Progress Towards 1.5.0

Daniel wrote:I once heard one of the uks leading seo experts in a con fence and he did say it was all about content winch makes sense.

google wants the web to grow and the best way is if people create unique contact them sleeves. if you have a store owner who copies and pastes a product description from the manufacture he has to compete against all the other stores using the same description. if the content is unique sure that should have a higher ranking.

Absolutely. Content is king. However, your content will never rank unless you get inbound authority links.

Ultimately you need content and inbound links to have a high ranking site. Then, you need everything described in the posts above to out rank your competition who also has unique content and inbound links.

alex1 wrote: I don't understand why some people are so fast to say things like "SEO Bandwagon", or "URL bandwagon".

Nope, we should be talking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi_Infidelity this wagon

I gonna go with X and Q on this (SEO is moving target and the URL class should come back)
SEO is moving target and google is not KING. In many ways it is, but it still is not the final answer. Bing, google, Baidu, and a few minor others play a major factor. Remember, ecommerce is not limited to the US!

I was thinking that Google and others are looking at this as a simple matter but are trying to keep the SEO gurus guessing. Just keeping your site relevant in regards to SEO is a daily job and you probably would spend more time trying to figure out what works than on your own site thus my agreement with X.

I'm surprised nobody brings up the readability (hearability) for blind people. I was talking with my SEO guru friend and he thought I was taking the piss out of him but in a way I think that maybe google is considering this.

Even if I'm wrong, the ability to have clean URLs, easy to navigate linking, categories and manufacturer links that are aware would be a huge advancement over what is being done today.
Thus the previous suggestion of having a UI study group for opencart. What is being done today is really old school.

So, supporting Q's url class would allow the SEO camp be happy but yet also allow those in the content, usability camp be happy.

alex1 wrote:My suggestion would be that any time there is a sort to add a NOINDEX, FOLLOW attribute in the meta tags or a canonical tag.

alex1 wrote:Ultimately you need content and inbound links to have a high ranking site. Then, you need everything described in the posts above to out rank your competition who also has unique content and inbound links.

Whoa! Back up a sec! How will putting sort to noindex/nofollow meta tags help in getting inbound links?

I understand good quality content is key, and duplicate or copied content is not good. However, Google already ignores parameters like sort...so no need to put them in meta tags...

On the other hand, OC uses parameters such as language which do need to be included...one way or the other, if you are serious about SEO, you can't rely only on the core product, not the least because there're lots of confliciting ideas floating around...if you are serious about SEO, you need to use tools like Google Webmaster Tools at the very least....it IS an everyday task...

This is not to say that the core product shouldn't have some basic, largely agreed upon functionality...only that most of such basic functionality is already there....

sooskriszta wrote: Whoa! Back up a sec! How will putting sort to noindex/nofollow meta tags help in getting inbound links?

First of all, I said NOINDEX,FOLLOW, not noindex,nofollow. Second of all, I never said it will give you inbound links. Where are you getting this?

sooskriszta wrote: I understand good quality content is key, and duplicate or copied content is not good. However, Google already ignores parameters like sort...so no need to put them in meta tags...

You're wrong. I have a bunch of indexed pages with the sort tag in Google.

alex1 wrote:You're wrong. I have a bunch of indexed pages with the sort tag in Google.

So the pages are being indexed. So what's the problem again?

Are they being endexed twice?

What ignoring the sort parameter means is that Google looks at the first page that comes it way...whatever the value of sort parameter. Then if it comes across more URLs that are the same except sort (and any other ignored parameters), it considers those pages to be same as the first and does not index them.

So the pages are being indexed. So what's the problem again?

He said that the problem is that google is not ignoring sort and that he has duplicate pages being indexed.

@alex1: I think you have a lot of great ideas and just want to tell you to keep up with the suggestions and don't be discouraged from the sometimes rude manner in which your ideas are received. You just have to remember that this is a small development team and that the workload can probably seem overwhelming at times causing any request for additional work to be very, very carefully considered.

With that said, here is my 2 cents on your suggestions:

1) Have Google Checkout as a bundled Payment Option

Great idea and should be apart of future releases but should be rather low priority.

2) Fix the duplicate URL issue (I read the topics, but even with canonical statements, Google still picks up the non canonical and causes problems)

I'm with you 100% on this. The truth is that this is a problem and not just for SEO but for Social Media as well. Ideally there should be no duplicate URLs anywhere.

3) Fix the non SEO urls in Google Base

Simple fix. I'm using the Improved Google Base extension and apparently it already does this.

4) Allow Customers to be able to do a shipping quote estimate w/o having to go through the registration process

No brainer. Good suggestion.

5) Make it easier to setup OpenCart without having to manually delete all of the countries and zones that don't apply to you

Yeah a better interface for doing this would be nice. I just did it all directly to the database, made it a little quicker but I can understand the frustration for those less savvy.

6) Make default "does not subtract from stock" and more than "Quanity of 1" as default for those who drop ship

This is more of a personal touch and if implemented you'd have an equal, if not more, amount of people wanting it the other way.

