Can Pages Be Converted To Regular URL's Instead Of Generated URL's?

Hello all,

Is there a way to change the url's from...

http://www.mysite.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=103&products_id=528

to something like...

http://www.mysite.com/my-category-page.php
http://www.mysite.com/my-category/my-product-page.php

I'm trying to get my SEO back to where it used to be in Google.

Thanks for viewing!

There are some mods for url rewriting but that will do little for ranking. Most SEs don't give a flip which you use. They rank on content.

When you say that you're trying to get the rankings back, are you saying that at some point recently you had a site that used human readable web addresses, that something changed for your site to use the default dynamic addresses and you are wanting to make your product accessible by the previous addresses or as suggested above thinking that by doing so now would change the rankings?

Thanks for the replies.

While content is indeed the most important aspect of being indexed and ranking high in Google, or any search engine for that matter, it's also a boost if the page names have the "relevant" keyword(s) in them. While people are moving away from that important point of seo, it's still relevant in seo and getting to the top of the search engines.

Let's take this for example:

***** We have 2 websites with the same exact content
***** Each website is put on it's own domain that is new.
***** Submit each website to be spidered, crawled and indexed.

From my own experiences from the above information, pages that are keyword named, ranked better than pages that are "generated numerically by id" or not sounding human-like page names. Despite what many people may hear, I am confident that "keyword rich" page names will always play a part in ranking your pages as they have been important in the past.... that's just my own opinion.

My site fell out of the search engines because of not having content good enough for Google to consider. I have built my websites with Joomla and rewriting my url's have always bought up my position in Google and my Alexa Rankings. Adding the right keywords and description tags have helped even more. I had surgery a little over a year ago and I let my site go down because I didn't have it in me to sit in front of a computer. Now I'm getting my site back up to current standards and I was wondering if it was possible to rewrite the pages easily as I make any page, being product page or any other to something more human looking/sounding.

....starting to brainstorm....

Now on the other hand, I can make a Joomla website with the products in them, but link to the shopping cart (Zen Cart) if they click on the "Buy" button or clicking on the image or whatever, like I did in the past.

The reason I did away with using Joomla was because I didn't want to have to update both websites if I updated my Zen Cart products.

As I type this, I'm brainstorming some more. I do believe I have my old Joomla/Zen website on a hard drive. I can do as I am wanting to do, but the only downfall is linking each catalog page (Joomla) with each product page in Zen Cart. It's time-consuming but it will work.

You know what, I'm kinda glad I posted this question, yet, at the same time, why didn't I think of this before I even posted my question?

I think I may have solved my issue...

I can use Joomla as the showcase and any other fancy-dancy stuff I want and use the Zen Cart for just the shopping cart part. And doing it this way, I can link to the store by having the store in a /directory/ that is keyword-rich.

In essence, I can actually drive traffic to my Zen Cart store by driving them to my Joomla first.

One thing I will end with...
Zen Cart has been the BEST SHOPPING CART I have ever used, and I have used quite a few so far.

On and ending note....
Have any of you been to a website and then when you clicked on a shopping cart/store link and it took you to another domain or different folder on the website? Many websites advertise on one site but take you to another site or folder if you click on something to purchase. And although it may seem like double-work to accomplish the same goal, it's something worth doing. I ranked on the 1st page of Google for "most" keywords/phrases I targeted.

TesterServers

This might change some of your thinking. Not a single mention of URL changing. https://searchengineland.com/8-major-google-ranking-signals-2017-278450
The problem with trying to compare exactly the same sites is that one is probably automatically demoted for duplicate content.

dbltoe:

This might change some of your thinking. Not a single mention of URL changing. https://searchengineland.com/8-major-google-ranking-signals-2017-278450
The problem with trying to compare exactly the same sites is that one is probably automatically demoted for duplicate content.
Agreed. And the one that's not keyword-rich is the one I would bet would be the less relevant or duplicate site according to Google... not unless they're using timestamps and using that as to which one is the original and the duplicate.

I'm speculating all of this, but my experience have been the way I stated before as far as seo. Also, rich content also means "original" content.

I forgot the name of the website, but you can test any web page and see if there is any duplication of it online, and the website I'm talking about will tell you how many sites that have duplicated content. Darn, I forget the name of that website. I'll say all the alphabets from a-z until I can remember the name of that website. I'm sure someone here knows what website I'm talking about.

Just found it.... http://www.copyscape.com. If your content is unique, you should only get results from just your own site. According to this website (unofficially), you should do good in Google as long as you have the right keywords and all your seo is properly inserted on the pages (front end = visitor side / back end = source code).

TesterServers

For the last 14 years we have operated zencart sites that use EITHER dynamic URL's (core zencart), OR URL re-writes (rendering readable paths to web pages). For these, we use CEON URI MAPPING.

We have found not a shred of evidence that re-written URL's advantageously influence page ranking. The important search engines largely ignore how a URL is written.

Search engines now look for CONTENT descriptors - particularly those that use SCHEMA.ORG protocols, and that render such microdata in a JSON/LD format in the page header.

If you still believe that URL-Rewriting is important for SEO (and is definitely isn't), then you can consider something like CEON URI MAPPING.

But is will not influence your site ranking one little bit.

Thanks for all the replies. I have much to consider as I move forward. Either way, I'm hooked on Zen Cart.

I will do some testing soon so I can tell what is working for me now compared to what worked for me in the past.

Thanks for all the info. Much appreciated!

TesterServers