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Lately there seems to be many questions regarding seo, sef urls and meta tags...so as to make the search for info a bit easier for newbees i have added some elemetary info:

1. SEO/SEF Urls

In the osCommerce shop admin let - Use search engine friendly urls (In development) - be set to "false"

(Setting them to true might give you the dreaded error message: Error! Unable to determine the page link! )

If you want to change the url format , use on of the seo/sef urls contributions.

The most used one, which also has easy install and work together with most other contributions is: Ultimate Seo Urls

For other alternatives look here...

2. Meta Tags

Standard osCommerce 2.2 does not have any meta tags solution so you will have to install one from the contributions section.

The 2 most used ones are, Header Tags Controller and cDynamic Meta Tags.

There is also this one, header tags for novices , which is said to be an easy install. (Have not tested it personally, so i can not give any pros and cons on this one)

For more info and more alternatives look here....

3. Site Map

4. All Products Page

5. Google XML Sitemaps

6. Google Base/Froogle feeds

7. Go into your shops admin, configuration>>sessions, and set Prevent Spider Sessions to "True"

8. Download and use this contrib, Updated spiders.txt

Hello All,
Does anyone know the reason why (having installed Ultimate SEO version 2.1d) that no internal product links are working on my site (400 error). Then, when I disable SEOs in my admin control panel, all's well again?
My Admin directory has a .htaccess file in it but my Admin directory is not inside the catalog directory, so I have uploaded the .htaccess that came with the Ultimate SEO install to my catalog directory. Could that be the problem?
I read the comments in the .htaccess about configuring Apache. When I stopped crying, I decided to ignore the advice to mess with something else I don't understand in case I broke that as well.
Any advice, patronising or otherwise, much appreciated.
Thanks,
Paul

The common reason for such a failure is that the path in the .htaccess file is not set correctly. Look at the RewriteBase line. If your shop is in the store directory, for example, it should be RewriteBase /store/.

Jack

Thanks Jack but The .htaccess file is saved to the catalog directory and rewritebase is set to /catalog/ on the .htaccess I have loaded. So that doesn't look likely, unless it's part of a bigger problem ?!

I have sent a text copy of the .htaccess file to my hosting company and they say all is as it should be from the Apache point of view.

Is there another switch I haven’t thrown per chance?

These are the URLs thrown up with SEO URLs OFF:

http://mydomain//catalog/index.php/cPath/3...0db5a9dee7e0c58

All works well and the Category ‘Expressions’ is accessed.

SEO URLs ON:

http://mydomain//catalog/expressions-c32.h...aa4df02b9c83698

(IE Browser error HTTP 400)

I’ve tried uncommenting the Fix certain PHP values – same problem.

Any suggestions muchly appreciated

Paul

I'm trying to run Ultimate SEO URLs, but having a spot of bother - so thought I'd put more products on. But now I'm asked for the product's SEO URL when creating a new product.

If the product is eg. dog and it's in the category pets and my domain is http://www.furryfriends.com do I need to enter: http://www.furryfriends.com/pets/dog as the URL ?

Thanks All

no, just the product name/name you want to show in the url

if you want the url to be the same as the product name you type noting in the product seo url

i read with interest toyicebear's comments on seo in a few threads. will u recommend ultimate seo or seo-g?

thanks

Well they are both good, so you wont go wrong with eighter of them.

Seo-G has the advantage of being supported on this forum though, aswell as giving you some nifty options for making unike urls.

Hi, toyicebear, thanks for ur summary here. I have one more question maybe others encounter when submit to serach engine. Most of us will install the chart in a subdirectory catalog instead of root. But the search engine will collect the robot.txt in root directory, the second, google ect. need to know the root of the site, these are in a mess if it's in catalog. So what should we do to avoid these? Move OSC to root or ...? Appreciate your further help:)

1. move the store to the root....

or

2. make an intro page in the root with relevant links to the shop and its content....

For solution 2, You mean wherever I put the shop, web server root to ./catalog, I should submit the site to search engine only the domain, not in style like domain/catalog? The sitemap are code file list in ./catalog/include?

I got it? Thanks.

submit the main domain, and eighter have your shop in the root or make an entry page with links to all the important part of your shop.

I am having trouble installing the C dynamic meta tags. I am at step 3 and when I replace the code with the code suggested, I get a blank page in the index.php. However, I am curious if the reason for that is because I haven't done the following:
Run the .SQL file, in which I'm not to sure how to follow that and configure it. Could you pleae provide some guidance?

