Magic SEO URL vs Ultimate SEO URL vs SEO_G

[mydanilo]

All sound advice - thanks for that.

Indeed - no one really knows how to get the top spot on any search engine, except the search engines! I guess what is important in this thread is whether these mods benefit or hurt your site's ranking when compared to the standard ZC link structure. As ranking is not only controlled by how the urls look (e.g. your site may be more popular because it has nicer looking urls, thus creating more people linking to your site), then user-friendlyness, ability to see what page you're on and what it's parents are, etc, is also important.

SEO friendly url's do help. At least it seems that way if you look at competitive key words. Top listed sites have them. Do a search for wedding favors and have a look at the top few. Google marks the found key word in the url bold. Why? Guess what, it matters to them so it has to matters to me...

[wtashby]

If I may interject once again:

Zen Cart is the worlds Greatest FREE open source shopping cart software available. Support is FREE, ABUNDANT, FAST, and KNOWLEDGEABLE (scuse the all caps there).

That being said, why do people insist on purchasing third party programs, mods, and software without checking with the REAL experts here first?

The age old addage "Buyer Beware" seems to be obviously appropriate for this thread.

There is no "magic" (hint hint) formula for achieving top key word or page rankings. It's an ongoing battle that is being fought daily by some of the most ruthless, unethical, dishonest jackasses, spammers, and cheaters on the planet, and us little guys, mom and pops, and privateers, unfortanately, will NEVER, EVER win!

But, we can try. Follow the rules and guidlines set forth by Google (the mac daddy), check, and double check your site for errors, good content, proper meta and key word placement, try to get some good quality RELEVANT back links to your site (try a relevant high quality blog or two, but google how to do that first).

Install and use the GoogleBase and Yahoo Submit mods, and Definately install and use the Google XML Sitemap mod. If you really want to try a GOOD seo url mod that does NO damage to core files, and actually does seem to help a little, again, as before, I reccomend Simple SEO. Nothing "magic" about it, it just works nicely out of the box. And, it is FREE. The support is FREE.

With Gas prices getting as high as they are, it's nice to get something for FREE, isn't it?

[lankeeyankee]

SEO friendly url's do help. At least it seems that way if you look at competitive key words. Top listed sites have them. Do a search for wedding favors and have a look at the top few. Google marks the found key word in the url bold. Why? Guess what, it matters to them so it has to matters to me...

Thank you, Mydanilo! I look every day at how people reach my site using the user tracking mod, and many times I see the search keywords in bold in the actual URL of my competitors that are above and below me. I have always thought that the URL content had an effect. But, to defend the standard ZC install, I am constantly amazed (knock on wood!!) by how well my standard ZC links appear in Google. My site has been live since right after XMas '07, so just over 4 moths, and I am indexed every day by Google and we appear if not #1 at least on the first page for so many keywords that I am totally amazed and totally in LOVE with ZC just the way it is in terms of SEO. I think the absolute most important thing is to have great keyword density in your meta title, meta description, and page content. My own personal experience, after having paid for a certain SEO mod, is that the default ZC structure works and you need to focus on the above point of meta data and content and then Google will love you. I make a point of having keywords repeated no more than 4 times in my meta content. Please feel free to check out my site and do searches for items related to it, I know there are certain categories of items that are very competitive compared to others, but you will get my point. I couldn't be happier after so short of a time, after all there are many many site that have been around longer than 4 months BUT I AM BEATING MANY OF THEM ON MANY KEYWORD SEARCHES, and my sales are going up and up and up.....

I think the bottom line is, ZC out of the box will get you in the hunt as long as you add teh extra ingredient of great and relevant content. You might be able to tweak a little better SE listing(not Ranking) by improving the URL string but after using a paid for SEO mod, please see my other posts, to start my site(with very dismal results but that might just be the way it worked out), I can't fault the stock ZC system from a SE point of view since I am frankly Kicking a$$. My sales are growing so well, and my PR and #1 or 1st page listings are so good, I should knock on wood. AND, most importantly, the donations to the devs of ZC will keep flowing and I hope that EVERYONE that is on this forum will donate at LEAST a few $$ a month to keep it rolling along. ZC and this forum community are SO awesome, you will not find a stronger community elsewhere.

[lankeeyankee]

If I may interject once again:

Zen Cart is the worlds Greatest FREE open source shopping cart software available. Support is FREE, ABUNDANT, FAST, and KNOWLEDGEABLE (scuse the all caps there).

That being said, why do people insist on purchasing third party programs, mods, and software without checking with the REAL experts here first?

The age old addage "Buyer Beware" seems to be obviously appropriate for this thread.

