Progress Towards 1.5.0

Great look and feel, i love it! i saw more subcategories, are you using modified preorder tree traversal? don't forget IE9, just in case. Thank

RonA wrote:Thanks for all the hard work Daniel and team... I enjoy Opencart very much and my customers seem to like it too.

One thing though that I REALLY want to see... is ONE PATH and ONE URL for each product. Currently each product page has five or six different URL's depending on how you find it and this has a very negative effect on search engine page rankings. 1.5.0 could be the most awesome cart in the world, but if the pages don't show up in a Google search, it's not very helpful.

Just my two cents... keep up the great work!

PS... I'm glad to read about the shipping calculator being built in.... I hope it's similar to Interspire's where it's built right into the shopping cart as a link that uses ajax to present the choices.

PSSS... I'm also crossing my fingers we get ajax search built in... I have it working now in one of my sites and I love it. Check it out at http://www.inspirationpeakgifts.com

you miss understand how search engines work. search engines will decide which url to use. they will not penalise you for having multiple urls to the same content. only multiple domains. this has been said many times by google and other search engines themselves. content is king. if you write unquie content you will have better chnaces of gaining higher rankings. multiple urls to the same content is sometimes how the web works.

Here's an example Maansy...

One of my products is called the 'Soaring Swallow Ring'

Opencart creates at least three different URL's to take you to the same exact page.

http://www.inspirationpeakgifts.com/soa ... -ring.html

http://www.inspirationpeakgifts.com/jew ... -ring.html

http://www.inspirationpeakgifts.com/ama ... -ring.html

This may affect your page ranking as Google does discriminate against what it considers to be 'duplicate content'.

In my situation, when I do a Google Search for 'Inspiration Peak Soaring Swallow Ring, the correct page should come up toward the top... but it doesn't show at all. (My home page is there but the product page is nowhere to be seen.) This I believe has to do with the fact that there are so many unique product addresses that the Google crawlers don't know how to properly index them.

More information from Google on 'duplicate content':
http://www.google.com/support/webmaster ... swer=66359

Things a webmaster can do to prevent poor page rankings:
http://www.google.com/support/webmaster ... wer=139066

Looks like we were posting at the same time Daniel...

Maybe I am misunderstanding something... but it does seem like my Google results are no longer accurate. The home page will always show, but the individual product pages do not appear even when you type in the exact page title.

For example... I have a very unique product called a Tibetan Mantra Ring. When I do the following Google search:

Inspiration Peak Gifts "Tibetan Mantra Ring"

The product page does not appear anywhere.

I've uploaded my sitemap and even have the products listed with Google Base... so the product page should be there somewhere... (one would think, anyway. )

RonA wrote:This may affect your page ranking as Google does discriminate against what it considers to be 'duplicate content'.

Unfortunately most sites can't help having a lot of duplicate content. For example shops selling tee shirts are going to be using the word 'shirt' everywhere, shops selling cd's and dvd's will also repeatedly be using very similar content. Then you have things like 'you may also be interested in' features in shops that will also get picked up by the bots as duplicate content if there is a link there.

The truth is nobody knows with one hundred percent certainty exactly how Google and other search engines evaluate rankings. If they did, they could charge thousands for it and have a crowd of eager shop owners queueing up around the block. Those with online enterprises need to devote as much time to offline marketing marketing for most sites to flourish. There are only ten places on the front page of Google.

You make some excellent points Custom_UK.... I appreciate your post. Maybe what I'm asking for is not possible with Opencart, and that's fine, but just in case it is possible, it would be great to see product links that point to one URL instead of several different variations. Other carts (such as Interspire) seem to be able to do this without problem and I'd love to see it incorporated into Opencart 1.5.0.

RonA wrote:You make some excellent points Custom_UK.... I appreciate your post. Maybe what I'm asking for is not possible with Opencart, and that's fine, but just in case it is possible, it would be great to see product links that point to one URL instead of several different variations. Other carts (such as Interspire) seem to be able to do this without problem and I'd love to see it incorporated into Opencart 1.5.0.

It is possible, but the only way it's possible is to make the link domain.com/product and it has been suggested before and there is even code out there on the forum how to do it, but as soon as it was suggested the "SEO experts" jumped in and said you can't do that you have to have domain.com/category/product and domain.com/manufacturer/product then the other "SEO experts" started beating them over the head with duplicate content signs. After the massacre we just decided to leave it the way it was.

Still I do agree that I'd like to see a single structured url that is consistent, regardless of agreeable design, as long as there is some design.

Having multiple links that go to the same place:
http://www.mysite.com/shop/mens/shoes/nike-plus
http://www.mysite.com/shop/mens/nike-plus
http://www.mysite.com/shop/nike-plus

is inconsistent. For a perfectionist, there should be 1 url

Can this be added to 1.5.0, its not a big edit, but gives great results, it creates better SEO and shows individual image descriptions.

It is only on the products page but if it could be rolled out over the full site it would be a great step forward.

It's doesn't use database and names can be edited in the image manager.

http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route ... h=8&page=2

Thanks

Davy K

I guess we just might have to ignore the 'experts' and simply go with what works... I recommend all shop owners do a simple test... choose one unique product and then do a google search that includes your store name ("in quotations") and the exact name of your product as listed in your catalog. If it's a unique product name, your product page should show toward the top of the Google listings. If it doesn't, something's not right.

The Interspire cart I mentioned earlier uses the domain.com/product scheme and I've been doing some testing with some of their live stores. One of these stores is called 'CatchingFireflies' and when I do a search for 'catchingfireflies' and any one of their product names, it always seems to come up at the top of the Google results page.

