Newbie Needs Help With Title Tag's & H1 & H2 Tags

Hi, this is the 1st time iam looking into the title tags, H1 & H2 tags.

Could somebody tell me where this is found?

Also if i do this for each category, how do i find the relevent file for each category?

Thanks in advance & Happy New Year

We need to know more about what you are trying to do to answer you correctly. There are lots of <h1> and <h2> tags generated in your site; if you are trying to change the look of one set of them, there may be a file to edit. There is no such thing as a "file for each category".

I think the OP is hinting at doing SEO stuff...

Thankfully, these are auto-inserted into the zc formatting where they matter most.

These tags <h1><h2><h3> etc can be styled any way you want to in the CSS, but don't worry about trying to insert "new" ones.

What may be useful, is the embedding of additional H tags in your product description texts, and as this text is inserted manually, you can add any html tags you like into the text.

The meta tag data is generally controlled in a PHP file in the languages folder(s) called meta_tags.php . This sets global tags and tag behaviours.

You can also manage meta tags in the Admin categories/product screens to set meta data for individual categories and products.

Hi, yes iam trying to do some SEO. :shocking:
Contacted a SEO company and they sent me a list of Recommended Title Tags, Meta Keywords & recommended H1, H2 & H3 tags. So i figured i could do this :no:

How would i add the <h1><h2><h3> etc tags to the CSS???

If i add <h1> tags etc to the meta tags in the Admin categories/product screens to set meta data for individual categories and products, is that the same???

Also is it possible to change the text on the web tab on each category that i click on? Because at the moment whatever category i click the text in the tab reads the same.

Hope you can help.

Thanks

"web tab"? What is that referring to?
Zen Cart automatically applies h1, h2 and h3 tags to appropriate places on every page. If you have given relevant names to your categories and products, the tags will contain the best possible SEO content without any further action on your part. Since these tags are all built dynamically using info from the database, customizing them further would be a huge job, only to be undertaken by a PHP/MySQL expert.

You would not add h1 tags to metadata - they are not in the same ballpark and it would not work. Meta keywords are pretty much useless, since they were so horribly abused by people trying to game the system, and search engines basically ignore them now. The meta description is officially ignored by Google for page ranking, but a good description may be used as the search result content and help people (remember people?) decide to click on your link over another.

When editing products and categories in admin, there is a place to include custom metadata for each of them.

"How would i add the <h1><h2><h3> etc tags to the CSS???"

These are already set in stylesheet.css for general use on your site; you would only want to change them if you want your headings to look different than they do now. This will be irrelevant to SEO.

hcd888:

Hi, yes iam trying to do some SEO. :shocking:
Contacted a SEO company and they sent me a list of Recommended Title Tags, Meta Keywords & recommended H1, H2 & H3 tags. So i figured i could do this :no:

How would i add the <h1><h2><h3> etc tags to the CSS???

If i add <h1> tags etc to the meta tags in the Admin categories/product screens to set meta data for individual categories and products, is that the same???

Also is it possible to change the text on the web tab on each category that i click on? Because at the moment whatever category i click the text in the tab reads the same.

Hope you can help.

Thanks

I think you need to spend a little LESS time on discussing SEO with so-called "SEO Consultants" and a little more time on learning the fundamentals of Zencart.

The main drivers of good positions on SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) relate to RELEVANCE, CONTENT and POPULARITY.

There are a few "technicalities" regarding the structure of sites and the pages they present, but as has been said, Zencart already caters for these in its inherent code structure.

You can manage meta-tag content in your ZC Store in a variety of ways - all of which are well-documented, but you do NOT need to start fiddling with the core code... Please be careful of taking "advice" from "SEO Experts" who have no clear understanding of Zencart.

Focus on using zencart's inherent mechanisms to make your content (including meta tag content) RELEVANT and TOPICAL.

I would also recommend you install Andrew Berezin's SITEMAPS-XML module, and use this in conjunction with the various management systems now available in the major search engines (Google webmaster dashboard, etc).

