Search Engine Friendly URL's!

[gtroll]

Can we have Search Engine Friendly URL's?
Instead of http://yourdomain.com/demo.php?crn=48&action=show&show_products_mode=cat _click
Url's like http://yourdomain.com/categoryname/ and http://yourdomain.com/categoryname/productname/

Anyone who has built template based sites that use query strings to select content will have at some point hit the problem of indexing (or lack of it) by search engines. (Some) Search engine spiders won't index dynamic sites, as they are worried about getting stuck in a maze of twisty URLs, all alike.


Articles describing techniques to do this:
http://www.promotionbase.com/article/485
http://www.evolt.org/article/comment/17/15049/
http://www.zend.com/zend/spotlight/searchengine.php
Scott Gahres
SEO (Search Engine Optimizer)

[Jamie]

We may be able to offer something like this in the future. The methods vary so much, and would not work for some. I've tried quite a few of them. If we did this, then it would probably be an option you could enable, and specify how you want the links to appear. That way, the cart would work regardless of whether or not you had your site setup to support it.

[gtroll]

[size=12:fc310a80fd][color=blue:fc310a80fd]My reasoning is not that search engines won't index dynamic URL's but they [u:fc310a80fd]will[/u:fc310a80fd] rate pages higher that have a directory based content.

keyword.com will rate higher than name.com/keyword/ and much higher than name.com/nokeyword.html

It follows that Search Engine Friendly php URL's /categoryname/productname
would rate higher than query strings

I what that they thinkis- Why would people name a whole directory to a name that doesn't fit the content? -less likly than the page name.

So it fits thier goal of providing quality links to pertainent information or products.[b:fc310a80fd](and ours too)[/b:fc310a80fd][/color:fc310a80fd][/size:fc310a80fd]

[gtroll]

I figured it out...

[Jamie]

I'm sure we can definitely do this. It is just not a high priority at the moment. We will look into making it an enabled option. We need to get 1.0.8 out, and this feature will not make it into that version. I understand the importance of being search engine friendly, but we have other things we are working on as well, that need to take precedence at the moment.

Once we have it enabled, it would be free of charge in an upcoming version.

[gtroll]

I have found a solution see:
http://www.squirrelcart.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=282

[welshandy]

RE:
>>
I have found a solution see:
http://www.squirrelcart.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=282
<<<

I need to know how this chap has solved this problem as my dynamic pages are not getting indexed, but the topic seems to have moved and can't be displayed. Does anyone know how to get these dynamic pages indexed properly?

[LouDog]

SEO is very important (to me), especially for us that profit from it. Currently I have to create a second static page just to get a decent ranking for each product that I add. I personally would pay double the price of SC if it could relieve this administrative nightmare from me. It would definately reduce my advertising cost... SquirrelCart is still a great, if not the best, PHP/MySQL solution available for the price, but the SquirrelCart team/person really needs to work on SEO. I know it's not a lot, but I have at least a half dozen clients that love this product, but will not move to it because of SEO concerns. I know there have been some recent improvements with adding the ability to easily edit some of the head content, but let's work on friendly/descriptive/SEO freindly URL's.

[LouDog]

Jamie,

Any plans for this in the future?

[Jamie]

Hi LouDog,

We have plans for just about everything in the future. :) I have no idea when we will get to this, but it is definitely coming. The easy way for us to handle this is to add support for mod_rewrite, but that is an Apache only solution. Whatever we do, it's going to need to work on all web servers across the board. We may implement a couple of solutions that you can choose from depending on your webserver. We are working on v2.0 right now, and there will be no additions to it with this subject in mind. We've got a huge number of features to add, and improvements to make. We have to pick and choose them as time permits, and we haven't had time for this one yet.

[LouDog]

OK - Thanks for the response.

[welshandy]

Hi Jamie
Link Anchor text seems to be getting more important with search engines today and especially Google. As a web store that needs to rank highly for my keywords - I would welcome a solution in the future.

I know you are very busy on lots and lots of improvements and can't do everything, so I appreciate if it is not planned for a future release, but if possible Im sure it would benefit the SquirrelCart community.

Many thanks

[welshandy]

Jamie

I just found some interesting code that may or may not be a solution for getting friendly URLs:

http://www.daniweb.com/code/snippet74.html

It claims to work under Apache and IIS server.

Can this be implemented in Squirrelcart?

