Search Engine Optimization for osCommerce [repost]

There are many theories about search engine optimization. The algo used by search engines is a closely guarded secret and nobody knows exactly what it is except the engineers that constructed it...if it were public it would be way to easy to manipulate. Hence, there are only theories and nothing is known for fact. Even though the algo used is a mystery there are solid techniques that will ensure your site obtains top search positioning and stays there no matter if Google, Yahoo, or MSN change their mind on criteria.

#1 - CONTENT, STRUCTURE, VALIDATION - CONTENT IS KING
A product that has a description simply as "I'm good for you. Buy me." will not be terribly popular with customers OR the search engines. Everybody loves content that is unique and adds value to the browsing experience. The more content you give the customers and spiders the more value it will be given. The customers will feel confident to purchase from such an authority site and the search engines will feel confident to send web searchers to you.

Another area that you should pay attention is document structure. A clearly defined document structure makes the page flow better in terms of data organization and consistent tone. You should read up on using the HTML Header tags and how to format them with CSS. A good thing to keep in mind is that H tags should be used but not over-used.

The final step is to validate the HTML code according to W3C recommendations and standards. It is becoming increasingly more important to have cross browser compatible HTML code and may present an extra edge in search engine result placement. Notice I said may have an extra edge...it is a debated topic now but I feel that aside from possible SERP enhancement it's generally a good idea to ensure cross browser operation. Check your server logs and see what browsers your audience is visiting your site with. I'm willing to bet that there are a few you'll recognize but a few that you won't. Having W3C validated code ensures that each views your page the same.

#2 - META CONTENT - TITLE SAYS IT ALL
The most important meta tag for a page is the TITLE. This is what web searchers will see first and is used almost universally. Have you ever seen an osCommerce store that sells widgets having every page indexed come out as "osCommerce"? This adds no value (and may actually subtract) to their index entry. No matter if the web searcher asks for blue widgets or red widgets they will always see the "osCommerce" title and will most likely visit the search result that says "Blue Widgets on Sale" for the title. They have no idea what osCommerce is but do know it is not a Blue Widget.

An excellent contribution that remedies this is Linda McGrath's Header Tag Controller. It will give each page on your store a unique and keyword rich title...which is essential for not only page identification but also first presentation to the potential customer. What sets this contribution separately from others that do the same is the pinpoint accuracy that it affords on a per page basis. The main benefit is also the main drawback...you have to enter the meta information for each product and category by hand. If your store has a significant number of products or categories this can be a very time consuming task but well worth it due to the incredible amount of control (and tweaking) available. This contribution is best used on stores with a small number of prods/cats.

If you have a lot of cats/prods and want a more dynamic solution you should consider Chris LaRocque cDynamic Meta Tags. This contribution accomplishes the same as Linda's but does so completely dynamic...thereby saving countless hours entering data. This is under heavy development by Chris and in the future will no doubt become the preferred rapid deployment contribution for page meta information...especially for large stores. Currently, it dynamically creates the page meta data and has a tremendous amount of flexibility. You can use site name, product name, description, model number, and a few other columns to generate the metas. This added flexibility is great for novice coders since you can change on the fly what is used and presented...some like product name and description whereas others will like product model. IMO, with further development and refinement this should be released in it's next milestone as Ultimate Meta Tags.

#3 - URLs - 10% MORE FOR FREE
It is hypothesized that having keywords in the URL give the search engine resuly placement an extra 10% advantage. That is purely speculation but reflects the generally accepted notion that having keywords in the URL (domain or file) are that important.

There are several flavors of implementing SEO URLs and which one you choose is simple preference.

A popular choice is Daniel Kerr's Search Engine Friendly URL contribution. The benefit is that it presents the catalog in a directory structured manner and mimicks a natural organization. Each URL is characterized by a keyword rich path like "domain.com/CategoryName/ProductName". This contribution is currently still under heavy development but will surely rise to be one of the top SEO URL choices.

