SEO for an osCommerce site

[Chris K]

Hi Guys,
We are in the middle of doing an oscommerce/mysql site for a client and would like to know the best ways of optimising it.
We have managed to get it displaying ALT tags with the product name in, but my main concern is that the urls are horribly unfriendly.
Apart from using things such as AdWords and Overture, what are the best methods?
Should we maybe aim at making a static html page for each product with an optimised page title and copy etc?

Cheers

Chris

[PhilC]

Yes, do the basic optimization on each page.

To get rid of dynamic-looking URLs, you can either create static pages for each product, or you can create static-looking dynamic pages by using Apache's mod_rewrite module, or ISAPI_Rewrite on a Microsoft server.

You know that spiders can't fill forms in and it may be that many of the dynamic pages that people can get can't be got by spiders because they can't select from lists, fill in textboxes, etc. If that's so you'll need to make all pages available to the spiders by feeding them a trail of links.

[I, Brian]

If I remember right, I've seen a reported hack available for OSCommerce to help modify the URLs to be more spider friendly.

[POR-15 Depot]

Depending on the version of osC you don't have to worry. I've run osC on several sites and am doing it now and Google indexes all the pages just fine. there is a setting for " Search Engine Friendly" This removes the dynamic URLs and works fine. I'm ranked #1 and #2 on several search terms on my sites. This new Google crap just killed one of my BEST terms " Stop Rust " where I was #1 for 4 months and POOF now I'm no place to be found.. Others seem to have survived ok so far. If you need some help with osC I'd be glad to hep.

[Jazzee]

Hi Rustbullet

[POR-15 Depot]

SWEETHEART !!!!!!

Can we get Married yet ? Yes.. I'm new here, but I follow Jazz everywhere, she's my next ex-wife ya know

[Jazzee]

LOL

How ya doin? Haven't heard from you in a while

[POR-15 Depot]

Just been real busy.. had a few sites to try and get worked out and it was working real good !. I was lurking on the "other place" and still do. SO yes, I'm stalking you .. After a few months of heavy SEO and finally getting results this dang Floria crap screwed it all up.. Now I'm about to just trow it all in the air and punt.. What a mess. Gezzz the MAIN keyword I wanted I got #1 in and now I'm GONE from the index for it. What a mess. I'm ready to move to Pennsyltucky and just live the good life.

Drop me a line sometime

[Jazzee]

Ah yes... Pennsyltucky, the good life Glad you found your way to the new forum!

[MadHatter]

Back onto the OSC

OSC uses nuke, which I am about to complete a full hack for that will change this: /modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=getit&cid=14
to:download-file-details-14.html
Making it much easier to crawl.

I will put it here once I have finished rewriting the original NukeCops hack (to include all modules including catalog)

[Chris K]

Cheers MadHatter - would an optimised html page for each product help or can Google and co find all the products already?

[MadHatter]

Sorry, I thought you were talking about OSC2Nuke (www.osc2nuke.org)
Which uses PHPNuke and OSCommerce combined. The Mod I have nearly finished is for OSC2Nuke or just PHPNuke.

[I, Brian]

Originally Posted by MadHatter

Back onto the OSC

OSC uses nuke, which I am about to complete a full hack for that will change this: /modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=getit&cid=14
to:download-file-details-14.html
Making it much easier to crawl.

I will put it here once I have finished rewriting the original NukeCops hack (to include all modules including catalog)

Wouldn't that involve using mod_rewrite to create those URLs?

[MadHatter]

Yes it does... Nearly finished it now.