How would I go about using this code on my store home page?

Please respond as this is important to my store.

Many thanks

[LouDog]

I think if more people from this community respond and post to this topic, then the priority level for this will be raised by the SquirrelCart Staff. This is definitely something SquirrelCart needs to implement. It would be nice to have a place in the admin section of each product to define what we want. Here is a good example; I have a product called Entrox. The most popular search term is entrox.
Instead of having a url like this:
http://www.supphut.com/index.php?crn=62&rn=277&action=show_detail
It should be like this:
http://www.supphut.com/entrox.php
or even this would be acceptable for dynamic reasons:
http://www.supphut.com/index.php?product=entrox

Anyone else have any ideas?

[Jamie]

Hi,

That method is probably one of the better ones. We are not ready to work on this yet. When we do, it may be this approach, but we haven't made any decisions on how we will handle this. The main problem with most search engines is not the dynamic URL, but rather the session ID appearing in the links. Google has no problem indexing most URLs that contain query strings. Try this search:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Asquirrelcart.com

Notice how many of the URLs have query strings?

I would highly recommend you upgrade to v1.5.5 if you haven't already. Prior to that version, if the session ID was not available in the session cookie, it was added to most of the links. Because cookie data can only be read on the page load AFTER it is set, this resulted in the very first page load having session ids in the links, even if cookies were enabled. For search engines, subsequent page loads would also show session IDs in the links because SEs won't pass cookie data. In v1.5.5, even if the session ID needs to be in the links due to lack of cookie support, it will only appear after you perform an action that needs to be remembered. This means that you can browse the entire product catalog, and never see a session ID in a link until you either login or add something to the cart.

[welshandy]

Jamie

Google is big on link anchor text and urls with keywords and for my online store to be successful I need to please google's algorithym anyway I can.

Keywords in Links to a website and internal links with keywords seem to be playing a greater importance these days and it is vital in my business to try and get higher page ranking to potentially gain more visitors and more sales.

For e-commerce stores this issue is big!

[Jamie]

Hi,

I agree. It is definitely coming. Unfortunately, we only have so many hours in the day, and most of them don't involve sleeping! If this were a small issue, it would have been done long ago. I consider this a major concern, and as such we will be dedicating a lot of time to it, once we can finish up v2.0 and get it out.

[LouDog]

I think there are 2 issues to consider. The first one seems to have been resolved in v1.5.5 as Jamie stated. The second is what welshandy is saying; and from my experience, he is correct.

/index.php?product=friendly_name

is going to rank higher than:

/index.php?crn=56&rn=266&action=show_detail

Louie

[welshandy]

Thanks Jamie

I appreciate the demands on your time to develop new functionality and completely understand that everything can't be added immediately.

Keep up the good work!

Andy

[welshandy]

Does anyone know if MSN manages to index squirrelcart pages?

[Jamie]

Yes...they seem to do OK with the query string in the URL:
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=site%3Ademo.squirrelcart.com&FORM=QBRE

For some reason, this same search in Google still shows old information for our demo store. Looks like Google hasn't hit our demo for awhile, although they hit all our other pages almost daily.

[welshandy]

Yep! Looks like they do! ;)

[polargps]

I see that this post is rather old. Have you guys added the "/" url feature yet for Search engine optimization.

Everyone knows that SEO is the #1 priority. Bad rankings = no sales. Or bad rankings = sales + $$$Pay-Per-Click

I guess it's easier to do in a Servlet environment, but you can definitely do it in PHP. 2.0 should definitely have this feature!

Craig :yahoo:

[LouDog]

Just looking for an update. Is this still something the SC team is working on, or at least thinking about?

Louie

[Jamie]

Hi Louie (and others),

We will definitely be adding support for changing the URLs. They will most likely use mod_rewrite (which requires Apache). This is not currently being developed at the moment, but we hope to have it available before the end of the year.

[Randy]

I am definitely interested in being able to optimize the cart. Organic search engine ranking are all my clients can afford and we need all the help we can get. I know these posts are a little old, has there been changes w/ 2.1?:yahoo:

[fisher318]

Hey All, did anyone figure this out yet? The one post was removed or something like that which was rather dissappointing. Yes, search engines are friendlier with dynamic pages these days regardless of query strings containing ?=, however, for other purposes as well, such as being able to intelligently monitor website analytics and customer behavior while on the website, it is much easier to follow a page that says www.mysite.com/myproduct then ?=crn204 or whatever it is. So, if anyone has found a solution at this point please reply. That dani link posted above appeared to have a solution but impletementing it properly without being a programmer seems rather difficult on where to post the code without messing up my existing shopping cart.

