Need a SEO add on, tried all but nothing

[Marco Serge]

Hi there,

I'm using Zen Cart 1.51 I was using Simple SEO URL and was good for me, but for better speed time of my site I had the need to move it on another server, this server utilize PHP 5.3 and no more PHP 5.2 and as consequence My Simple SEO mod (as stated by authors) stopped to work (because it's not compatible with PHP 5.3).

So now I need another SEO mod:

Tried Ultimate SEO URL, doesn't work on my site (I've tried it on other shops in the past, never been able to make it work) lot of hours of hard ork used with the hope to make it work, but with no result
CEON URI Mapping: as stated in the read me document of the mod, It works only for the pages created AFTER installing the module, but since my pages are all created before the installation, I would have a problem:

"If the site has existing Categories/Products/Manufacturers/EZ-Pages, they'll continue to use the standard Zen Cart dynamic URIs, until a URI has been entered or auto-generated for them, by editing the respective Category/Product/Manufacturer/EZ-Page in the admin."

(I have almost 1.000 sub categories and I've no SEO knowledge, so if it would be up to me to manually enter the SEO url, I won't be able to put down good ones)

So, what can I do now? Actually I'm without SEO Url on my site and I'll be penalized by google if I don't to nothing.
Thanks in advance

Site url: www.jollyrogerbay.it

[kobra]

I'm without SEO Url on my site and I'll be penalized by google if I don't to nothing

Where did you hear this??

As you are starting over anyway - as your new url's will not match your old ones just do not use any rewrite app

[Marco Serge]

Hi, thanks a lot for your reply! :)

So, if I understood right, you are saying that I can do without any SEO module (as I'm doing right now)? But search engines doesn't prefer websites with friendly URL? So, wouldn't be better to have some SEL url rewrite app?

If I understood wrong your words, please excuse me.

[mc12345678]

Couple of things here are mixed up.

1) Movement of a site to a new server doesn't mean that one is "starting over".
2) As kobra suggested, there is no need for the URI to be user friendly/readable for search engines.

If there is a desire to continue using a URI rewriter, yes Simple SEO has not been updated to remain usable with more recent versions of PHP/ZC. Either need to use CEON URI rewriter or USU. If having issues with either, take to the applicable forum thread.

As to the description about URI updating for CEON. There is an add-on called CEON URI Mapping manager that is a commercial product to support what you are requesting. There also is a modified version of EasyPopulate version 4 that incorporates the rewriting of the publicly available EasyPopulate v4 and CEON URI Mappings to populate the CEON database with rewritten URIs upon export of the database.

As to incorporating the previously existing URIs to maintain ranking, would need to be able to obtain the previous URIs offered under Simple SEO to then have them rewritten to whatever is newly desired. Otherwise, SEO is all about content...

Good, descriptive content is what is needed for SEO. This may include URIs, but that is just one small aspect of the whole.

[kobra]

But search engines doesn't prefer websites with friendly URL?

Modern Search engines do just fine with the dynamically created url's
They are not humans which is the touted reason for rewriting
An excerpt

How many times have you tried to remember the URL of a particular website, but the address had resulted in a jumbled mix of letters, numbers, forward slashes, back slashes, question marks, ampersands, percent signs, dots, dashes, and underscores? Happens a lot, I know, especially with dynamically-generated web documents.

The question should be how many of you even attempt to type a complete url??
That is what bookmarks are for

[Marco Serge]

Thanks for all the explanations, then if SEO URLs are not necessary for better search engines position, then I can avoid to try a SEO mod, I thought they were necessary for this reason.
Thanks a lot, anyway for all the useful information you shared with me

[wrickspam]

i use CEON URI Mapping and can confirm its working :)

its a pain in the ###### though as you explained you will have to create urls for all your products by hand because there is no option to do it automatic (for allready excisting products, new products get a link automaticly)

[mc12345678]

i use CEON URI Mapping and can confirm its working :)

its a pain in the ###### though as you explained you will have to create urls for all your products by hand because there is no option to do it automatic (for allready excisting products, new products get a link automaticly)

This is misinformation. One does not have to manually go through each product from the admin panel to populate the database URIs. Check my website for example, or search for CEON Mapping Manager (two different items being discussed here.)

[lhungil]

Yup, quite a bit has changed in the last few years. For example "Ultimate SEO URL" has been replaced with "Ultimate URLs" (and is very easy to install)... And CEON URIs has been updated and additional tools created to make CEON URIs easier to manage... If you are currently trying to test the latest versions of either and having difficulty, suggest posting in the respective Support Thread and providing all the relevant information and answering all of the questions asked.

Of course both of the above work best "out of box" when best practices are followed (templates all use zen_href_link, only one site per VirtualHost / web server document root, dedicated SSL certificate, Zen Cart patches kept up to date, etc).

Yes SEs are not inhibited by (or having issues accessing) URLs containing ? and & (been a very long time since this has been an issue). But SEs are all about providing a "human friendly" experience (in addition to being easy to parse programmatically). Modern SEs also show URLs in the search results.

So while one does not NEED alternative URLs, one may wish to use them to improve a website visitors experience (as well as the store owners experience - such as when looking through analytics).