seo url's

[Miff]

Iv a website which iv been running for a few months using the zen cart standard url form.
Since this particular site has not been doing too greatly in the SEO area I was thinking about using either the simple seo url or ultimate seo url add ons.
I was hoping that anybody in the know could assist me with this as iv heard very different views on whether changing your url form even makes any differences with todays search engines.
If changing your url's is the way forward then I would also appreciate any add on reccomendations. Thank you

[schoolboy]

As you are in the UK the only Search Engine you need concern yourself with is Google.

Back in 2006, Google started to advise webmasters to NOT generate static URL's on dynamic content websites.

They have repeated this many times. They actually recommend that you do not attempt to re-genrate the URL's, as there are risks attached.

You seem to have all the google features in place on your site. So the problem is not with the site, or its configuration with yiour Google account.

The problem is content. Your home page text-to-html ratio is just 4.9%. It should exceed 15%. You ned much more text on your home page, and then even more inside the site.

Do not make the considerable error of installing so-called "SEO URL's"... this term not only does not make sense, but it makes a claim that is spurious anyway.

[CoolCarPartsOnline]

Changing the URL will not change your traffic or make you get more traffic per say. There are a lot more things that affect the traffic, most important in your case is domain age. I don't know what you have done to generate traffic to your website so I can't tell you what your doing right or wrong.

SEO is a continues operation which takes months to show results so having a website for few months and not getting traffic is normal.

Simple SEO is a staple and easy to customize mod. I prefer that on the Ultimate SEO. I am using both on different stores.

You have no content on your website so that maybe the reason your traffic is not growing.

[dbltoe]

I guess I should never be shocked at how folks think they need to change ZC to make it "SEO Friendly"

ZC does an excellent job until someone "fixes" it. Take http://www.andysmotorcycles.com/inde...roducts_id=286 for example.

Do you think you could mention brake pads one more time?!? Google will ban you at some point. The only reason they haven't yet is probably that they're busy trying to figure out the punctuation in your keywords or how Oils & Lubricants fit in with brakes.

Your meta description for the page is 404 characters long and only mentions pertinent data in the "Kyoto FA235 brake pads to fit the front brake calliper of all CPI Aragon 50 models and years." statement. Get wordy and more pertinent in the product description. Just this will raise your rank.

Your title is 130 characters which is 50 characters more than the number considered "robot friendly."

All the magic wands are out of pixie dust. It takes lots of testing and proper text creation to move up in today's search engines. We have one customer who is a licensed distributor for his region. Using a bare-bones ZC and intelligent text creation got him to page 1 while the main company never got in the top ten pages.

Today's search engines are designed to look for pixie dust and treat it like they're allergic.

Of course, all my babble is moot as anyone going to this page can simply click on the Google add for Lifetime Brakes and leave the site.

[schoolboy]

I guess I should never be shocked at how folks think they need to change ZC to make it "SEO Friendly"

ZC does an excellent job until someone "fixes" it. Take http://www.andysmotorcycles.com/inde...roducts_id=286 for example.

Do you think you could mention brake pads one more time?!? Google will ban you at some point. The only reason they haven't yet is probably that they're busy trying to figure out the punctuation in your keywords or how Oils & Lubricants fit in with brakes.

Your meta description for the page is 404 characters long and only mentions pertinent data in the "Kyoto FA235 brake pads to fit the front brake calliper of all CPI Aragon 50 models and years." statement. Get wordy and more pertinent in the product description. Just this will raise your rank.

Your title is 130 characters which is 50 characters more than the number considered "robot friendly."

All the magic wands are out of pixie dust. It takes lots of testing and proper text creation to move up in today's search engines. We have one customer who is a licensed distributor for his region. Using a bare-bones ZC and intelligent text creation got him to page 1 while the main company never got in the top ten pages.

Today's search engines are designed to look for pixie dust and treat it like they're allergic.

Of course, all my babble is moot as anyone going to this page can simply click on the Google add for Lifetime Brakes and leave the site.

Just the sort of medicine needed in this case... Too many conventional "SEO Rules" are being broken.

And I have to agree with the dumb idea of having google ads on your site. You complain of having no visitors... and the first thing you do when they do find you, is invite them to go away!

It's like a high-street shop-keeper standing at his shop doorway, and when a customer tries to enter, he says... "On no... don't come in here. Look over there at my competitor. He has better products and prices, and he pays me 2p for every customer I send to his shop!"

[CoolCarPartsOnline]

Zen Cart works great as is, but having the right SEO rewrite mod is also important, not for traffic but for user friendliness. I often visit different forums for different type of softwares and Zen Cart developer seem to be the only people that always attack "User Friendly URL".

Whether we like it or not, having a URL that is easy to read and understand is not a bad idea If Configured Correctly.

As a business owner you should always study your competitors, and copy what they do. If my competitor that spend $10,000/month on SEO using user friendly SEOs, then they probably have done more research than I have done.

Your meta description for the page is 404 characters long and only mentions pertinent data in the "Kyoto FA235 brake pads to fit the front brake calliper of all CPI Aragon 50 models and years." statement. Get wordy and more pertinent in the product description. Just this will raise your rank.

Your title is 130 characters which is 50 characters more than the number considered "robot friendly."

That is really not important if also done right. There is a whole school of SEO that say, it doesn't matter how long your meta data is as long as you have content on the page that complement it. Even though the SERP will truncate the title at 60-65 and description at 160-170, if you have longer copies that explain the page and match the search query some SE will use that information instead of randomly pulling information from the page that match the search term.

[stevesh]

I'm certainly no expert on SEO, but:

As a business owner you should always study your competitors - absolutely.

and copy what they do - um, no.

