Comparing URI mapping plug-ins - which is better?

Hi,

I would like to install one of SEO / URI Mapping plugins on my site. So far I found 4 of them and can't seem to decide which one to install. If you've tried one or more of these, please share your experiences. Would be great to get some sort of a comparison here.

Simple SEO URL:
http://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=711

Ultimate SEO URLs:
http://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=132

Ceon URI Mapping:
http://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=889

Magic SEO URL (69 euros):
http://www.inveostore.com/magic-seo-urls-for-zencart-6

Any info will be greatly appreciated . Thank you in advance!

URL rewriting is of no useful value for ecommerce as SE's find/prefer the dynamic urls and handle them just fine

REMEMBER you are in the business of "SELLING" not of making your url's "pretty"

kobra:

URL rewriting is of no useful value for ecommerce as SE's find/prefer the dynamic urls and handle them just fine

REMEMBER you are in the business of "SELLING" not of making your url's "pretty"

I second these comments.

Cheers
Rod

I keep reading contradicting opinions on this subject..what do you guys think of these opinions (for example):

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls
http://www.seozy.com/url-structures-best-practices/

Also, when i google pretty much anything, sites on top almost always have the keyword in the URL.

Any thoughts?

You shouldn't bother with ANY of them until you've at least updated to a modern version of Zen Cart.

As for the contradicting opinions you're talking about, there's a marginal benefit to having keyword text in the URL. If your site is already extremely well optimized and you're looking for that final 0.5% boost, then there a small bit of value in making your URLs be a mile long with words stuffed in them.

But MUCH MORE IMPORTANT is having properly-written content on your pages and getting other people talking about your site with links back to your site and having those links contain the same keywords in them that you've optimized for. That's all basic SEO stuff. URI rewriting is NOT A MAGIC PILL TO SOLVE ALL PROBLEMS.

Thank you for your response.

Does keeping my site at 1.3.7 make it less optimized for SEO?
Dreading the moment when i will need to upgrade - have installed too many plugins and done too many changes to the code.. Not going to be an easy task.. Also more or less happy with 1.3.7.. Are there are any huge differences to make the upgrade worth it?
As far as other basic SEO stuff, we are working on it..

Thanks again for your help!

greenhat:

Does keeping my site at 1.3.7 make it less optimized for SEO?
Dreading the moment when i will need to upgrade - have installed too many plugins and done too many changes to the code.. Not going to be an easy task.. Also more or less happy with 1.3.7.. Are there are any huge differences to make the upgrade worth it?
Upgrading is not a question of "less optimized for SEO"; it is more a question of "Should I protect my customers and my company". Zen Cart < 1.3.9 is no longer officially supported and my understanding is older (and no longer supported) versions of Zen Cart do not receive new security patches. Even if it will be alot of work to upgrade, it will be less work than dealing with the repercussions of your e-commerce site being compromised.

Also keep in mind current plugins are typically not supported on older versions of Zen Cart. This may cause you problems if you are looking to add a new plugin into the mix. Granted this is just my opinion, you will have to make a decision based upon your best judgement.

Why not give your store a facelift at the same time as upgrading with a complete clean install. Of course you'll need to import and update your database to match.
Make a list of the add-ons that you actually need, and any essential code changes you need, then just start afresh (keeping your image folders of course). You'll have a slicker more SECURE store with a fresh look to boot.
As for which rewrite too, and IF you think you do need one then IF I must vote then I vote Ceon.

greenhat:

I keep reading contradicting opinions on this subject..what do you guys think of these opinions (for example):

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls
http://www.seozy.com/url-structures-best-practices/

Since you asked.... my opinion of these comments are the same as my opinion of all other similar comments sprouted by the SEO companies. They present a 'lot' of information that looks good in theory, but in practice there is liitle to no evidence to back up their claims.. And of course, of you aren't successful at following their 'tips' they'll happily perform the SEO for you... at a price.....

Those of us that argue against SEO have nothing to gain by doing so, and generally only express our opinions when we get so frustrated at seeing so many people needlessly wasting time and money trying to chase this holy grail.

