| Search Engine Optimization | Last Update: 21st July, 2005
Article ID: 194 |
- Introduction
- General Tips
- Page Links
- Site And Page Content
- Usage Of Keywords
- Page File Names
- Recipricol Links
- Valid HTML
- Images
- osCommerce Tips
- Disabling Sessions
- Linking To Products
- Meta Tags
Introduction
The aims of this article is to provide general guidelines on how to optimize an osCommerce based store to increase the page ranking in search engine result sets.
Some of the tips provided in this article require changes to be made to core osCommerce source files, and some tips require configuration parameters to be set which will be finalized and made available in the osCommerce 2.2 Milestone 3 project release.
General Tips
- Page Links
- Site And Page Content
- Usage Of Keywords
- Page File Names
- Recipricol Links
- Valid HTML
- Images
Page Links
In order for search engine spiders to be able to find all of the pages on a website, links need to be provided so that accessing them is possible. An efficient navigation system can be achieved by avoiding the use of images, javascript, applets/active-x objects, and flash presentations as page links.
Viewing the site with a text based browser such as Lynx can help in ensuring the accessibility of pages. A list of alternative browsers can be found here:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/Browsing.html
Search engines like Google who factor link popularity into their ranking algorithms take the text used in text links into consideration, and should contain keywords.
For example, linking to Yahoo should be done as:
Here is a good
search engine site.
And not like:
Here is a good search engine site.
Site And Page Content
Search engine spiders index all pages and content of a web site, with the more content and relevant-content being made available that matches keywords, the better.
Adding feedback, reviews, and press articles to the web site increases its appeal to both customers and search engines alike.
Usage Of Keywords
Keywords that are targeted for should exist in the content of the web site.
Be careful of over-using keywords, as the end result may damage the page ranking instead of helping it.
Page File Names
Keywords that best describe the content of the page should be used as part of the file name, with spaces being replaced with hyphens ('-').
Recipricol Links
Exchanging links with sites your visitors will find useful helps improve page ranking.
Don't exchange links only to increase link popularity as it may cause the opposite effect due to dilusion.
Valid HTML
Making sure the HTML source code is valid ensures that search engine spiders will correctly index the content on the page.
A free HTML validator can be found at:
http://validator.w3.org
Images
All images should include descriptive, keyword-rich alt text, and be used to describe the image.
The alt text should not be too long and should fit in the image placeholder.
osCommerce Tips
- Disabling Sessions
- Linking To Products
- Meta Tags
Disabling Sessions
Sessions should be disabled for search engine spiders to prevent session ID's from being indexed which could cause a potential security and privacy issue when multiple customers share the same session ID that the search engine spider has indexed.
Sessions for search engine spiders can be disabled at the following section on the osCommerce Administration Tool:
osCommerce 2.2 Milestone 2
Administration Tool -> Configuration -> Sessions -> Prevent Spider Session
osCommerce 2.2 Milestone 3
Administration Tool -> Configuration -> Services -> Sessions -> Block Search Engine Spiders
If the above configuration parameters are set to True, search engine spiders existing in
osCommerce/includes/spiders.txt will not be given a session ID.
The following contribution can be used for osCommerce 2.2 Milestone 1 and earlier versions which provides similar functionality:
SID Killer
Linking To Products
A convienient method to provide a link to all products and pages on the web site is to use a sitemap page or a page listing all available products.
A sitemap page has been implemented in the osCommerce 2.2 Milestone 3 release that automatically and efficiently lists all available categories.
The following contribution can be used for osCommerce 2.2 Milestone 2 and earlier versions, that lists all available products on a page:
All Products Page
Meta Tags
Including meta tags in the header of the HTML page can help improve the page ranking in search engine search results, although most search engines today ignore the meta tags.
As of osCommerce 2.2 Milestone 3, meta tags are appropriately set for all pages.
The following contribution can be used for osCommerce 2.2 Milestone 2 and earlier versions, that provides similar functionality:
Header Tags Controller