Looking forward to a solution.

[LouDog]

Hey All, did anyone figure this out yet?


Not yet. According to Jamie's post below, they were going to try and get to it by the end of last year. I know they are busy, but I think this is an import feature that SquirrelCart is missing. I'm waiting on this before I do anymore upgrades.

[billsblueprint]

Maybe I'm unique, but my SC site gets pretty good Google rankings. Maybe it's becasue I just sell stuff that people want... not sure.

When I search for, say, edgebind material, we're the first listing.
And many other searches bring us up on the first page.

I have done much of my own optimizing of the header graphics (that appear at the top of every page), so maybe that helping.

But for what it's worth (which may not be much), I'm getting about 500 new visitors every month (out of 1300 total), and arounf 4500 page views monthly.

[LouDog]

Of course you're the first listing. That search only returns four results and three of them are for your site. Google wants to change the search to edgeband material. Of course you'll come up first for something that specific. Bad example.

Maybe it's becasue I just sell stuff that people want... not sure.


I guess I'll just have to find something that people want and I can be unique and get good rankings!

[billsblueprint]

Yeah, that wasn't a very good example.

Try these:

Alvin PXB Boards
509 hits in Google, we are listed 2nd.

The only one who beats me there is the actual manfacturer.

Or this:
Pentel 2mm leads
9520 hits. My (free) Froogle listing is on the very top of the page.

[billsblueprint]

I guess I'll just have to find something that people want and I can be unique and get good rankings!

I guess so.

[idslamyou]

Is this ever going to be added as a feature? This topic is over 4 years old and still nothing? I would think that SEO would be a top priority for users, especially when you are trying to sell something. The more organic traffic, the more sales you will recieve.

[Jamie]

Yes.

It is definitely coming. Unfortunately, we only have so many hours in the day, and most of them don't involve sleeping! If this were a small issue, it would have been done long ago.

[billjoeu81]

Can't wait for this to be finished!

I know this has to be costing (some) lost business for my clients. :doh:

Keep up the good work!

[wendylady]

I know your probably getting tired of hearing it, but I was just wondering when SEO will be implemented into the cart. I purchased a server license so I could use it for all of my clients, and was disappointed when I found out it is not very search engine friendly. I think it's a great cart except it's missing this one important feature. It's really a must have, and I think it should be priority #1. Please get this added soon!

[Jamie]

It's about 90% done, and will be in the next release.

[wendylady]

Thank you for the update! That's wonderful...I can't wait.

[ryantknox]

It's about 90% done, and will be in the next release.

SWEET!!! And I'm just beginning to do a complete overhaul/upgrade of my site!

Any idea on a date for this guys?

[ryantknox]

Okay, Okay! NM! I know it's not done till it's done, so nevermind the date question.

I hope the new feature is almost completed and you guys are ready to release 2.5 soon!

[fisher318]

Yeah, I've actual moved on to a really great free open source software called [*removed]. It's a very simple and easy to use shopping cart, and they have something called a Friendly URL Alias that has to be entered manually. I mean, at least they have one of the most important components which is SEO friendly URL's.

HOWEVER, and this is the extremely important part, there are a lot of GREAT and WONDERFUL features that squirrelcart has that these other free carts don't. Like implementing real time rates for your shipping companies. . . I can't find that anywhere else. It's amazing how important that is. . . when you suddenly find out you don't have it =( so I was thinking, well, I'll just go buy another squirrelcart license. . . but now finding out the release with the SEO friendly url's isn't done yet, i'll have to wait. If it's coming, this is still one of the best valued carts on the market. . . hands down.

[Jamie]

The SEO URL feature is completed. We are working on documentation and the upgrade script for v2.5.0 at the moment.

Please try to refrain from publicizing competitors. :)

[ryantknox]

Sweet!!!!

[designwerks]

I created a XML Sitemap for the specific purpose of having Google, Yahoo and MSN crawl the dynamic pages of our website. Works well for me.

As far as I know XML Sitemaps are specifically designed for dynamic web page content.