I often ask myself, what kind of magic formula are they using to make many of their claims. They all seem to 'guarantee' top rankings, and they all seem to promote having 1000's of satisfied customers, yet in practice, there are only 10 top ten spots in google. How can a 1000 or more customers share the same top ten places? Now multiply these claims by a 1000 SEO companies, and they are all claiming all their customer get the top rankings.. that 100,00 customers sharing the top 10. Someone is telling porkies!! SEO (as a service) is generally a way to help you part with your cash.

greenhat:

Also, when i google pretty much anything, sites on top almost always have the keyword in the URL.
Any thoughts?

Yes, you are seeing what you want/expect to see... Just as when I go to google with almost any search term I can't help but note with the exception of the paid results, the top results tend to be the computer friendly dynamic URL's rather than the user friendly, or keyword contained URL's.

Actually results vary depending on the search terms of course, but if searching for something to buy, as opposed to searching for something to do, or somewhere to go, then the results are pretty clear cut, in my opinion.

Well, you did ask :)

Cheers
Rod

RodG:

Since you asked.... my opinion of these comments are the same as my opinion of all other similar comments sprouted by the SEO companies. They present a 'lot' of information that looks good in theory, but in practice there is liitle to no evidence to back up their claims.. And of course, of you aren't successful at following their 'tips' they'll happily perform the SEO for you... at a price.....

Those of us that argue against SEO have nothing to gain by doing so, and generally only express our opinions when we get so frustrated at seeing so many people needlessly wasting time and money trying to chase this holy grail.

I started building websites in 1994 - in the days when you wrote the HTML in notepad, and when Webcrawler and Excite were emerging as the first intuitive search engines.

I have followed this subject of "SEO" ever since - and there is so much crap written about it. 99% of what you read on the internet is dubious, and as Rod says, so-called "SEO" companies won't get the ignorant and desperate to part with cash if they did not hype up this topic to the extremes that they do.

The current great driver of "SEO" as a topic, is of course, Google... and everyone wants their site to be "at the top of Google". But at the top for what search terms?

SITE optimisation is more important than Search Engine Optimisation - and if you get the site right, it will rank well. There are TWO fundamental considerations with regard to SITE optimisation:

1. TECHNICAL optimisation
2. INTELLECTUAL optimisation

The technical relate to just that - making sure that the site operates as efficiently as possible and that it is STRUCTURED to present a flawless User Experience. (Core Zen-cart is 100% "optimised" technically... there is NO NEED to tinker with the way it functions in the desperate hope that adding some "SEO" module will improve it.)

The intellectual side is the "human input" part, and this relates to the on-page content, and the degree to which the site attracts the attention of other sites - including its involvement in popular social media, commetary sites (blogs), news and views sites, forums, and relevant directories.

As Google says itself... build the site for PEOPLE, make it USEFUL TO PEOPLE, and RELEVANT with GOOD QUALITY CONTENT, which operates EFFICIENTLY AND LOGICALLY... and you will feature well in search results.

In short, don't waste time or energy tinkering with code issues. Focus on the INTELLECTUAL side of things.

Does keeping my site at 1.3.7 make it less optimized for SEO?
No, but it is very likely to get HACKED
You can upgrade on your schedule or wait until hacked and then be down and have to clean it up prior to upgrading

If your site has ranking currently(being v1.3.7) - then using a rewriter will lose that ranking and you begin all over

lots of good ideas and comments here. will take them all into consideration. thanks everyone!

since we got on the topic of upgrading, would be grateful for answers to the following:

1. are there any known security threats that were not patched in 1.3.7.
2. has the database structure changed from 1.3.7 to 1.5.x ? if so, are there instructions/ scripts that move the data from old to new structure?
3. few years ago , i remember seeing something about a soon-to-be release of 2.0 . Is that still in the works? and if it is, is there an approximate date of release.

Thanks again for your time and information.

Just to stay a bit on topic , i found this useful thread that is relevant to the original topic:

http://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.php?74653-Magic-SEO-URL-vs-Ultimate-SEO-URL-vs-SEO_G

1. Yes. Upgrade to at least 1.3.9h to get the majority of them patched.
2. Yes. The standard upgrade procedure takes care of all that: https://www.zen-cart.com/upgrade Discussion about upgrading belongs in another thread
3. Yes. No dates. For all news about upcoming development or releases, subscribe yourself to the "Release Announcements" section of the forum. It's the first forum in the list on the forum home page.

Greenhat,

I have some experience with all four re-writers.

