http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php.  Check to see if the spiders/bots are getting any errors on your pages.

 

I had a similar problem, it was caused by having the 'prevent spider sessons' option turned on.  Since there was no session there was a variable getting a blank for the language rather than the language name, thus causing an error on my pages for Google and other spiders.  I went through and made corrections to my code and now I'm getting traffic from the bots.  I had this problem because when I'm using a development version of the software, or one of the mid-releases from late last fall. 

 

Put a link to your website in your profile, that way when you ask questions people can look at your site.

Thanks for that link. I tried it and there are no errors although it is seeing a few pages I thought I had disallowed. I have prevent spiders turned on but it doesn't seem to be causing a problem. I added the link to my profile as suggested. Never thought to go back an edit it after creating the site. Thanks for the input.

 

Jack

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Jack,

 

I wouldn't give up that easily. Some things to consider trying:

 

Get more links, Google shows your PR is 0 (but that may be the new indexing going on).

 

Create spider maps to link directly to your products.

 

Create static products pages.

 

Create search engine friendly URLs at the server level (in Linux this is done with the htaccess file, I don't know how to do it on a IIS server)

 

Wait. Getting deep dynamic pages spidered can take a long time.

 

Bob

 

 

... That means my only other option is to get rid of OSC completely.  I'm really happy with OSC but if I can't get listed all of my work on the site is wasted effort....
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I wouldn't give up that easily. Some things to consider trying:

 

Get more links, Google shows your PR is 0 (but that may be the new indexing going on).

That may be. I had a pr of 2 prior to the new indexing but I was never able to get my site indexed after changing the name.
Create spider maps to link directly to your products.
I've never heard of this before. Can you explain what it is and how to do it?
Create static products pages.
Is there a way to do this automatically? I thought about doing it before but I have about 500 products now and prices change fairly regularly so I can't imaging handling this manually.
Create search engine friendly URLs at the server level (in Linux this is done with the htaccess file, I don't know how to do it on a IIS server)
Yeah, htaccess won't work with IIS. There is a mod-rewrite program I ran across that will work with IIS but my host won't support it.
Wait. Getting deep dynamic pages spidered can take a long time.
Maybe I messed up the time by changing my site name (removing the shop/catalog). I appreciate your input and will continue to work on it for now since changing it would take too much time to even consider at this point. Hopefully I will become listed before I am forced to make a move. Thanks. :)

 

Jack

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> That may be. I had a pr of 2 prior to the new indexing but I was never able to get my site indexed after changing the name.

 

You gain PR by getting external links & you get indexed when you have enough PR. External links are the key to getting spidered & indexed by all the major search engines.

 

 

>I've never heard of this before. Can you explain what it is and how to do it?

 

Spider maps are link pages designed for the spiders, they should provide the most direct path possible from your default page to each of your products listings (with fewer than 100 links per page). See my site for more details.

 

 

>Is there a way to do this automatically? I thought about doing it before but I have about 500 products now and prices change fairly regularly so I can't imaging handling this manually.

 

Yes. It's not too hard to write a script to query your database and generate these pages based on your product's description. To keep it simple I suggest writing the script as a stand alone program independent of the osCommerce code.

 

 

>, htaccess won't work with IIS. There is a mod-rewrite program I ran across that will work with IIS but my host won't support it.

 

I'd look for a more flexible host running Apache but that's easy for me to say.

 

 

>Maybe I messed up the time by changing my site name (removing the shop/catalog)

 

 

Changing your site name takes time to be picked up by the search engines. If you had pages indexed on the old site did you redirect to your new site (using a 301 permanent redirect)?

 

If in doubt, get more incoming links.

 

Good Luck,

 

Bob

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I think the fastest way to get listed is links from other sites. I have another domain that is very well listed on google. I put a link to my OSC site on the common footer on that site. I may have just gotten lucky but google spidered my site and it was listed in three days, all of it, even the pop up image pages and a flash movie I use on the front page.

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Go to Google and search for:

 

site:cheapsheetmusic.co.uk cheapsheetmusic

 

This will search just my site for the string cheapsheetmusic, which is on every page on the site.