Another choice is a contribution that I coded called Ultimate SEO URLs. There are a few marked differences with Daniel's contribution such as using a static file instead of directory structure. The URLs are formed like "domain.com/category-name-c-1.html" or "domain.com/product-name-p-1.html". This has no directory structure but is very close in proximity to the domain root which may help boost the relevancy (hypothesized). Another benefit is that this is currently the only contribution to address the needs of mature stores transitioning from old style parameters to the new SEO URLs. There is a beta release automatic redirect script that will send the proper 301 (moved permanently) headers to signal to the search engine that the old style URL should be replaed by the new SEO URL. After a few months of use all the old URLs should be replaced with the new SEO URLs and not lose any page seniority or rank.

#4 - ALL_PRODUCTS AND SITEMAP - BOTTOMS UP
It should be your goal to satisfy customers...and equally satisfy search engine spiders. Don't wait on them to crawl your site from the top down (start with homepage and find links deeper). Give them a spider buffet -> all_products and sitemap pages.

This gives them a handly list of important URLs and will guide them to those parts of the store. I won't go into it much more but here is a thread for further reading: Sitemap or All Products?, Which is better?.

#5 - BACKLINKS - HELP SPIDERS FIND YOUR STORE
Each link a spider finds back to your site will help drive that spider deeper. It is imperative to get the spiders to crawl your site to the greatest depth possible (and preferably completely). Some will view backlinks as a means of accumulating Google PageRank but remember that is a metric used by a single search engine. Other engines use similar technology but may give it other names like page seniority. The most desireable of all backlinks is one from a themed page or one whos content is the same as your website. In the world of eCommece it may be a bit difficuly to get competitors to link to you (and lose customers) so a good alternative is directory submissions. There are countless free submissoin directories and many more paid inclusion directories. It is a very time consuming task to perform a directory submission linking campaign but each one will be a valuable one-way and themed backlink. Here is a thread for more reading and links to great resources: How to increase your spider traffic, Maximize the depth of spider crawls. Visit that thread and bookmark the links...they are great resources and will serve you well. Be sure to send an email to Dan and thank him for the Free Directory List .

Hopefully this thread helps consolidate a lot of information that's been floating around...enjoy!

Bobby

BTW, here's the real story behind Google Page Rank technology.

 

Hey Bobby, this is the thread that I asked you to start on OS commerce, did you author the above to make it clear for the members?

 

That covers it but the order of your 5 points could be interpreted as order of importance. If so I'd disagree with the order.

That aside, that one page tutorial should get any OsC shop high SE visibility.

 

This thread is a report of the one I posted on osC support forum in the new Next Steps / Marketing channel. Harald was so kind as to FINALLY create the channel so we can consolidate information and posts in one place.

As being clear...not sure how much more clear it can get The intent was to spark discussion since the topic of even basic SEO is a foreign language for new store owners. The osC application is spiderable but is far from being search engine friendly. Luckily there are several contributions that are easy to install and make for a truly SEO'd store!

Bobby

 

I didn't write it in order of importance or the backlinks would be at the top

However, I feel it is the best order of implementation...a new store would want to get all the content, metas, URLs, and spider food implemented before getting the first spider to visit the store (most likely through direct submission or back links).

Bobby

 

Bobby what I meant by "clear" is, you are the one that wrote all of this originally?

 

Yes, I authored those posts. Mainly to kickstart the new channel that Harald (osC project leader) added to the forum...and to get people to stop PM'ing me about optimizing their stores

Bobby

 

I joined the forum over there and got some good information on hosting and set up, we have some members here that are members over there also.

I think Miko and a few others, maybe TOPS is active over there.

What is the best way for someone new to play around with a live copy of a store

 

Good to hear Though a shop might initially be worried more about conversion (content) of the few visitors they do get than accumulating IBLs and present crap to streams of traffic. One of those is most important IMO and content is King for conversion, not for ranking.

Very true indeed.

I have to say - since starting my OsC ride in Jan I've come to love it. Still hack away a couple hours a day to make it even better for myself and others where possible. And the next step / marketing discussion is definitely a good one since I have to amdit I was a bit at loss initially as well. It's really good out of the box but still lacks in so many ways. And then there's hundreds of contribs.

Implementing those 5 points is definitely the first next step (after populating the shop).

Schlottke has been kind enough to help me through the inital stages. And your contribs Bobby have helped a great deal as well. Thanks.

