Ultimate SEO v3 (and v2.200) [Support Thread]

not in mine

pixelpadre:

not in mine
... and which version of USU are you using? I'll note that the above 'guidance' has been on the readme's **Installation **tab forever.

lat9:

... and which version of USU are you using? I'll note that the above 'guidance' has been on the readme's **Installation **tab forever.

I was looking at a different readme when I said it wasn't there. You are correct, it is there. But it's a source of confusion. When you are giving installation instructions and say put it in the temp directory, that sure tells me that you want it there, as opposed to just uploading it to where it belongs.......like every other plugin tells you to do. Yank that temp non sense out of there. Absolutely no need of putting anything in a temp directory or any other directory but the store directory. Geez. What are you thinking? Unbelievable.

Ugggg.....

Why do these plugins have soooooooooo many problems.

Uploaded everything to the proper directory structure. Configuration shows Ultimate URLS at the bottom.

But new products or old products do not show a field to enter the friendly url.

I just checked and I am getting friendly urls but no way to edit them.

USU doesn't provide a means of directly-editing those URLs.

lat9:

USU doesn't provide a means of directly-editing those URLs.

Years ago it did. Why not put it back at the bottom of the new item page?

pixelpadre:

Years ago it did. Why not put it back at the bottom of the new item page?
Because, right now USU is a very lightweight solution and the database lookup required for each URL generated would adversely affect a site's performance.

Thanks for this mod, I'm looking at installing this on new install of 1.5.7c on PHP 7.3 with OPC, IH5 and colorbox installed.
I am reading the .htaccess file and not really understanding much of what I actually need to change other than where the shop is located by changing this:
**#RewriteBase /shop/
**to
RewriteBase /final/ (if shop is installed in a directory other than the root)
and if shop is installed in root directory, than just leave the code as is with #.

As for the other settings, I'm not sure if I need them or not?

#Options -Indexes

#Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

#RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$
#RewriteRule ^index.php$ / [R=301,L]

I currently do not have a .htaccess in my directory.

Also, to the Professionals out there, do I really need this plugin?! Will it help customers identify my items when viewing URL's on Google?
I've just set up my shop and looking to see what plugins I need to install to make it more appealing to GOOGLE and CUSTOMERS.

No response yet?! Any seasoned moderator care to share if installing this SEO plugin is better than Not installing it when it comes to Google ranking and customer convenience?
I hope I can get an answer soon before Google starts indexing my site!!!
Thank you in advance.

rlexyd:

No response yet?! Any seasoned moderator care to share if installing this SEO plugin is better than Not installing it when it comes to Google ranking and customer convenience?
I hope I can get an answer soon before Google starts indexing my site!!!
Thank you in advance.

This has been discussed before, almost ad nauseum, so rather than continuing the discussion one such thread is https://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.php?223575-Changing-page-name-URL-s-for-better-SEO-rankings

Thank you Simon, will test my site with google lighthouse in the morning.

rlexyd:

Thank you Simon, will test my site with google lighthouse in the morning.
Your only problem is with the size of images slowing your TTI on mobile.
SEO is at 100 for both.
Google has already found your site. You need to finish your robots.txt and add sitemap to properly tell them where to go.

dbltoe:

Your only problem is with the size of images slowing your TTI on mobile.
SEO is at 100 for both.
Google has already found your site. You need to finish your robots.txt and add sitemap to properly tell them where to go.

Thank you John,
I did the test and you are correct the images are the problem but I don't know how to fix that?
IH doesn't show my images clear and when it shrinks them even thought I set compression quality to 100.
I've also looked into WebP format which is better quality as I've tested it, but it doesn't work on iPhones which at this stage is my main source of clients.
I can't think of any other way to solve this issue?!

As for adding sitemap, I just downloaded and installed it on my 1.5.7c.
Was a simple install but the issue now is setting the parameters?! Have no clue what I need to set? I've looked into Configuration -> Sitemap XML but not sure what I need to change?!
Also step, 7: To have this update and automatically notify Google, you will need to set up a Cron job via your host's control panel. How do I do that?

As for robots.txt, can you please advise if the below is correct and sufficient enough?

*User-agent: **
Allow: /

User-agent: amazonaws
Disallow: /

User-agent: **
Disallow: /index.php?main_page=popup_image
Disallow: /advanced_search
Disallow: /cookie_usage
Disallow: /unsubscribe
Disallow: /cgi-bin/

Thank you in advance!

Ok, as for the (Select Sitemaps to Generate), I've left what is already ticked in sitemap, not sure if it's better to tick the boxnews, news, reviews?
I had to manually add a few of my categories as they did not get added to the file.

As for the main domain, do you have to use (.../index.php?main_page=index)? Can't just just use the actual domain without the index.php part?

Also, I first went to (https://www.xml-sitemaps.com) to create a sitemap and it scanned a whole lot more pages than the zen cart plugin did. Is it better to use that instead or stick with this?

Still not sure if the robots.txt I created is good to go or if it's need further adjusting?!

I went to google and submitted my link the sitemap.xml but it says couldn't fetch and Sitemap could not be read.
Any reason why?
I also put my link in the robots.txt I think correctly?

Could we take the general discussion of SEO to another thread, please?

I just discovered over 20000 logs generated in the past two days containing these kinds of lines:
Request sent to href_link('index.php?main_page=site_map', '', 'NONSSL', true, true, true, true)
Generated URL: https://www.xxxxx.com/site_map.html

Is this the result of caching (admin settings) or what? I've never seen it before in all these years.

delia:

I just discovered over 20000 logs generated in the past two days containing these kinds of lines:
Request sent to href_link('index.php?main_page=site_map', '', 'NONSSL', true, true, true, true)
Generated URL: https://www.xxxxx.com/site_map.html

Is this the result of caching (admin settings) or what? I've never seen it before in all these years.
Do you have USU's debug enabled (or somewhere a constant defined for USU_DEBUG)?

I don't but someone who thinks they know what they are doing was trying to install some code. I'm now cleaning up after him. Where would I start to look for such?

delia:

I don't but someone who thinks they know what they are doing was trying to install some code. I'm now cleaning up after him. Where would I start to look for such?
Use the admin's Tools :: Developers' Tool Kit and search for USU_DEBUG in all storefront *.php files.