SEO for OsCommerce

I'm working for a client that needs to SEO his OsCommerce website/store...

Any advice? I don't want to fuck everything up by installing a plugin - thanks in advanced

 

1 advice: start using mod_rewrite a LOT.

 

Just go to RentACoder.com or Elance.com and outsource. Should be like $50-$100.

 

I setup follow plug-ins in my osc.
seo url
all product
site map
categories_description
xsell

 

Oscommerce has a search engine friendly component that you can implement even yourself by simply editing the .htaccess file. Also you can check this link for SEO manual; http://forums.oscommerce.com/lofiversion/index.php/t130695.html

 

Once the ULTIMATE SEO is installed on my OSCOMMERCE store, how should I go about getting it up in the rankings again for each of the products?

I spent a lot of time trying to optimize the PHP verision of the website, will those efforts help me with the new HTML SEO friendly verision?

 

YOu might be better off hiring someone to do the work for you.

 

I hope this "client" didn't pay you to be their SEO. If so you ripped them off and stole their money. You haven't a clue what you're doing.

 

Well said George B.

 

I phrased that wrong, you guys are dicks

 

enfest, having been down this road in the past two years, I'll share some things with you watch out for here:

1) Ultimate SEO is what you want. This is a great contribution and I use it myself.

2) Setting it up is not hard to do. It comes with good instructions. After setting it up, you will need to go through each product and include the meta description and meta keywords. Take your time here, don't over do the keywords, and make sure you try to get the keywords you use in your meta description.

3) All your old URLs will be obsolete. Just accept it and move on. Eventually your new urls will pick up page rank. If your site already ranks "decently" for some, you'll notice a nice increase in overall rankings. If your site is newer, it may take a while, as you probably are not already ranking very well (first three-four pages) anyway.

4) Here's your HUGE problem to watch out for. Once you implement your new urls via Ultimate SEO, your old urls will still be accessible to search engines. What does this mean to you? Duplicate content on the same domain. Trust me, this will KILL your site above anything else I know. It's possible to recover from, I did...but you should prevent it in the first place.

You may consider setting up a duplicate copy on a subdomain for testing, like: beta.mysite.com so your real store isn't all messed up while fixing these things.

You need to create a redirect.php script to be included in your application_top.php so that the redirect.php script can check for a pattern in your old urls. If the old pattern exists, then you want to do a 301 redirect, otherwise, your old urls and your NEW urls will both be indexed, creating dupe content issues for you. You MUST test this! What I did for testing was, once I thought I had the redirects in place, I would visit google, do a site:www.mydomain.com command and click on the old urls that were there. If they redirected to the new SEO urls, then it was working well.

Here's part of my redirect.php:

$p_id = $_GET["products_id"];
if ($p_id > '') {

  $redir_query = tep_db_query("select * from products_description WHERE products_id='" . $p_id . "'");
  $redir = tep_db_fetch_array($redir_query);
  $products_name = $redir['products_name'];
  $nname = str_replace(" ", "-" , $products_name);
  $nurl = 'http://www.yourdomain.com/product/' . $nname . '.html';
	
    if ($nname > '') {
      header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
      header("Location: " . $nurl);
	  exit;
    }
}

Code (markup):

Note here, that I'm using "-" as the SEO url separator. If I recall directly, by default, it uses the "_" underscore, but you'll want to double check that. If so, then just replace the "-" above with "_". What this does is, check for the old url pattern and if it exists, rewrites the url and does a 301 redirect so search engines will no longer index your old URLs.

For your categories, you'll need to add to this code, something for each of your categories like:

if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] == "/index.php?cPath=0_59_12") {
  header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
  header("Location: http://www.yourdomain.com/category/some-category-url-here.html");
  exit;
}

if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] == "/index.php?cPath=0_12") {
  header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
  header("Location: http://www.yourdomain.com/category/another-category-url-here.html");
  exit;
}

Code (markup):

You'll need to do these for each of your categories.

And don't forget your manufacturers:

$m_id = $_GET["manufacturers_id"];
if ($m_id > '') {

  $m_page = $_GET["page"];
  $m_sort = $_GET["sort"];
  $redir_query = tep_db_query("select * from manufacturers WHERE manufacturers_id='" . $m_id . "'");
  $redir = tep_db_fetch_array($redir_query);
  $manufacturers_name = $redir['manufacturers_name'];
  $mname = str_replace(" ", "-" , $manufacturers_name);
  $murl = 'http://www.yourdomain.com/' . $mname . '.html';
  
  if (($m_page > '') || ($m_sort > '')) {
    $murl .= '?';
  }
	
  if (($m_page > '') && ($m_sort > '')) {
    $murl .= 'sort=' . $m_sort . '&page=' . $m_page;
  } else if ($m_sort > '') {
    $murl .= 'sort=' . $m_sort;
  } else if ($m_page > '') {
    $murl .= 'page=' . $m_page;
  }

    if ($mname > '') {
      header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
      header("Location: " . $murl);
      exit;
    }
}

Code (markup):

Your code here will vary. Please do not assume you can just copy paste my exact code and it will work. It's simply a framework for you start with. What you are attempting to undertake is not easy and it will take a few days to get it all in place. My suggestion would be to setup the Ultimate SEO contribution, get it working solid, then note the differences between your old urls and your new ones. From there, build a redirect.php file (I keep mine in my /includes/ folder) and start trapping for your old urls, to redirect them to your new urls. If you don't do this, you will get dupe content on the same URL and your site will simply cease to exist as far as the world is concerned.

I hope this helps you get going. I don't envy your task, but I will say this; this contribution is great, it can/will help your ranking (but don't stop your off page linking efforts). Once you get your redirects in place, after a few months, your efforts will reward you.

I won't even setup an oSC store anymore without this contribution and a few others. I've created my own oSC template I start with as a base with this, and other popular contributions. Good luck!

 

Amazing really. If you phrased it wrong then simply rephrase it YOU phrase something wrong, but WE are dicks? LOL

My support was based on the fact that you appeared to have taken on an SEO job when knowing nothing about it. If you are saying that is not the case, then tell us the score. I would not help anyone who is selling SEO services if they know nothing about it. But if they have a client for another service, who is getting free help with his SEO, then I am up for helping.

 

I was attacked for asking a technical question, once attacked there was no reason to correct what I said.

I've been asked to SEO a website I took over for a client. I'm a web designer at heart; he paid me to fix up his OsCommerce store in a design sense. He then asked me to look in to optimizing his website for search engines. That's when I just recently discovered all my efforts to optimize his website could have been hendered by the OsCommerce software - so I asked a simple question - then was attacked.

Thanks to GTech for the valuable information, the one that has the experience and the time to provide valuable information to new marketers. He is the type of person I look up to and respect and strive to be on a constant basis.

Whenever people need help in a design sense, I strive to be like GTech when providing valuable information. Thanks again man...I can't thank you enough.

Old Wash Guy, you just wasted my time and provided nothing to this thread or the general knowledge of this forum.

 

Enfest, there is absolutely no need for you to be ignorant towards me by name calling. Especially as my last reply ended with I am up for helping.

There is no excuse for ignorance, and I am saddened that you feel I have provided nothing to this thread or the general knowledge of this forum. I am very helpful, I spend a lot of time helping peope as much as I can.

But we are all entitled to our opinions, we also have to live with them