Hi I am looking for some advice about SEO on oscommerce based store. My store is www.johnnysinajiffy.com (condom retailer) I have the SEO Url Contribution installed, about 2 years ago now. I have recently been moving alot of categories around, into sub categories etc I have tryed setting up 301 redirects for the old category pages to the new category pages, but they dont seem to work. Ive tryed both in my cpanel, and also htaccess with no luck. for instance http://www.johnnysinajiffy.com/catalog/pack-condoms-c-77.html was the old url for 12pk range of condoms the new URL http://www.johnnysinajiffy.com/catalog/condoms-quantity-pack-condoms-c-99_100_77.html the old link is still active, I am just worried if google would see this has being duplicate content? I would just like the new urls to be picked up by google etc can anyone help?
Duplicated content affects different domain names No problem. It is the same site. Gooogle just thinks you have a lot of Jonnies! You need to join G Webmater tools and install the tracking on your index. just let the old ones die and the the new ones florish. ( do you do the luminous ones that look like a light sabre incidentally?)
What I mean with regards to duplicate content, is having 2 same pages, on the 1 website, both urls are exact page When you said tracking on website, do you mean google sitemap or anyaltics? I have both installed I dont think you can just let them die, the old urls, just seem to stay, i need to find out how to get rid of them?
Valley has given you a good tip. Sign into google webmaster tools and you can get google to "spider" your website for you. It's not duplicate content per say. But it is an orphaned and redundant page. Your best bet is a 301 redirect back to your new product page, or your home page.
I have tryed doing the 301 redirects as mentioned above. Its weird the way the oscommerce seo url works, I cant actually find the html page that it creates, i dont think it actually creates the page on the actual server, i think its just the url thats created, if that make sense,
Both urls are identical! Heck ! How did you manage that. Change one, obvious but tricky of it is a CSV upload for a large catalog. G webmaster...what does it say to do? Honest answer... Wipe like a new site and start again. Perphaps not right but I sleep at night. If enough link sinbound they seem to die and spawn quite quickly. Buy a few links with juice or some do follow bloggs if you have time. As a minimum do you have 404 page instead of error $10 says you don't!
Google does not mind if you have duplicate content on your site; meaning if you have two identical (or nearly identical) pages. If I were you, I would leave both 'live' until Google indexes the new page. Then delet the old page. Google should drop the old page from you index fairly quickly. I believe you can even delete it from your URL list in Google Sitemaps if you use one. This is just my take. And, yes, a 404 page is essential in this case.
thanks people for your comments, but I really need someone who knows about oscommerce and how the seo url mod works, its not just a matter of deleting the page, as it doesnt actually create an html page on your ftp, its just to do with the url,
Well, since I am NOT familiar with Oscommerce's SEO URL Contribution, I can offer this information about duplicate content, per Google's recent "Tricks & Treats" webinar. "Myth: Duplicate content will penalize your site Don't worry too much about duplicates on your own site. We're good at ignoring duplicates. Make it easy for us to find the preferred version. Help us to crawl efficiently. Be reasonable when re-using content from other sites."
Since I myself use osCommerce and the SEO Urls contribution, I will tell you this.. osCommerce uses .htaccess file and the mod_rewrite feature. That is why you cannot find the .html files. It is taking the actual .PHP URLS and rewriting them to the .html files. All of this is done in your .htaccess file.
Just registered with DP to share my $.02 on this issue. Like QuickFreeHost says (and you basically alluded to) the html pages really do not exist. Oscommerce generates them (ex for me it's: /product_info.php?products_id=01) and the Ultimate SEO URLs contribution just masks the .php extension by using creative .htaccess rewrites (as QuickFreeHost mentioned). Redirecting an already redirected oscommerce-generated html page that doesn't really exist on the server is going to be a little bit annoying to say the least. I'd recommend you dive into the osc forumns and ask how you should alter your .htaccess file to point to your new categories you've created.