 

You will get about 22,000 results from my site alone.

 

I reckon that's pretty good going for the number of pages listed.

 

If you search for "cheap sheet music", however, we used to be no. 1 but have now moved to page 5, which is rather annoying. I can't quite figure out how to get back to no. 1. Still, indexing is certainly not a problem. Ranking, however, comes and goes.

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Julie

 

I believe what you are saying. I have only two categories and 17 products. My site lists 236 pages. I looked at your site and you have a lot of products and a lot of categories and sub categories. It's amazing the number of pages OSC can will generate when you consider the review pages and such. What is your total number of products to generate 22,000 pages?

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I have two stores on the one domain name (well, three but one's a testing ground and doesn't count). One has over 3000 products and the other almost 2000 products.

 

I also have a forum on the same domain name, so it is indexing pages from all three sub-sites.

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>You gain PR by getting external links & you get indexed when you have enough PR.

 

Yeah, I know external links are important. Getting them seems to be near impossible though. I keep trying but have only one so far.

 

>Spider maps are link pages designed for the spiders, they should provide the most direct path possible from your default page to each of your products listings (with fewer than 100 links per page). See my site for more details.

 

Oh, a site map. Yeah, I have one already. I tried generating one with your code but unfortunately, as you mention in the faq, it doesn't do dynamic pages. That is the main problem and was the genisis of this post.

 

>Yes. It's not too hard to write a script to query your database and generate these pages based on your product's description. To keep it simple I suggest writing the script as a stand alone program independent of the osCommerce code.

 

My php knowledge is very limited. I can edit code and create some very small sections of code but writing something to access the db is way beyond me at this point unfortunately.

 

>Changing your site name takes time to be picked up by the search engines. If you had pages indexed on the old site did you redirect to your new site (using a 301 permanent redirect)?

 

I left the catalog/shop directory on my site and then added an index.html file that just redirects to the main url.

 

>If in doubt, get more incoming links.

I wish I could.

 

Thanks for all of your help. I truly appreciate it. :)

 

Jack

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I think the fastest way to get listed is links from other sites.  I have another domain that is very well listed on google.  I put a link to my OSC site on the common footer on that site.  I may have just gotten lucky but google spidered my site and it was listed in three days, all of it, even the pop up image pages and a flash movie I use on the front page.

Yeah, every page I have read regarding getting better listings says to increase the number of incoming links to your site. Unfortunately, this takes two and other sites are not cooperating for some reason. I keep sending out requests though.

 

Jack

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One more suggestion. I was having a discussion under tips and tricks about getting unique titles on all your pages.

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=83300

 

Alex there came up with a simple solution that gives you a unique title on all your products pages and I think that helps with search engine placement when someone is searching for a specific product you carry.

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Go to Google and search for:

 

site:cheapsheetmusic.co.uk cheapsheetmusic

 

This will search just my site for the string cheapsheetmusic, which is on every page on the site.

 

You will get about 22,000 results from my site alone.

 

I reckon that's pretty good going for the number of pages listed.

 

If you search for "cheap sheet music", however, we used to be no. 1 but have now moved to page 5, which is rather annoying. I can't quite figure out how to get back to no. 1. Still, indexing is certainly not a problem. Ranking, however, comes and goes.

Thanks for the link Julie. That's great that you have so many links - I can only hope to get half of those one day. But one of the reasons I started this thread was because of search engines not listing sites with dynamic urls. Your site doesn't use dynamic pages (characterized by a ? in the url) so it doesn't apply here. How is it you were able to get rid of those?

 

Jack

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One more suggestion.  I was having a discussion under tips and tricks about getting unique titles on all your pages.

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=83300

 

Alex there came up with a simple solution that gives you a unique title on all your products pages and I think that helps with search engine placement when someone is searching for a specific product you carry.

I appreciate the link Dan. But I use Header Tags controller and it generates unique titles for each page already.

 

Jack

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Actually, I use the header tag controller too, but the solution Alex found was so simple that I thought I'd pass it along.

 

I guess what we need is some kind of an OSC web ring type deal to help each other promote our sites.

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>Yeah, I know external links are important. Getting them seems to be near impossible though. I keep trying but have only one so far.