Good SEO is not rocket-science. Melanie (mprough) has an excellent 12-point SEO strategy for Zencart, and if you read it and follow it you can wave goodbye to your current "SEO Expert"... You may even recommend to this "expert" that they too read the following:
http://pro-webs.net/blog/2009/09/10/zen-cart-seo-12-steps/

As an SEO expert, I can say that almost all of what is being told to you here is the truth. SEO is not rocket science, just make sure that our H1 and H2 aren't too long, and are to the point and relevant.

Having said that, the article is great in most respects, but is off a little with fact (i.e. bing is now starting to use meta kw, and google also launched a statement where they will be putting more weight on meta desc.

I like zencart and SEO many larger companies use it for retail. In all cases however, when requesting that I have the ability to edit all H1 tags, the developer has always had to do an extra 'job' to make this possible. It seems that product H1's are always perfect but category H1's need to be changed a lot, especially for higher level pages. In fact, I found this post while doing more research into custom H1 tags for Zencart. In my opinion, there should be am H1 field right where you add yor own copy, or there shuld be an option to turn off H1 tags per page, and then just add them as html in the content editing...

Fleury75:

As an SEO expert, I can say that almost all of what is being told to you here is the truth. SEO is not rocket science, just make sure that our H1 and H2 aren't too long, and are to the point and relevant.

Having said that, the article is great in most respects, but is off a little with fact (i.e. bing is now starting to use meta kw, and google also launched a statement where they will be putting more weight on meta desc.

I like zencart and SEO many larger companies use it for retail. In all cases however, when requesting that I have the ability to edit all H1 tags, the developer has always had to do an extra 'job' to make this possible. It seems that product H1's are always perfect but category H1's need to be changed a lot, especially for higher level pages. In fact, I found this post while doing more research into custom H1 tags for Zencart. In my opinion, there should be am H1 field right where you add yor own copy, or there shuld be an option to turn off H1 tags per page, and then just add them as html in the content editing...

Hmmm... while you may consider yourself a SEO "expert" (I meet lots of them...), you seem to have scant understanding of zencart.

As has been said by myself and Glenn, there is NO NEED to fiddle with core ZC code to maximize the technicalities of inherent SE efficiency.

Sure... how you adjust and configure all the settings and parameters can have an influence... and these are DELIBERATELY" left optional for people to make their own choices... but NONE relate to code changes.

If you recommend your suggested routes to your clients, you are doing them a disservice. Before you start posting recommendations about how ZC "ought" to behave, you would do well to study that behaviour first.

Contacted a SEO company and they sent me a list of ... Meta Keywords ...

Run!

Run away. Very fast.

They are living like it is still 1998.

Another Zen newbie here and a quick question, as content is king I have created some targeted EZ pages for particular keywords I'm after within my shop (yet to launch) I for the life of me can't seem to find how to edit EZ page <title> tag or meta discription etc, I'm no code man so hoepfully nothing too heavy. Thanks in advance.

Look carefully at includes/languages/english/meta_tags.php

schoolboy:

Hmmm... while you may consider yourself a SEO "expert" (I meet lots of them...), you seem to have scant understanding of zencart.

As has been said by myself and Glenn, there is NO NEED to fiddle with core ZC code to maximize the technicalities of inherent SE efficiency.

Sure... how you adjust and configure all the settings and parameters can have an influence... and these are DELIBERATELY" left optional for people to make their own choices... but NONE relate to code changes.

If you recommend your suggested routes to your clients, you are doing them a disservice. Before you start posting recommendations about how ZC "ought" to behave, you would do well to study that behaviour first.

@schoolbay

If I offended you in any way it was not intentional. If you developed the code or were on the production team I can see how you might be slighted when someone posts about a possible inadequacy in the code.

Yes I am an SEO Expert, own SEO Visions, with a portfolio including Disney's Club Penguin. Either Im an exptert or a con, regardless it makes no difference with what Im posting, so please dont use the forum to question my integrity.

