Simple SEO URL (OLD version) [support thread]

It may, or may not. All those are theories, Google keeps it a secret. But it's what you have to live with right now, it's just the way ZC links are created right now.

I do believe Google take such things into consideration as well, they wont go crazy and just punish all the sites out there.

Yellow - a few questions:

1. How does this compare to Ultimate SEO urls and Magic SEO urls? Is it going to be better? Do you think the rewrite method will be adopted into the core code eventually?

2. Do you want this to eventually be a contribution, or is this a one time project?

3. Does this use mod_rewrite to change the urls? Does it cause duplicate content?

4. Is there a way we could contribute to the development?

I just ask because I am evaluating SEO mods for zen cart. Magic seo urls looks like it has a great feature set, but it is not truly open source and I need that for a modified cart. Further I have heard it has actually hurt some sites' google ranking.

1. How does this compare to Ultimate SEO urls and Magic SEO urls? Is it going to be better? Do you think the rewrite method will be adopted into the core code eventually?
   --> huhm, Ultimate seo is no longer developed. Magic SEO does not support every link, and it costs.
   But again, those 2 modules have been around for a while, they do have something better than this one, for sure.

2. Do you want this to eventually be a contribution, or is this a one time project?
   --> yes, when I have the time, I will work on it

3. Does this use mod_rewrite to change the urls? Does it cause duplicate content?
   --> it does, but I do have plan to have a fall-back method for it.
   -->currently, it creates links the way zen does, if zen can cause duplicated content, this one will as well. (I do have plan to fix this)

4. Is there a way we could contribute to the development?
   Download it, work on it. The class is well commented, in fact we have a few coders contributed new codes here and there.

This sounds like an excellent mod. Thank you

The direction Simple SEO is headed looks great. I love that the URL paths appear to be easily customized. But I'm not sure what all its drawbacks are (compared to Magic SEO Url, specifically). What are they?

I ask because my client's site has been hit hard in Google's rankings. The URL turmoil it has experienced has dropped it from the top ten in many areas. For seven years up through December it was a Cold Fusion site and the URLs hadn't changed. In January, the site relaunched with Zen Cart. In February, many of the site's product IDs were accidentally changed and not noticed until too late. In March, the categories were overhauled and some of its category IDs were merged/swapped/deleted. That could have been handled better but what's done is done. In April, the site will go to friendly URLs.

At this time the plan is to use mSEO despite its URL path drawbacks. mSEO has 301 Redirect support, prevents duplication, and with the Numinix add-on, feeds are corrected, too. This appeals to my client.

Eventually, sSEO looks like the best solution but I'm not sure it is right now. I may not have the time to deal with its drawbacks, two of which I understand are that it does not yet prevent duplication and does not yet handle the 301 Redirect thing. Do I have that right? I may have accidentally skipped a page in this thread.

If I go with mSEO now and then in May or June, sSEO is ready for prime time, will sSEO be able to handle all the redirects for the mSEO URLs that have already propagated into the search engines?

Also, I am unsure about why any of these SEO solutions insist on putting the ID in the URL. What is the point if customers use unique product names? Does it have something to do with 301 Redirect?

I like Ultimate SEO because it uses product names without any category in the URL. And it looks like if hacked, the pID can be removed. But uSEO's support looks to be abandoned and needed improvements appear unlikely.

Yup, while maybe implied, I did forget to say thank you. So...

Thank you for developing Simple SEO, yellow1912. Zen users will finally have a supported, fully fleshed-out, and a truly open source SEO URL solution.

Is anybody running this on a live site?

Has anyone experienced any problems with PayPal EC when using this mod?

Is a download option available? Now I need the files piece by piece.
Maybe a zipfile somewhere.

Thanx

Bram

Is this mod going to be available anytime soon? I know this is hard to tell but some kind of time line until first working release would be great. Could we get an update on the progress?

New release will be available some time this month. I'm working on a way to disable ssu when needed without having to totally uninstall it.
Also, working to improve the redirection.

All feedbacks regarding the current version will be greatly appreciated.

The new release will be packed into a whole package for easier installation.

Regards

cartguin:

Also, I am unsure about why any of these SEO solutions insist on putting the ID in the URL. What is the point if customers use unique product names? Does it have something to do with 301 Redirect?

I like Ultimate SEO because it uses product names without any category in the URL. And it looks like if hacked, the pID can be removed. But uSEO's support looks to be abandoned and needed improvements appear unlikely.
Because product name is NOT unique, so the id MUST be there.
Frankly speaking, the product name is there in the link just for the users and possibly SEs.
One of the problem with that though, is that these 2 different links will lead to the same page:
index/this-is-cat-name-2
index/this-is-another-cat-name-2

Why? Because the way it works now, it doesn't really care about the name there at all.

pid will never be removed from the links, it must be there. The category name and such can be removed tho, and I'm thinking of a totally different way to let store owners decide exactly how their links will look like without editing the code.

I think someone mentioned about not wanting to have category name in the link, you can do that by:

1. Get the latest version from svn
2. Set "max category level" to 0

Alpha 2.6c is now available on svn:

1. Several bugs fixed. You can now set max category level to 0 and the category name will not be displayed in links
2. Redirection: the mod now catches all links that contain: "index.php?main_page=" and do a 301 redirect with all those links using the new links.

In most cases, you will see that this works extremely well.

This method does have 2 drawbacks:

1. if you set File extension to "php", some links generated by "forms" will also be redirected (even though they shouldnt be). This wont hurt though, but it can be a bit annoying. Just dont set file extension to php for now.

