Dear Zen Cart users, I have a Zen Cart based website for some years now. It is in Dutch language. A couple of months ago I decided to hire a freelancer to do SEO for my website. He has been working on my website for some months now, but for some reason he claims that Zen Cart is not good for SEO and he even advices me to switch to Magento and ask a developer to make the switch. He claims Magento is better for SEO.

I just want to check with you guys on the forum. Here is what I highlight from his email to me:

the issue is the website core coding has been so much customized that its not allowing plugins to either install or to solve the URL structure. Not only URL structure but

- Underscores in the URLs
- Dynamic URL Extensions
- Rewrite URL Structure with keywords and keyword phrases.
- Website have more unwanted URL Rewrites.
- Website have more duplicate pages.
- Broken Links (47 Broken Links)

these above issues are also because of the customization of core Zen Cart coding.

We are right now doing SEO for a Magento website from Finland.

Within 2 months the rankings got boosted to top 40 ranks. The reason is backend is very powerful, robust and easy. Hardly we are getting errors in the webmaster tool. However for your website we have got plenty of errors. For best SEO results, Magento is non comparable.

Now what best is, please change the website to Magento (use best developers)
I really need advice here. Is this guy right? Do I need to switch in order to do SEO for my Zen Cart based website? If it can be solved within Zen Cart, how and which add on do I need to use? Is there a platform of professionals who can take this project further from here? I use 1.3.8a at the moment. Do you think this effects any of my SEO needs?

HELP!!! PS I am not a programmer, so I don't understand any coding language. I would appreciate a lot if you guys can give me an answer in plain and simple language.

Many thanks!!!