SOLVED: When clicking "Add to Cart", message shows "Your Shopping Cart is Empty"

[bryanearl]

You are wasting a lot of breath here.

They are called "Search Engine Friendly" URL's for a reason. "Yes", the shopping cart worked fine without any SEO, URI mapping etc. "Yes", the search engines will index your page regardless of the type of URL it has. However, the fact is that search engines will index your website WAY higher in the results with URI mapping enabled. If you are using keywords in your URL that people are directly searching for, you will be placed higher in the search index, end of story.

SO, for that matter, for those people that WANT URI Mapping because they WANT to use keywords in their URL's, I have simply provided a solution for a problem that apparently comes with installing Ceon URI Mapping into Zen Cart.

Why hijack a good thread helping those people with a similar issue, just to impose YOUR personal methods? Start your own Anti-SEO thread for that.

[RodG]

You are wasting a lot of breath here.

I know that.

Most people don't like having their beliefs destroyed.

Nonetherless as a Certified Trainer & Assessor in ICT (Nationally recognized) it is in my nature to at least *try* to separate fact from fiction.

They are called "Search Engine Friendly" URL's for a reason.

Care to explain?

Perhaps you missed the bit where I stated:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Examples:
SiteA.com/phonecovers
SiteB.com/phonecovers
vs
SiteA.com/main_page=product_info&cPath=12_9&products_id=124
SiteB.com/main_page=product_info&cPath=44_9&products_id=567

In the 1st two examples (human friendly) 'phonecovers' would get equal ranking.
In the last two examples (SEO friendly) the actual page contents will determine which of the two sites gets the higher ranking.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Unless I'm mistaken you are saying that I have this backwards, and that "SiteA.com/phonecovers" is the SE friendly URL, which means SiteA.com/main_page=product_info&cPath=12_9&products_id=124 must therefore be the Human Friendly URL?

In that case I must be a search engine rather than a human, because I find SiteA.com/phonecovers a LOT more friendly than the other.

You can't have this both ways. One of these is SE friendly the other is human friendly.
Do a poll and then come back and tell many how many people think that SiteA.com/main_page=product_info&cPath=12_9&products_id=124 is the Human freindly one.

However, the fact is that search engines will index your website WAY higher in the results with URI mapping enabled.

Please supply a reputable source for this so called fact. No, don't tell me to google it. It is *your* fact, you must have a reference that you can provide as to where you obtained this information.

If you are using keywords in your URL that people are directly searching for, you will be placed higher in the search index, end of story.

There used to be a *little* bit of truth to this.... a decade or so ago, but this hasn't been the case for a long long time. The higher rankings go to the sites with the most relevant content. The URL barely gets a look in these days.

This is EASY to show. Using my current example 'phonecovers'. According to your understanding, if a person goes to google and does a search for 'phonecovers' the highest ranking sites will be those with 'phonecovers' in the URL, correct?

Please go ahead and try...

Excluding the paid adverts, the top link is to www.xcases.com.au/

I don't see 'phonecover' anywhere in that URL In fact I need to go to the bottom of the page for the 1st entry that contains this 'SE freindly URL', namely
www.cellularfactory.com/phonecovers.jsp

IF what you claim had any basis of fact, www.cellularfactory.com/phonecovers.jsp should be the top ranking site. Why isn't it?

Now if you don't mind, I'm going to take this one step further.. TO SHOW THAT ZENCART GETS LITTLE TO NO BENEFIT FROM THIS TYPE OF SEO.

Go to google, and search for "3310 phonecover" (a typical search term for someone looking for Nokia 3310 phone covers).

The 1st few links go to Ebay & Gumtree (another auction site). The reasons should be obvious, these sites will have a *lot* of content that match this search query.