Jamie - in a nutshell (no pun intended) am I right or wrong. At last glance google registered 582 pages on our website!

John

[Jamie]

Google and other search engines don't have a problem indexing dynamic pages that make use of query strings. There are only 2 reason we are adding support for more meaningful URLs:

1. Gives you a way to put keywords in URLs instead of information that has no practical meaning
2. Makes URLs provide more information at a glance as to what content they contain

If creating a sitemap helped you get indexed, then that's a good thing. BUT... you shouldn't need a sitemap in order to get your Squirrelcart store pages indexed regardless of what version of Squirrelcart you are running.

[fisher318]

Refrain from publicizing other competitors? You'd think you would be confident enough in your product to not be afraid of other solutions be spoken of. Anyways, I'll refrain from stating that other solutions exist. =)

[Jamie]

Refrain from publicizing other competitors?
Yes, that's what I asked.

You'd think you would be confident enough in your product to not be afraid of other solutions be spoken of.
Speaking of a competitor is a bit different than suggesting it to others. This is our forum, and I see no reason to allow it to be used to promote competing software applications to our customers. If you want to go to another forum and do that you are certainly welcome to.

This thread is here as a request to add a new feature. You replied to it explaining to everyone looking for that feature that it's available elsewhere in another shopping cart application, which has the potential to cause us to loose business. Everyone has access to Google, and is certainly welcome to search for other shopping carts if they wish. This is not a general "shopping cart/ecommerce" forum. It's a forum to discuss our software.

I'm not trying to hide anything here. We don't have this feature yet, but will very soon. It's available in other products and most people have the means to figure that out.

I'm not about to allow posts recommending other shopping cart applications here. I'm sorry if that is a problem for you.

[fisher318]

No, it's not a problem for me, I just see things differently than you do. That doesn't make you a bad person, nor does it make me a bad person. I post in several other shopping cart forums and all of them talk about the various differences and features of "OTHER" shopping cart solutions. But I had no intention of trying to offend you over it, I did post saying I would comply with your request.

[fisher318]

And in all honesty, despite saying th name of another shopping cart, if you'll read my post, it focused on the fact that despite the fact that this feature has not been released yet, the squirrelcart solution has so many other "NEEDED" features that these other carts don't offer, that it's worth the wait for that feature to be released. At least I think I said that, haven't read it in a while =)

[Jamie]

Thanks for the feedback.

[jackkyll]

Stepping in for a moment. I just recently found out about XML sitemaps and the free generator to create them. I purchased the stand alone since I have more pages than 500. I did need it because all of my pages weren't indexed (and they still aren't) but it has helped over the last couple of days.

I was about to close my store earlier this year because I've been working on it for years and have not made anything and was not getting the traffic that I thought would fall into my lap. But I've recently lost my job and I'm frantic to get it back up and running and actually get customers into it. So you'll see me a lot trying to get different answers.

I forgot what my point was except that I'm glad I found XML Sitemaps.

Glad there are some new features coming out in next patch.

[Jamie]

FYI...if you implement our new SEO URL feature when it's released and have a static site map, you'll need to update it after turning this feature on. Old format links will still work, but will trigger a 301 redirect to the new URL.

Example
Customer clicks old link in Google like this:
http://www.example.com/store.php?crn=123&rn=4&action=show_detail

They will be sent to this URL via a 301 redirect:
http://www.example.com/store.php/products/50-inch-plasma-tv/

This helps to avoid duplicate content penalties, and tells the search engines to use the new URL. With some minor tweaking it will also be possible to change that last URL to something like this on most servers:
http://www.example.com/products/50-inch-plasma-tv/

[emcdermon]

Jamie:

I'm a website designer and Search Engine Optimization specialist in the Atlanta area. The ability to display the URL as a search friendly term will be very useful for my clients. Since 2007 Google has been agressively turning off keyword phrases in Ad Words if they don't match the secretive Google "quality" algorithym's expectations. A search string composed of code has less relevance or "quality" than does a word phrase leading to a category and the product landing page name.

This feature (sometimes called by your less worthy competitors "pretty URL's") will be very useful in optimizing Squirrelcart installations and improving SC's ability to be optimized for this sometimes confusing and murky aspect of Google Ad Words. Of course, all of this depends on having the site indexed with a good Google xml sitemap generator.

I'm lookng forward to some of the new features in v2.5.0, hopefully you'll have this release on the street in the near future.