1. Simple SEO URL, insofar as I know, has not been upgraded for zencart 1.5.x and I do not know if it will be, as the developer is long gone. But IMO it is actually pretty nice and comparable to the highly regarded CEON writer. In some ways, I think it even better than CEON. I still use it on a 1.3.9h cart and am keeping the cart at 1.3.9h specificially for Simple SEO URL for now. See fashion-mart.biz in my signature.

2. Ultimate SEO URL: I am using it on my main site, prommart.com. It has been upgraded for 1.5.x and in my experience works flawlessly. I think it the safest rewriter, as I did a fresh zencart install not long ago back on dynamic urls, did not have Ultimate SEO installed at all, and so long as its htaccess was kept in place, google links still returned to the proper page. This plugin is currently being actively supported by Ihungil for only zencart version 1.5.x and perhaps 1.3.9h.

3. CEON URI: I've tested but never put on a production site. Its main drawback, for us, was that it did not re-write existing categories/products (but it had a commercial addition that would allow that.) Unfortunately, its developer recently passed-away so there may be uncertainty with its future as far as support. But it is an excellent choice.

4. Magic SEO URL: a commercial re-writer that I've used in the past on prommart.com and my sister still uses on her two main sites. I have to say, it does work...very well. My best seasons were when using this re-writer and my sister's two main sites are still hanging in there in a very competetive business. Drawbacks: its htaccess virtually takes over the htaccess file, so you can't do much more with it. Also, category/product names cannot end with a number. Unfortunate for us, as our dresses usally go by designer and style number. So we have to add something like "dress" at the end. Also supposed to have a back-link, even though paid for. Cannot use the free zencart Google Sitemap plugin with this re-writer; however, the developer has a free one for this re-writer that does work. Developer is somewhere in Europe and apparently one person, insofar as I know. Should he one day disappear, what then? But I have to say again, this re-writer has carried my sister thus far.

Thank you Steve! That was a very helpful post.

Have you found your traffic change in any way after you've installed these plugins?

I've ended up installing Simple SEO few days ago. But still ironing out some small issues (for example: product name that has "abc 1: " breaks down), so i havent turned it on in production yet.

greenhat:

Thank you Steve! That was a very helpful post.

Have you found your traffic change in any way after you've installed these plugins?

I've ended up installing Simple SEO few days ago. But still ironing out some small issues (for example: product name that has "abc 1: " breaks down), so i havent turned it on in production yet.

Bad choice...

In reality, there is no "SEO" value in these things. In fact, Google PREFERS that the URL's are left as-is. Zencart generates perfect URL's for search engines that are easy to index and to follow.

However... if you are intent on re-writing URL's, then the only RELIABLE module is CEON URI Re-writer. The others are "risky", and can interfere with the behaviour of both core zencart and many other plugin modules.

I think these "xxx SEO" modules should just be renamed to "Friendly Urls" and thought of as totally non-essential window-dressing.

I use CEON URI...but I'm totally biased and believe that anything Conor took the time to do, would be done as good as possible.

I use it as we are continually pasting-in page links to reply to email enquiries and it just looks better....and I don't care if it does nothing else.

I believe the time spent worrying about google rankings is better spent improving content...its the search engine company's job to find the best content: you do your job and let them do theirs.

The two I recommend the most under Zen Cart 1.5 are "Ultimate SEO URLs" and "CEON URI Mapper (SEO)". Which one is better? Both have tradeoffs and the answer depends upon the store itself. Currently if there is a NEED to keep URLs from a previous non Zen Cart based store or to have full control of your URLs - CEON is better. If you do a large number of imports, product update automation, the ability to switch between Dynamic / Rewritten URLs, or need to lower the number of SQL Queries to the database - Ultimate is better. Just a quick comparison - there are other factors as well.

I cannot speak towards the other offerings.

torvista:

I think these "xxx SEO" modules should just be renamed to "Friendly Urls"...
I'd have to agree - I never liked the word SEO in the names and would prefer simply URL or URI.

I took over maintaining one of these modules around the time Zen Cart 1.5 was released. The main reason was having a nice user friendly (human readable) URL was desirable to some of my clients. The name was left to enable existing users of the module to more quickly (and easily) find updated versions.

The discussion of "Why human readable URLs?" I'll leave to other threads.