There is no "magic" (hint hint) formula for achieving top key word or page rankings. It's an ongoing battle that is being fought daily by some of the most ruthless, unethical, dishonest jackasses, spammers, and cheaters on the planet, and us little guys, mom and pops, and privateers, unfortanately, will NEVER, EVER win!

But, we can try. Follow the rules and guidlines set forth by Google (the mac daddy), check, and double check your site for errors, good content, proper meta and key word placement, try to get some good quality RELEVANT back links to your site (try a relevant high quality blog or two, but google how to do that first).

Install and use the GoogleBase and Yahoo Submit mods, and Definately install and use the Google XML Sitemap mod. If you really want to try a GOOD seo url mod that does NO damage to core files, and actually does seem to help a little, again, as before, I reccomend Simple SEO. Nothing "magic" about it, it just works nicely out of the box. And, it is FREE. The support is FREE.

With Gas prices getting as high as they are, it's nice to get something for FREE, isn't it?

YES YES and YES to everything you have to say!!!

You are speaking the honest truth and there is no "magic" in what you have to say.

[mydanilo]

I did a search for snare drums on google. A key phrase that is searched
408 times daily with 2670000 competitors. Search for bass drum, about the same thing....

I can't see you on the first few pages? Look at the first page listings and look at what you find in the url's? You find url's like www.xxxxxx.org/percussion/bassdrum.html

Can you tell me what key word you are happy with? Does the listing in google point to a category or product page?

Now if you try to compete for key phrases that are searched thousands of times a day, you will see the need for every bit help you can get.

Don't get me wrong, I am quiet pleased with the rankings I am getting with my standard installs as well, especially in more specialized fields where key words are not so hard fought over. The sites in my signature do not use any SEO url mods and I am pleased with results. Indexing is no problem.

And by the way, the main page is never an issue anyway. This is where you have your main key words placed and no url mod makes a difference here. It may only affect, help the sub categories and products pages.

I feel the key word rich url is ONE small factor in the SEO puzzle that is worth pursuing if you need every little bit of help you can get. It's like tuning a car to the max.

[barricades]

One issue I discovered is that products that have incorrect categorizations, e.g. associated with disabled/deleted categories or with an invalid "master" category, seem to throw a 404 with MSEO installed. The pages still come up fine, but if you look at the header, you'd see 404 instead of 200. Of course, these miscategorized products should be fixed anyway (I think it's not cool Zen even allows this to happen); but be vigilant in checking your links sitewide with MSEO installed to make sure you don't have any of these erroneous 404s popping up.

I'm concerned that this might be happening to me. How to I actually look at the header? Sorry for being stupid

[iRAY]

You can see HTTP headers by installing e.g. Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox and selecting Information - View Response Headers.

But since MSU send HTTP 404 only after redirections to dynamic URLs is made, I don't think it is MSU issue.

[Website Rob]

barricades, I wouldn't be too worried about what you quoted by capnhairdo. Their site (babybestbuy.com) has some specific problems going on with that do not look like they are related to MSEO. In perusing their site I noticed I can get more than one Zen Cart ID which shows there is a more basic problem somewhere.

Also, anyone concerned about what a Module is or isn't doing can always turn the Module OFF to verify, if the Module is the problem or something else.

[fergusmacdonald]

Thanks for the replies guys, much appreciated and some good advice.

I would conclude that ZC's links work fine for SEO purposes, so if there is a mod which will improve their readability, without hampering the site's pagerank (ie by creating duplicate content etc) then it should increase the organic click through rate (i'm certainly more likely to click a link which is /drums if i'm looking for drums rather than /c-123/-24 etc).

The advice is all appreciated and i will definitely look into SSEO instead of my current Ultimate SEO.

[capnhairdo]

I wouldn't be too worried about what you quoted by capnhairdo. Their site (babybestbuy.com) has some specific problems going on with that do not look like they are related to MSEO. In perusing their site I noticed I can get more than one Zen Cart ID which shows there is a more basic problem somewhere.

Rob, I'm not sure what you mean, but if you've discovered a problem with our site, I'd be keen to find and fix it. Can you explain?

anyone concerned about what a Module is or isn't doing can always turn the Module OFF to verify, if the Module is the problem or something else.

Of course, this was the very first thing I did to isolate the problem with the 404s we were experiencing, which is how I figured out it was MSEO. I then went to the trouble of decoding MSEO and actually found the line of code within it that was issuing the 404 erroneously. iRay will deny this, as he did when I first reported the issue, and I don't care to rehash that argument. So take this for what you will, but know that my claims were not simply idle speculation.