My suggestion was to have H1 entries either in the meta edit area or in the page edit area. This is a very obvious benefit to anyone who works in my field. However, I did not suggest anyone makes code changes anywhere in Zen Cart, I simply stated that when I ask my developers, from multiple projects, to allow me to insert custom H1's for each product page from a cms level, they all claim to need to make some code adjustments and some cant do it at all. As an advertising and marketing expert, I do not touch the code, I delegate, and dont have a need to upgrade my 'scant level of Zen Cart'. I am simply being told that what I want is not 'inherent' in Zen Cart. Whether they need to change the coding, make "adjustments" or are simply too underskilled to even know what to do, the fact remains that H1's should be included in the cms as an editable field out of the box. If this feature is available out of the box, and the deveolopers for my clients simply are unaware of this feature, please point me to the area where I can turn on this function, and I will reverse bill them for their time, and pay you for yours. By the sounds of it, the fix should be a very quick and the bill small.

"allow me to insert custom H1's for each product page from a cms level"

So the product's or category's name is not appropriate or sufficient h1 content? How about editing the name in admin to be good SEO content? As I said, having a different h1 for the page would require a new database field, the admin modifications to enter it and front-end code to retrieve and use it.

Fleury75:

My suggestion was to have H1 entries either in the meta edit area or in the page edit area. This is a very obvious benefit to anyone who works in my field. However, I did not suggest anyone makes code changes anywhere in Zen Cart, I simply stated that when I ask my developers, from multiple projects, to allow me to insert custom H1's for each product page from a cms level, they all claim to need to make some code adjustments and some cant do it at all. As an advertising and marketing expert, I do not touch the code, I delegate, and dont have a need to upgrade my 'scant level of Zen Cart'. I am simply being told that what I want is not 'inherent' in Zen Cart. Whether they need to change the coding, make "adjustments" or are simply too underskilled to even know what to do, the fact remains that H1's should be included in the cms as an editable field out of the box. If this feature is available out of the box, and the deveolopers for my clients simply are unaware of this feature, please point me to the area where I can turn on this function, and I will reverse bill them for their time, and pay you for yours. By the sounds of it, the fix should be a very quick and the bill small.

The default style in zencart for the Product Name is H1. As a SEO "expert" you ought to know that excessive use of the H1 tag in descriptive text can be detrimental to SE ranking, but that said, it is relatively easy to make whatever you want H1 in the product description, simply through the HTMLArea wysiwyg editor - when inline styles can be applied even by the most web-ignorant novice. (Just highlight the desired text and, using HTMLArea menu features, apply an inline H1 style.)

As Zencart is opensource it firstly has to be provided "out-the-box" as a fairly generic tool, because every user's needs are unique... and secondly, as it is opensource, you (or anybody) is free to modify it in any way you choose.

To infer that opensource software MUST have certain features (QUOTE: the fact remains that H1's should be included in the cms as an editable field out of the box) is plainly ridiculous. It is opensource... either use it or don't use it, and as mentioned, you are free to customize whatever features you wish - there is no law that says you can't.

I've came across this thread just now, looking for some guidelines in regards to these h1-h3 tags and how it pertains to ZenCart.

First, the h1 tag is the most important tag on a page and should only be used once per page. h2 tags should be supportive of the h1 tag and elaborate on the h1 description. h3 tags follow suit... there can be several h2 and h3 tags but not excessive.

It is also best NOT to use a class or inline styling on those tags, except what is formatted in the external CSS file. Is that true actually? ZC uses classes and ids on their h tags. Does that dilute the impact of the tag? I've read something similar..... the SEO experts here know?

That said, I am trying to figure out if ZenCart makes the most reasonable use of those tags. The category headings seem to all use h3. There is also usually 1 h1 tag on each page. No h2 tags on the categories but h2 tags in the individual product pages (for the price of the product...). Thus gives me a pretty good idea how to re-word some of my categories and also insert some h2 headings in text.

Also.. looking at the source code of several pages: there IS a lot of space between sections, the content should really be closer to the <body tag, because SE 's like text and any relevant info to be as CLOSE as possible to the top of the page. Anyone has dealt with that here i.e. making the code much more compact than it appears now?

Yolanda

Simply run your page through the W3C HTML Validator and select the "Show Outline" option.

It will generate an indented bullet-point list of your headings. You'll soon see they they are a summary of your page.

Hi,

I'm just working on seo for a zen cart site.
And a good way to see how your page looks for search engines is to:
google your site
click on cached
view text only

this shows the heading tags used by the size.

The problem is then finding where to change them????