The 4, 5 and 6th links point to
http://shop.vcsweb.com/index.php?mai...&products_id=2
http://shop.vcsweb.com/index.php?mai...products_id=17
http://shop.vcsweb.com/index.php?mai...ndex&cPath=2_8

This is one of our own ZenCart stores. We DO NOT use SEO or URI mapping. These are clearly NOT Human freindly URL's, nor are they the so called SE freindly URL's.
They are zencart native URL's but still manage to occupy three of the top results returned by Google for the relevant search query.

IF the SE Friendly URL's had any value at all then surely
http://www.mytrendyphone.co.uk/shop/...s-13039c1.html (the 1st site returned that has '3310 & 'cover') would be ranked higher than our site, so why do I have to go to page two on Google to find this... and this isn't even an exact match for the search query.. The 1st one that has both '3310' and 'phonecover' in the URL doesn't appear until page 3, with
http://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/woodv...ssories/nokia-3310-paul-frank-purple-snap-lock-phone-cover/1001100613

SO, for that matter, for those people that WANT URI Mapping because they WANT to use keywords in their URL's, I have simply provided a solution for a problem that apparently comes with installing Ceon URI Mapping into Zen Cart.

I've no problems with you providing a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.

Why hijack a good thread helping those people with a similar issue, just to impose YOUR personal methods? Start your own Anti-SEO thread for that.

What makes you think this is personal? It isn't. My comments are based on fact. Nothing more, nothing less.

Why are *you* taking it so personal? Perhaps you somehow blame me for not giving you this education sooner? By you own admission it could have saved you months of work and a lot of headaches if you didn't have to fix a problem that shouldn't have existed in the first place.

I give you full credit for supplying a solution so that others don't have to go through the same experience that you did, BUT, if I can teach people that they don't need to put themselves in this position in the first place isn't that a far better solution?

It is easy to make claims that URI mapping is a good thing, but so far I've never seen any evidence of this fact. My own attempts to either prove or disprove the claims have always ended up showing the claims are without merit. Can YOU show otherwise, are are you simply repeating something that you've read somewhere? I suspect the latter.

So, am I still wasting my breath? Maybe, but even if just one person learns something from this and can save themselves from the needless headaches it has caused you and many others, then I consider it a worthwhile exercise......

Will I ever be able to re-educate you? I doubt it. It is MUCH harder to re-educate someone than it is to teach them the right things in the first place, and this is what saddens/peeves me off more than anything. This is why I have 'hijacked' this thread - To give people a chance to learn of the facts before they succumb to the myths.

Cheers
Rod

ps. I also have anecdotal evidence that URI mapping is not only non-beneficial these days, but is in fact detrimental.. IOW, a site is actually penalised as a result of creating HUMAN FRIENDLY URL's. Search engines really do prefer the 'uniqueness' of machine generated URL's, this is probably why
http://shop.vcsweb.com/index.php?mai...ndex&cPath=2_8 gets a much higher ranking than http://www.mytrendyphone.co.uk/shop/...s-13039c1.html for the same search query '3310 phone cover'. (surely you can see that this is contrary to the SE friendly claims?)

[stevesh]

For some reason, I never get tired of these 'SEO' URL rewriting debates. I used Bing to search for 'rewriting URL SEO' and looked at each of the sites returned on the first two pages of results. Of the sites which recommended rewriting, the latest which had a date posted was from 2009. Most were earlier. One site, which sold rewriting tools, had this posted at the top of the page:

"SEO Tools - URL Rewriting

Google is making some changes on how automated search results are handled, and it is causing some of our tools to not operate correctly. We apologize for any inconviences this has caused, and we are working on ways to make our tools functional again."

I appreciate your providing a fix for those who insist on using these 'tools', although the pretty URL example you provided doesn't tell me the horsepower of the pump any more than the stock Zencart URL does. 2-1-1 hp is meaningless.

I also appreciate RodG providing his usual wall of text providing some very useful information (not just an opinion) that might help other (especially new) Zenners avoid the trouble you experienced.

Even on the Internet, old memes die hard.