 

Install it locally or on your PHP / MySQL enabled host and have a play. Configuration isn;t hard but takes some time to set correctly. Add some products and identify which parts you do and don't like. Then read the post above + start having a look at contributions on the OsCommerce site.

It also helps A LOT to know what the code does. Have a browser open and a PHP IDE at the same time if you're interested in understanding the stuff behind the scenes. Then follow the buying process. Everything makes a lot more sense once you know the file structure and which file does what.

PHP + Mysql skills aren't required per se but you wouldn't be able to create 'your own' shop without it.

 

Good info Bobby. I've been using similar principles for about a year now on some OSC sites and doing really well with position.

I use NIMMIT, Header Tags Controler and the Categories Description (and a few other) contributions.

Basic overall principles:

Match your product name / keyword(s) to:

a) URL (search engine friendly path/filename)
b) Page Title
c) Meta Keywords
d) Meta Description
d) H1 tag
e) Content
f) alt tags
g) image name (if possible)

Your article looks good. Should be a good primer for OSC users. Will have to check out the new Kerr SEF contribution.

 

OK can someone write me a synopsis for my blog

 

One thing to keep in mind if using the SEF contribution is that it is best used on a new store that does NOT have pages already indexed. The reason is that the contribution does not have an automatic system for sending 301 headers for the old (default) URLs.

So, if you have product_info.php?products_id=XX indexed by the search engine and the new URL is CategoryName/ProductName/ it will be indexed again...possibly being tagged as duplicate content.

As you know, when pages are deemed as dup content they are not dropped...it's just that the one with more seniority will stay on top and the rest are pushed so far down it'll never be found. In the case of duplicate product pages the one you want on top is the new SEO version...not the old default parameter driven URL.

To my knowledge, the only SEO URL contribution that addresses the needs of mature stores is Ultimate SEO URLs. There is an addon redirect script that will automatically detect old parameter driven URLs and will send a 301 header to the new SEO URL. Once again, this is not a concern for new stores as it will not have been spidered yet...but if your store has been live you need to keep in mind that all those product pages have some amount of seniority. You don't want to sacrifice that just to install an SEO URLs contribution...

Just my 2 cents...

Bobby

 

Yea, it was kind of a pain on the 301's. I wrote a custom redirects.php script that I had to include in the header, that checked whether the user agent was one of a select few search engines (yahoo, google, msn) and if so, then check for the products_id and redirect to the new urls.

It was a hassle, for sure. But we had some good PR and quite a few indexed pages and I wanted to preserve that. Within a month or two of doing the changes, we started seeing some really good results in google. Our traffic has increased from 3-4k hits per month to 40k+ hits per month in the past eight months. And we've not done a thing towards linking. Just doing the things you describe above.

I'll be sure and check out the new SEF contributions.

 

Bobby -added - and others of course,

To do with SEOing OsC shops I posted this:

http://forums.oscommerce.com/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=142257

It didn't get many expert replies because it's probably beyond people's knowledge / interest.

I'd like to avoid Google having (knowing of) two instances of my shop's index and figured the nicest way would be to ditch index.php because most people naturally link to the domain instead of domain.com/index.php. I can see where it might go wrong code-wise but what do you think about the issue in general? About canonical roots and duplicates.

As of right now, neither the index.php nor the top level domain show in a site: search whilst 113 other pages do.

 

In includes/functions/html_output.php find this code:

    if (!tep_not_null($page)) {
      die('</td></tr></table></td></tr></table><br><br><font color="#ff0000"><b>Error!</b></font><br><br><b>Unable to determine the page link!<br><br>');
    }

Code (markup):

...just under add this code:

	if ($page == '/') $page = '';

Code (markup):

Then, change FILENAME_INDEX to '/'. Alll done and all osCsid's will still propogate. As a side note, I incorporate that feature in the Ultimate SEO URLs contribution since that's what I use on my development server. It works for all contributions and is completely compatible with osC tep API.

Give me something harder next time

Bobby

 

LOL

I've (obviously) got your Ultimate SEO installed but I guess this is optional. Will have a look at the code.

Thanks for changing my normally 70 hours a week into 90 this week