Try it for yourself: catchingfireflies candy charm bracelet

Here's another example from a different store called BabyReflux... babyreflux gaga baby bean bag

Both of their product pages come in number one.

We should be getting similar results with our product pages.

Qphoria wrote:Still I do agree that I'd like to see a single structured url that is consistent, regardless of agreeable design, as long as there is some design.

Having multiple links that go to the same place:
http://www.mysite.com/shop/mens/shoes/nike-plus
http://www.mysite.com/shop/mens/nike-plus
http://www.mysite.com/shop/nike-plus

is inconsistent. For a perfectionist, there should be 1 url

I tend to agree I don't mind just having the product pages without the category or manufacturer in the url, but when I mentioned it a long time ago about 6 "SEO experts" came out and had a complete fit so the powers that be didn't change it. I just dropped it cause to me it's an easy change, and I have it changed on my site so that each product has only one url.

I really think that at the very least we should get a canonical solution in place that always has the same url for products.

RonA wrote:I guess we just might have to ignore the 'experts' and simply go with what works... I recommend all shop owners do a simple test... choose one unique product and then do a google search that includes your store name ("in quotations") and the exact name of your product as listed in your catalog. If it's a unique product name, your product page should show toward the top of the Google listings. If it doesn't, something's not right.

The Interspire cart I mentioned earlier uses the domain.com/product scheme and I've been doing some testing with some of their live stores. One of these stores is called 'CatchingFireflies' and when I do a search for 'catchingfireflies' and any one of their product names, it always seems to come up at the top of the Google results page.

Try it for yourself: catchingfireflies candy charm bracelet

Here's another example from a different store called BabyReflux... babyreflux gaga baby bean bag

Both of their product pages come in number one.

We should be getting similar results with our product pages.

It's hard to say that the rankings you are seeing are only because of it having one url. There are many factors that go into google ranking. That site may have lots of backlinks, it could be a difference in the meta descriptions, the titles, the h1 tags, the page content, or any number of other things. I think it's a bit naive to make the conclusion that it's because of the "duplicate content".

Well, couldn't you just add what Google says to add? Just have that in the title, using the seo keywords, or product_id, and should solve the problem of multiple entries...No? Or do I miss understand it?
Taken from http://www.google.com/support/webmaster ... wer=139066

ncc50446@hotmail.com wrote:Well, couldn't you just add what Google says to add?

Code: Select all

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/dresses/greendress.html">

Just have that in the title, using the seo keywords, or product_id, and should solve the problem of multiple entries...No? Or do I miss understand it?
Taken from http://www.google.com/support/webmaster ... wer=139066

I guess you missed this

I really think that at the very least we should get a canonical solution in place that always has the same url for products.

I didn't miss it. Sorry, what I meant was for now. It would be nice to have 1 url for everything. I simply meant as a solution until that is resolved.

ncc50446@hotmail.com wrote:I didn't miss it. Sorry, what I meant was for now. It would be nice to have 1 url for everything. I simply meant as a solution until that is resolved.

maybe you are misunderstanding a canonical solution is exactly what you suggested and I suggested same thing.

Xsecrets wrote:

ncc50446@hotmail.com wrote:I didn't miss it. Sorry, what I meant was for now. It would be nice to have 1 url for everything. I simply meant as a solution until that is resolved.

maybe you are misunderstanding a canonical solution is exactly what you suggested and I suggested same thing.

Sorry, my mistake lol

it just show how much bad information is out there telling people wrong infromation about duplicate content. you only get penalised if you have the same content accross multiple domains not multiple url links on your site.

You need to trust me when i say i know more about SEO than you! Sorry to sound like ass here but I have to argue with people everytime to convince them what i'm saying is right.

I used to have competitions with other groups when working in a company to see who can get the most sales so SEO was very important.

I have been developing sites 10 years now and used to reasearch SEO quite a bit and I get people asking me all the time about the stupied url thing. It does not matter.

Think carefully about it. why would google give you a higher ranking just because of some stupied urls and not the content on the site.

If you copy and paste the description for a product from a manufacturers site and so do 1000's of other seller thats when you get a duplicate content penalty. But if you write unique content that is informing and have certain keyword density for the keywords you are trying to get a high ranking with.

Secondly you need to write some unique good quality articles about the products you are selling on some blog sites with links to your site.

Search engines like good quality unique content. Not repeated spam all over the net. multiple links to the same content on the same domain is not going to get you penalised. Think about it. read the matt cutts blog if you don't beleive me will you believe some one from google? Also the chronical metatag is already added on the product pages not that it is needed anyway (as stated by google!).

Qphoria wrote:Still I do agree that I'd like to see a single structured url that is consistent, regardless of agreeable design, as long as there is some design.

Having multiple links that go to the same place:
http://www.mysite.com/shop/mens/shoes/nike-plus
http://www.mysite.com/shop/mens/nike-plus
http://www.mysite.com/shop/nike-plus

is inconsistent. For a perfectionist, there should be 1 url

While I would like to see it, it's impossible to have 1 url, since you can have multiple categories linking to the same product, and would want to have the correct URL structure based on that

Also the chronical metatag is already added on the product pages not that it is needed anyway (as stated by google!).

what version is that in? I just now looked at a product on my 1.4.9 install and it doesn't have it.

While I would like to see it, it's impossible to have 1 url, since you can have multiple categories linking to the same product, and would want to have the correct URL structure based on that

and here's the rub you get the people that want to see the category/manf stuff in the url and the battle rages on.