Moving The Entire Store To A Different Directory

[sle39lvr]

I guess what I am about to ask is both Zen Cart technical and SEO related.

I have my current store installed as:

www.mydomain.com/mystore

I want to move the whole store to root:

www.mydomain.com

To do this, I found instructions here:
http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?...that-directory

Do you think this is worth it? I want to do this mainly to get better search engine rankings.

I used to have www.mydomain.com/index.html link directly to my store. However, I felt it could be better, so I put a redirect on it. Now my rankings are down.

Thanks in advance.

[twitchtoo]

I've used these two methods with excellent long term results with respect to rank:

1 - installed in the root folder, properly categorized, named and specific meta tags added.

2 - installed in a sub folder, installed the appropriate SEO module from the forum and again, properly categorized, named and 'simple' meta tags with 'simple' 2 step path overwrites.

I prefer to keep things simple these days and start or move to the root folder or a very appropriately named sub directory that doesn't need hiding.

[pixelpadre]

My experience has been that root directory or sub directory offer no significant advantages one way or the other. Sub sub directory seems to be where search engines draw the line. As long as you have a link on your website home page that will take crawlers to your subdirectory, you will be good. I use gsitecrawler, free sitemap maker and have had excellent organic placement in search results. On sites that have my store in a sub directory, I create a link in the footer on the main page that links to the subdirectory.

But most important is a good sitemap maker. I tried the zencart mod that created four sitemaps (catalog.xml products.xml etc) but had no good search ranking with that method. Now I have one sitemap.xml file and one sitemap.xml.gz. That seems to get me the best results.

Of course, meta tags must be accurate and utilized. It is tedious but absolutely mandatory.

Edit your site wide title tag also. Choose your title words carefully.

Having your business address on the footer seems to make search engines happy also.

Include prices in meta tags. I think that is very important. I do it, and I get top rankings.