Naming Page URL's For SEO Purposes

[SteveCollins]

I have read as many posts as possible to find the answer to this question and I cannot find it so maybe someone can help me on this one.

I run www.regencyexpress.co.uk a site selling ink cartridges and other computer consumables. I have customised my site (for the most part) so that i am happy with the result and now I am looking to optimise the site for search engines. I have completed most of this according to my current product range and business activities and I am happy with the result so far. I recognise that this is an ongoing thing but that there are also some things that i will only need to do once.

My problem is that search engines find real relevence in having the category or product name in the URL of the page that it refers to. I cannot find a way to do this. When I create a page Zencart creates a URL for it that bears no resemblence to the category or product that it refers to. For example, my top category is called 'Ink Cartridges' and the URL for that page is as follows:

http://www.regencyexpress.co.uk/inde...ndex&cPath=114

Very long and also not showing any reference to ink cartridges!!

I would like to be able to customise the URL name so that it contains the name of the category or product. For example:

http://www.regencyexpress.co.uk/inde...ink_cartridges

This is only an example of what I mean but not necessarily exact. I just would like to have the category or product name in the URL as this will help my optisation efforts.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance for any advice given.

Steve

[Pauls]

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showth...t=ultimate+seo

[SteveCollins]

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showth...t=ultimate+seo

Thanks for the link. I have been looking at all of the replies but I cannot find anything for the version that I am using (ver. 1.0) I have been trying to get as much info on the subject but files that are mentioned in the threads are not in the version that I am using, or I just don't know where to look for them.

Any ideas?

[vr4indian]

you also need to work on .htaccess file

[clm76]

Hi, I've a problem with the installation of Ultimate_SEO_URLs_v2.101 for Zen-Cart 1.3; I've follow the guide and I rename htaccess_sample in .htaccess and copy it in the root, but when I tried to access to my website, I encountered this problem:

Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, admin@localhost and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

What can I do?

Thanks

[DrByte]

1. Check the errorlog for more details.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

2. Did you edit the .htaccess and set the base to your own site instead of the sample?

3. Does your server allow the use of mod_rewrite?

[SteveCollins]

DrByte, a question for you... I have installed the SEO URL and everything works with exception of when a customer clicks to add products to their shopping cart I get a 404 page not found error. This does not happen when the SEO URL is switched off in the configuration section of Admin.

Any ideas Sensei???

[DrByte]

What's your server's errorlog saying?

[SteveCollins]

Thanks for your help.

I'm not sure whether you mean the site error log or not. I have looked in MySQL and cannot see anything that is an error log. I have copied and pasted the errors found in the /logs file which is as follows:

when clicking on the login link:

[Wed Jul 26 13:25:31 2006] [error] [client 86.144.205.22] File does not exist: /home/vhost/regencyexpress.co.uk/html/login.html

when adding a product to my cart:

[Wed Jul 26 13:26:12 2006] [error] [client 86.144.205.22] File does not exist: /home/vhost/regencyexpress.co.uk/html/products_general_info.html

If this is not the info that you were asking for do you know where I can find the log that you referred to?

Thanks again.

[SteveCollins]

Something that I have noticed is that the page name generated by the SEO URL tool is different from the file to which I think (but am not sure) it refers. The page name in the address bar is:

/products_general_info.html

the only file similar to this is the english/products_general_info.php.

I have also noticed that since installing SEO URL I have small text appearing at the top of every page apart from the home page. At first it looked like a line but after copying & pasting into ms word, then zooming in by 500% I have found that this is actually the page heading in minute lettering. I know that this can be a problem for SEO and this problem stays whether SEO URL is on or off. It is only noticeable when viewing the site in IE.