If all we did was copy each other, all our sites would look and operate the same. It's people who try new ideas and take chances who end up in front, in my opinion.

My research has shown me that the 'SEO expert' field is chock-a-block full of people who obviously have no idea what they're doing. There's no reason to assume that the guy who spent $10K on an SEO consultant got better advice that you could have come up with on your own, I don't think.

There are concepts in every field which become 'truths' and remain that way long after they're no longer meaningful. Automotive engine oil is now so good there's no sane reason for additives, but STP still sells millions of bottles of its product every year.

[Miff]

I guess I should never be shocked at how folks think they need to change ZC to make it "SEO Friendly"

ZC does an excellent job until someone "fixes" it. Take http://www.andysmotorcycles.com/inde...roducts_id=286 for example.

Do you think you could mention brake pads one more time?!? Google will ban you at some point. The only reason they haven't yet is probably that they're busy trying to figure out the punctuation in your keywords or how Oils & Lubricants fit in with brakes.

Your meta description for the page is 404 characters long and only mentions pertinent data in the "Kyoto FA235 brake pads to fit the front brake calliper of all CPI Aragon 50 models and years." statement. Get wordy and more pertinent in the product description. Just this will raise your rank.

Your title is 130 characters which is 50 characters more than the number considered "robot friendly."

All the magic wands are out of pixie dust. It takes lots of testing and proper text creation to move up in today's search engines. We have one customer who is a licensed distributor for his region. Using a bare-bones ZC and intelligent text creation got him to page 1 while the main company never got in the top ten pages.

Today's search engines are designed to look for pixie dust and treat it like they're allergic.

Of course, all my babble is moot as anyone going to this page can simply click on the Google add for Lifetime Brakes and leave the site.

Thank you for the input.
Unfortunately I have not yet found the time to alter the meta tags for my categories or products yet so all keywords and meta descriptions are currently being created by default. Looking at these meta details I see exactly what you are saying, which is also confirmed within my webmaster tools account. Infact the only meta tags I have edited so far are my top level categories.
When you mentioned that ZenCart operates fine until someone "tries to correct it", does this mean that zencart should not be creating these default meta tags? and if so then is there a setting that can be switched so that they will be left blank until I manually edit them with the default 70 & 150 character meta tags?

Also when you mentioned that the word Brake Pads had been several times, were you referring to the product description or the meta tags? Or did you mean both? Can the product description also harm your seo or was it mainly the repeated use of the word brake pads within my meta tags that you were referring to?
Any support would be appreciated.

[CoolCarPartsOnline]

This is really not SEO forum and a lot of the answers you will get here are from developer which in most cases don't do SEO for living.

Zen Cart will generate Meta Data using the default data if you don't override that by creating unique meta data for each page, the default meta data will be used, otherwise you will have no meta data.

In your case, you should edit your default meta data to match the standard rules of 160-170 character for the description and 60-70 for title.

Having duplicate meta data will not help your SE standings and that should be fixed ASAP.

Well optimized content should have Keyword density of 3-4%, IF you have 100 words on the page then your should repeat the keyword you are targeting 3 or 4 times. If you repeat it more than it will be considered keyword stuffing and will hurt your SE standings.

I don't really like to get into SEO discussion of what's right or wrong because everyone that does SEO develop their own method. Results may vary but there are general rules that apply to SEO. Don't break the rules and eventually your work will pay off.

[dbltoe]

Unfortunately I have not yet found the time to alter the meta tags for my categories or products yet so all keywords and meta descriptions are currently being created by default.

but, you DID take the time to modify the basic meta tags incorrectly by adding items that would show up for every item in the store. Site tags are the most abused in the attempt to show homage to SEO.

When you mentioned that ZenCart operates fine until someone "tries to correct it", does this mean that zencart should not be creating these default meta tags?

You created them on the site and now they are following you everywhere to shoot you in the foot.
You were apparently guided by the same SEO fables as others here. We all get daily emails telling us that our SEO sucks and "they" can help.
I don't care if my customers see a "friendly" URL. I DO care if the search engine can't point them in the right direction to find me. If a search engine says "they've got brake pads" and takes me to muffler choices instead, I'm not a happy camper. How many times have you clicked on a Google search result and found yourself on a landing page? Boy, that me off! Bet they had an SEO expert help them with that one. Search this forum for posts by mprough. You'll not find better, common-sense advice from a REAL SEO expert.
Once correctly led to my site, I doubt any customer would complain that the URL has some funny-looking code in it. True, there are still the paranoid out there who think a ? or & in a URL will AUTOMATICALLY implant a virus on your hard drive. I can't ease their paranoia no matter what I do so I have to impress those I can. I do that with concise, informative text and product/page/category/product descriptions.
We do very selective hosting and have improved standings for all 30+ clients (some with page placement from oblivion to first page) without a single SEO mod. I have also seen sites "optimized" for SEO that misused the robots.txt/.htaccess and actually blocked all searches of their site.
The forum is riddled with all the problems SEO has caused. "I've done SEO and I'm still on page 33" is not uncommon to hear.
You've come here with the best of intentions. Tender the enthusiasm with as much desire for knowledge as a quick fix. There's MUCH more to this than just SEO and you will need to search/read as much as possible in order to keep up with the changes. Otherwise, you'll be one of those that believes keywords change rank when Google quit using them five years ago. Why? Because people put in a keyword and used it ten times in the text. The SEO folks used it to temporarily raise rank. Google had to invest time and money to ferret out the abuses to the point it became less time consuming to just ignore them. Funny that the SEO experts (got one this morning) seem to all mention they can improve our keyword standing.