Post by Karen » Mon Jun 21, 2010 6:25 pm

At the risk of opening up this can 'o' worms again...I really like the ability with OC to write my own SEO URLs, but it's an enormous time-suck for all the products for all 3 stores I'm redoing in OpenCart.

I watched Matt Cutts talk about SEO URLs in a video on his blog (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-site- ... e-io-2010/), and he says (I'm only partly paraphrasing here):
If you're building a site from scratch and can have a few keywords in your URLs, fine. But if it's an 8 month project to rebuild, don't worry about it. If everything else on your site is pretty good, don't get that worried about your URLs.
I wish that he had gone into more detail about this, because this was only partially reassuring for those of us who might want to abandon the effort involved in creating SEO URLs. (And I can't HELP but notice that his own blog uses them!!)

Several years ago, I jumped ship from MonsterCommerce (R.I.P.) because they would not even make it a priority to provide them, but they *would* happily charge a premium to publish an alternate version of your pages using them in Monster Marketplace (I think it was called). I noticed that my sales picked up after that, but that might also have been coincidence, because my store was so young then.

I've had keyword URLs (as we called them then) for several years, so I have nothing, really, to compare to. I've always been careful to pack all my keywords into my product's title itself. It seems that that, and adding keywords to the footers of category pages, is what brings me traffic.

I'm wondering about the actual experience of folks from more recent times, especially since search engines finally figured out how to handle dynamic URLs? Do you think SEO URLs help your sales, or don't think there's much of a difference? How would they compare to making sure your page title is really descriptive?

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http://catandcaboodle.com/


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Post by amplifywebdesign » Mon Jun 21, 2010 6:41 pm

I think they look good in search results, much more enticing to click on than some nonsense url.

I don't have any sales or viewing figures to compare with or without, though.

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Post by i2Paq » Mon Jun 21, 2010 6:47 pm

It is part of a total picture, I cannot imagine it will have a BIG effect on the sales.
It is more easier for the eye, thats all.

I have no seo-urls, I do have a Google 1# ranking or I'm on page 1.

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Post by Karen » Tue Jun 22, 2010 3:57 am

amplifywebdesign wrote:I think they look good in search results, much more enticing to click on than some nonsense url.
Yes, I had considered that. Wish I could be certain how many people even pay *attention* to that. I (sometimes) do, but it amazes me how many people call me to place an order and when I ask them which website they were shopping on, they don't even know the name! (Most of my products overlap 1 or more sites.)
i2Paq wrote:I have no seo-urls, I do have a Google 1# ranking or I'm on page 1.
That's very helpful information to have; thank you.

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http://catandcaboodle.com/


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