2. Say if some of the site links generated by get forms were available some where on the net (very unlikely), and now users visit your site using those links, they will also be redirected, which may not be a very good thing to do.
   But for now I havent figured out a way to get around this yet, since it's impossible to know if a link was generated by a form or not. The only way I can think of now, is to make a list of all redirect-able links.

Alpha 2.6d is now available on SVN.
It now handles redirection when the product/category name in the link does not match (say if you changed category/product name, etc...)

This version brings us to a state where this mod can be used on LIVE site.

Zipped package: https://svn.rubikintegration.com/zencart_mods/zipped_modules/

This module also requires:
http://code.google.com/p/zencart-module-manager/downloads/list
and the shared classes:
https://svn.rubikintegration.com/zencart_mods/zipped_modules/

Demo:
http://demo.rubikintegration.com/zencart/

Sample link:

http://demo.rubikintegration.com/zencart/product_music_info/p-sample-of-product-music-type-169/language/fr

Current features:

1. Change ZC current link style to a more user friendly and search engine friendly style.
   Category name(s) and product name are included in the links (you can set the number of category names you want)
   You can set the extension you want (html, php, none, etc...)

2. It works for almost all links created by ZenCart, that means it will work not only with the default links, but also with any additional modules you have.
   (i.e: the rss, the feeders, etc....)

3. It will redirect most if not all of the old links to the new ones (using 301 permanent redirection)
   It will also redirect the links if the category/product name in the link is not correct.

4. It also makes sure that if your site offers more than 1 lang, and if the user uses a non-default language, that should be reflected on the links.

5. It's free ^_^.

Drawbacks:

1. if you set File extension to "php", some links generated by "forms" will also be redirected (even though they shouldnt be). This wont hurt though, but it can be a bit annoying. Just dont set file extension to php for now.

2. Say if some of the site links generated by get forms were available some where on the net (very unlikely), and now users visit your site using those links, they will also be redirected, which may not be a very good thing to do.
   But for now I havent figured out a way to get around this yet, since it's impossible to know if a link was generated by a form or not. The only way I can think of now, is to make a list of all redirect-able links.

3. As one who used Magic Seo, I admit this one may take just a bit longer to install. Also, it may not have all the features magic seo offers (given that magic seo costs money, and it has been developed for a while), if you find any missing feature, fell free to suggest here.

Requirement:
Apache mod_rewrite (it may work on windows server, but you need to port the current rules in .htaccess to its equivalent on iis)

Thank you for your hard work yellow1912. :clap:

One more question. You call this still Alpha 2.6d but say it is ready for live site? I am still hesitant to install anything ALPHA for an active site. Would it be time to call it at least Beta?

Can you clarify how save this is to be used on actual live site? Are you confident that most bugs are out of the system and once I have my new pretty url's indexed that newer updates will not change again how the url's are rewritten? Category inclusion or not, special character handling, length of url etc...

Does the google base feeder still work? I know with MSEO you have to buy a special google base feeder. Ultimate SEO works with free google base feeder.

I looked at your demo store and noticed that url's are built like this:
zencart/index/c-hardware-1
c for categories and 1 for the number of categories, the name of the cat positioned in the middle. OK, but why is /index/ needed?

Ultimate SEO would build it this way:
zencart/hardware-c-1
-c-1 at the end makes the url better for reading. No /index/ helps as well.

Q: Do you plan to still work on the url structure?

I feel as long as the url's structure might still change, it is not advisable to do the implementation to a live store.

Still glad you work on this mod....thank you again.

One more question. You call this still Alpha 2.6d but say it is ready for live site? I am still hesitant to install anything ALPHA for an active site. Would it be time to call it at least Beta?
--> Probably, hehe. I can call it gamma if you want me to, the name doesnt really matter to me.
I would suggest your clone your live site, and test it a bit first before making a final decision.

Can you clarify how save this is to be used on actual live site? Are you confident that most bugs are out of the system and once I have my new pretty url's indexed that newer updates will not change again how the url's are rewritten? Category inclusion or not, special character handling, length of url etc...
-->I do not plan to change the url structure unless many people want to do so.
Category inclusion or not--> this is set in admin
special character handling--> I simply remove any non alphanumeric character.
length of url --> depends on the number of category name you want in your link, which can be set via admin

Does the google base feeder still work? I know with MSEO you have to buy a special google base feeder. Ultimate SEO works with free google base feeder.
--> This works with most if not all modules, right out of the box. As long as they use ZC zen_href function to create links.
For example, check the rss feeder: http://demo.rubikintegration.com/zencart/rss_feed/feed/products/c-hardware-graphics-cards-1_4

I looked at your demo store and noticed that url's are built like this:
zencart/index/c-hardware-1
c for categories and 1 for the number of categories, the name of the cat positioned in the middle. OK, but why is /index/ needed?
--> I plan to have that "c" and "p" customizable (so you can use "category and "item" for example)
As for the "index" in the link, the first element of all links will always be the main_page in the normal links (hence "index" in this case). this is actually for simplicity and performance sake.
I dont feel it has any effect on the customers or search engine in anyway.

Ultimate SEO would build it this way:
zencart/hardware-c-1
-c-1 at the end makes the url better for reading. No /index/ helps as well.
--> It is really easy to do so, i want to hear more opinions from others before making it a permanent change tho.

Thank you for the clarifications.

zencart/hardware-c-1
I do think it is better for the reader (human) to have the clear text first and then the must have product or category id last as above. To have it wedged in makes it confusing to the eye. I hope more people agree on this so you implement the change if it is easy as you mentioned.

I will do a test install and see how it works...