 

Most of the webmaster forums have link exchange areas where you can swap links with other new sites. It's a start. Also directories in your industry are a good place to try.

 

 

>I tried generating one with your code but unfortunately, as you mention in the faq, it doesn't do dynamic pages.

 

The online spider map creator only handles static pages. I've also written a spider map creator for osCommerce sites (not free). There's a demo of these maps on my site as well.

 

...

 

> I left the catalog/shop directory on my site and then added an index.html file that just redirects to the main url.

 

If you are using a META refresh tag to do this it could be hurting you. A 301 redirect is the most search engine friendly way of handling redirects.

 

 

> Thanks for all of your help. I truly appreciate it. :)

 

 

You are welcome,

 

Bob

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does the header tags controler generat new titles for all pages catagorie sub catagorie or just product pages?

It creates them automatically for the product pages. For other pages that you might add, like About Us, you have to add a few lines of code. On my site it generates titles for all pages except for the product categories themselves. I'm sure there is a way to do this but I haven't spent the time to find it yet.

 

Jack

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Actually, I use the header tag controller too, but the solution Alex found was so simple that I thought I'd pass it along.

 

I guess what we need is some kind of an OSC web ring type deal to help each other promote our sites.

Ahh, I see. Yes, I agree. The solution is quite simple and if I had seen it first I might have chose it over Header Tags. I like your idea of helping others promote sites but don't have a clue as to how to do it.

 

Jack

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Most of the webmaster forums have link exchange areas where you can swap links with other new sites. It's a start. Also directories in your industry are a good place to try.

 

If you are using a META refresh tag to do this it could be hurting you. A 301 redirect is the most search engine friendly way of handling redirects.

 

Thanks for mentioning that forum. I've looked at it before but never noticed the link exchange part. I've already found four sites that sound like they might work as exchange sites.

 

I'll have to talk to my host about the 301 page. I'm allowed to change any page in the 400-500 groups but not 300's for some reason. I did ask them about mod-rewrites software and they said they are just about to add Apache to their service so that should take care of at least one problem.

 

Thanks again. I feel a lot better about my chances of getting listed now. :)

 

Jack

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Go to Google and search for:

 

site:cheapsheetmusic.co.uk cheapsheetmusic

 

This will search just my site for the string cheapsheetmusic, which is on every page on the site.

 

You will get about 22,000 results from my site alone.

 

I reckon that's pretty good going for the number of pages listed.

 

If you search for "cheap sheet music", however, we used to be no. 1 but have now moved to page 5, which is rather annoying. I can't quite figure out how to get back to no. 1. Still, indexing is certainly not a problem. Ranking, however, comes and goes.

Thanks for the link Julie. That's great that you have so many links - I can only hope to get half of those one day. But one of the reasons I started this thread was because of search engines not listing sites with dynamic urls. Your site doesn't use dynamic pages (characterized by a ? in the url) so it doesn't apply here. How is it you were able to get rid of those?

 

Jack

Hmm - I use search engine safe URLs as I was advised to very strongly by a friend.

 

However, everything I have read on here says that Google et al SHOULD be able to index dynamic pages also. Certainly some of the links which point to my site are from forums that have dynamic pages, this one included.

 

Anyone got any concrete examples of dynamic pages which have been indexed to offer up as proof?

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Hmm - I use search engine safe URLs as I was advised to very strongly by a friend.

 

However, everything I have read on here says that Google et al SHOULD be able to index dynamic pages also. Certainly some of the links which point to my site are from forums that have dynamic pages, this one included.

 

Anyone got any concrete examples of dynamic pages which have been indexed to offer up as proof?

Ahh, I see. Search Engine Safe URL's only work for Apache systems and, at the moment, my host uses IIS. Google themselves say that they will index some dynamic pages but there are conditions applied to them. Asking to see sites that use dynamic pages and were listed is how I started this thread. So far, that hasn't happened. But, hopefully, with all of the given suggestions and my host switching to Apache, I will be able to to make a difference. Your site's placement is very encouraging but, unfortunately, seems to prove the point about dynamic pages.

 

Jack

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