Installing Ultimate SEO URL

[swdynamic]

1.3.9h current
novice

Well, I was originally on the same hunt for install advice...not so much now...if majority says NOT beneficial then lets go with that thought and ask the question I have.
If SE are ok with Zencarts URL's as generated, then why am I getting responses from my Optimization programs telling me that out of 997 current pages, I have 997 broken links or stop words and or invalid characters? If I need to re-post this in another thread, let me know. This just happens to be the one place that I found a discussion concerning all of this. If these issues really aren't affecting the SEO then I will change nothing...I am just trying to get my site out there.

[picandnix]

1.3.9h current
novice

Well, I was originally on the same hunt for install advice...not so much now...if majority says NOT beneficial then lets go with that thought and ask the question I have.
If SE are ok with Zencarts URL's as generated, then why am I getting responses from my Optimization programs telling me that out of 997 current pages, I have 997 broken links or stop words and or invalid characters? If I need to re-post this in another thread, let me know. This just happens to be the one place that I found a discussion concerning all of this. If these issues really aren't affecting the SEO then I will change nothing...I am just trying to get my site out there.

One initial question, 'optimization programs'. Please elaborate.

[lhungil]

...
Well, I was originally on the same hunt for install advice...not so much now...if majority says NOT beneficial then lets go with that thought and ask the question I have.

You resurrected a thread about a module from two years ago... The current version of "Ultimate (SEO) URLs" is nowhere near the same and more than 75% of the code base has changed. The issues present back then are not present in the current versions.

Note: There is a known bug in 2.212 (specific to Zen Cart 1.3.9h) which requires you to first uninstall any older versions of the plugin before installing version 2.12.

...
If SE are ok with Zencarts URL's as generated, then why am I getting responses from my Optimization programs telling me that out of 997 current pages, I have 997 broken links or stop words and or invalid characters?

Search Engines do not have any issues following or indexing Zen Cart's default URL scheme... The development team has taken care to ensure the default generated URLs work in the major search engines. The development team has also added many features over the years to make Zen Cart "search engine friendly" far beyond just looking at the URLs.

You can look in both Google's and Bing's Webmaster Tools to see if they had any problems crawling or indexing pages on your site. These tools are a great resource.

I'd be curious as well to hear what "optimization programs" are reporting these issues...

[swdynamic]

First...let me say I am extremely appreciative of the help and patience from everyone here. As for where I posted...I apologize as I have been so frustrated with Optimization that I simply didn't pay attention. It just happened that this one brought up a point that hit the nail on the head for me.
Anyway, Optimization...there are several that I have had check my site. First is the optimization area with Go-Daddy...I know...good, bad or otherwise I had to start somewhere. The other is through Microsoft and Google Webmaster Tools and all three are kicking back URL or Stop Word, Invalid Char issues. All seem to be pointing to the Page Links...or so it says. I did find the issue with the Broken Link issue(s) as one of my banners that show globally had a link that was inop. I am not by any means anything more than a just above beginner but figured I had better address any issue regardless of validity that was presented too me. Sooo...here I am. I can attach lists that I have downloaded concerning the errors but don't believe it would be of any additional help here as they only show the page URL's as provided by my "Zencart" which you are already aware of I am sure. If you feel that this is not a relevant issue then I will move on to killing other rats.

Well...before hitting submit I ran the Google tool again and I guess I addressed some of the issues there as now I don't get the broken link(s) or crawl errors any longer, but still getting them on the others.

Thank You for Your Time and Patience.

[fairestcape]

First...let me say I am extremely appreciative of the help and patience from everyone here. As for where I posted...I apologize as I have been so frustrated with Optimization that I simply didn't pay attention. It just happened that this one brought up a point that hit the nail on the head for me.
Anyway, Optimization...there are several that I have had check my site. First is the optimization area with Go-Daddy...I know...good, bad or otherwise I had to start somewhere. The other is through Microsoft and Google Webmaster Tools and all three are kicking back URL or Stop Word, Invalid Char issues. All seem to be pointing to the Page Links...or so it says. I did find the issue with the Broken Link issue(s) as one of my banners that show globally had a link that was inop. I am not by any means anything more than a just above beginner but figured I had better address any issue regardless of validity that was presented too me. Sooo...here I am. I can attach lists that I have downloaded concerning the errors but don't believe it would be of any additional help here as they only show the page URL's as provided by my "Zencart" which you are already aware of I am sure. If you feel that this is not a relevant issue then I will move on to killing other rats.

Well...before hitting submit I ran the Google tool again and I guess I addressed some of the issues there as now I don't get the broken link(s) or crawl errors any longer, but still getting them on the others.

Thank You for Your Time and Patience.

I can assure you that your issues are not related to core zencart - which will generate URL's and page content that is 100% consistent with how the search engines like the "technical" side of page construction.

Your issues are much more likely to be a result of "tinkering" or bad modifications you have made, and may even be related to HOW you compose your product content in the first place. If you use an external "HTML Generator" - (such as MS FrontPage or even DreamWeaver), you might be embedding a host of bad stuff in the html.

It is far better to keep the html as simple as possible, and to create <divs>, <spans>, <p's> and other basic tags into which you can insert class and id taxonomy. Then, you can make additions to your main stylesheet to accommodate declarations for these id's and classes, to style the content as you see fit.

This does, of course, require that you know the rules of CSS.