INSERT INTO `configuration` VALUES (190, 'Store Description', 'STORE_DESCRIPT', 'The Next Level Of osCommerce', 'Place your sites meta description here, for use with dynamic meta-tags<br>', 1, 40, NULL, '2003-12-05 05:01:41', NULL,'tep_cfg_textarea(');
INSERT INTO `configuration` VALUES (191, 'Store Index Description', 'STORE_METDEX', 'Productivity Sold Here', 'Place a seperate \r\nindex page meta description here, for use with dynamic meta-tags<br>', 1, 41, NULL, '2003-12-05 05:01:41', NULL,'tep_cfg_textarea(');
INSERT INTO `configuration` VALUES (192, 'Store Key Words', 'STORE_KEYWORD', 'ecommerce, oscommerce, shopping cart', 'Place your sites meta key words here, for use with dynamic meta-tags<br>', 1, 42, NULL, '2003-12-05 05:01:41', NULL,'tep_cfg_textarea(');

where to place all this or what portions of it have me at a loss.

Lastly, I'm not to sure about the last step

<H3 class=install>STEP 5 - Configure basic parameters</H3>

Set settings which are located in includes/languages/english/meta_tags.php

How to place the settings.

Thanks for any help provided.

Joe

1. roll back your changes.
2. download c-dynamic meta tags version 1.4
3. follow the install for c-dynamic meta tags 1.4

There are two install instructions and not sure which to install. cDynamic Meta Tags v1.4 for osCommerce-MS2 or cDynamic Meta Tags v1.2 for CRE. When I get to step three of the first one and replace <title><?php echo TITLE; ?></title> with
<?php
# cDynamic Meta Tags
/*<title><?php echo TITLE; ?>*/
require(DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'meta_tags.php');
#
?>

my index page goes blank. When I go to view source, all the code is missing except for a few lines at the top which are as follows:

<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html dir="LTR" lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

so I roll back those actions.

You can view my store at www.creativewebsolutions.net/shop/index.php

Thanks

Joe

quick set-up...

1. use the instructions for osCommerce MS2.2

2. Upload the contribution files from the included uploads folder. (also at first do not edit the language meta file)

3. to make it simple.

in index.php (and anyother files where you want meta info)

replace:



with



Then when all is working..proceed to do the rest of the install and edit the language meta files.

I followed the steps and replaced the code with the one you gave. Please view the index at www.creativewebsolutions.net/shop/index.php. When I changed the code like you directed the index page went blank and the code in view source is like the other. Below is the code in my index page up to the first body tag. Maybe I am putting it in the wrong index.php. I am putting it in shop/index.php. Should I be making the change in another index file in another folder?

<?php
/*
$Id: index.php,v 1.1 2003/06/11 17:37:59 hpdl Exp $

osCommerce, Open Source E-Commerce Solutions
http://www.oscommerce.com

Copyright © 2003 osCommerce

Released under the GNU General Public License
*/

require('includes/application_top.php');

// the following cPath references come from application_top.php
$category_depth = 'top';
if (isset($cPath) && tep_not_null($cPath)) {
$categories_products_query = tep_db_query("select count(*) as total from " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_TO_CATEGORIES . " where categories_id = '" . (int)$current_category_id . "'");
$cateqories_products = tep_db_fetch_array($categories_products_query);
if ($cateqories_products['total'] > 0) {
$category_depth = 'products'; // display products
} else {
$category_parent_query = tep_db_query("select count(*) as total from " . TABLE_CATEGORIES . " where parent_id = '" . (int)$current_category_id . "'");
$category_parent = tep_db_fetch_array($category_parent_query);
if ($category_parent['total'] > 0) {
$category_depth = 'nested'; // navigate through the categories
} else {
$category_depth = 'products'; // category has no products, but display the 'no products' message
}
}
}

require(DIR_WS_LANGUAGES . $language . '/' . FILENAME_DEFAULT);
?>
<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html <?php echo HTML_PARAMS; ?>>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=<?php echo CHARSET; ?>">
<?php require(DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'meta_tags.php'); ?>
<base href="<?php echo (($request_type == 'SSL') ? HTTPS_SERVER : HTTP_SERVER) . DIR_WS_CATALOG; ?>">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheet.css">
</head>
<body >

Have you uploaded all the contribution files to the relevant folders before trying to add the code to your index file?


If all else fails, use this one instead: Easy Meta Tags

Thanks, I decided to use the Easy Meta Tags anyway. I followed the steps as was directed in the contrib file. Didn't work for me and didn't want to spend the time trying to figure it out.

Joe