7) Show the brands Logo on the brands page (what's the point of uploading the logo in the first place if it's never shown?)

I assume the logo was added with the intention of being used in the future. Can't wait to see the new manufacturers page.

The ability to change the title of the page (so it doesn't have to be the name of the category)

Not really in dire need but shouldn't be too hard to have product and category specific titles.

9) Easier way to do excel/csv/xml imports

The Export/Import extension handles this fairly nicely for stores with <10k products. Anything greater than that and it becomes a pain taking so long to download and upload the excel file. Not to mention your store will basically crawl to a halt while it bulk imports everything. An option to only import products that are new or have changed would be nice.

10) Ability to add or remove fields in the checkout process of what you ask the customer

Now we might be bordering on bloatware are this point. It's not too hard to customize these things and so I can't really say this feature is a must-have but maybe it could be added somewhere down the road when other more important things have been taken care of. Still, might be a bit excessive though.

11) Ability to have a specific field in the admin where you update the tracking number for the customer, and the customer receives it as a hyperlink so they can just click on the tracking number

Yes, an order tracking table might be useful for storing as many tracking numbers as necessary for an order.

12) Make "home" links SEO from the start

Should be an easy fix and I'm surprised it hasn't been done already.

13) Fix the search! The existing search system is not very good.

I couldn't agree more but this is something nearly every e-commerce site is lacking. Some prefer using AND, some like using OR. I think the search should be carefully thought about and a proper solution implemented sooner than later.

14) Better use of tags, maybe a page that lists all of the tags used (helps with SEO), similiar to manufacture page

Not too bad of an idea. Perhaps you could dump them out at the bottom of the sitemap.

15) the user being returned back to the site after making a payment with PayPal (or Google Checkout)

This already happens.

16) sales tax report - so you can easily calculate how much sales tax you collected

An improved reporting system with a handful is pre-installed reports would be nice but this feature shouldn't be too high priority at the moment.

17) Ability to turn system cache on or off (it causes more problems when it's on, on a small install)

Good suggestion. Perhaps take this a step further and implement debug levels like CakePHP. If debug is set to 1, show errors and turn cache off. If debug is set to 2, show errors, SQL queries and turn cache off. Otherwise, you're in production mode.

18) Google Sitemap module should only list the canonical URLs

Agreed.

d7a7z7e7d wrote:

So the pages are being indexed. So what's the problem again?

He said that the problem is that google is not ignoring sort and that he has duplicate pages being indexed.

I thought he said the problem was that Google would consider differently sorted pages as duplicate content and therefore penalize them.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot. ... nalty.html as stated by googel.

But most site owners whom I hear worrying about duplicate content aren't talking about scraping or domain farms; they're talking about things like having multiple URLs on the same domain that point to the same content. Like www.example.com/skates.asp?color=black&brand=riedell and www.example.com/skates.asp?brand=riedell&color=black. Having this type of duplicate content on your site can potentially affect your site's performance, but it doesn't cause penalties.

Simple A-B esting proves that internal site duplicate content doesn't effect your rating.

sooskriszta wrote:

d7a7z7e7d wrote:

So the pages are being indexed. So what's the problem again?

He said that the problem is that google is not ignoring sort and that he has duplicate pages being indexed.

I thought he said the problem was that Google would consider differently sorted pages as duplicate content and therefore penalize them.

Ah, so you DO get what he is saying. And that's completely understandable since I believe this...

alex1 wrote:You're wrong. I have a bunch of indexed pages with the sort tag in Google

...hardly leaves room for varying interpretation. I'm glad we're on the same page. So now that you understand what the problem is, wouldn't it seem obvious that a NOINDEX, FOLLOW would make sense when sort is being applied?

decypher wrote:http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot. ... nalty.html as stated by googel.

But most site owners whom I hear worrying about duplicate content aren't talking about scraping or domain farms; they're talking about things like having multiple URLs on the same domain that point to the same content. Like http://www.example.com/skates.asp?color ... nd=riedell and http://www.example.com/skates.asp?brand ... olor=black. Having this type of duplicate content on your site can potentially affect your site's performance, but it doesn't cause penalties.

Simple A-B esting proves that internal site duplicate content doesn't effect your rating.

First, Google isn't the only search engine. Second, this causes visitors statistics and tracking (i.e. Google Analytics) to be very messy since it will be tracking the same URL several times, each with its own statistics that would need to be merged in order to have accurate totals. Third, duplicate URLs for the same page means your users are going to share a different URL for the same content. This means that any site that would rate or otherwise gather statistics for that page is now going to distribute those numbers between several URLs, thereby lowering the overall numbers for that unique content. A simple example would be del.icio.us... when a user bookmarks a page, delicious will keep track of other users that have bookmarked that same page. If that page has 4 different URLs, any statistics that delicious keeps are basically useless and inaccurate. This problem of course gets more serious when considering the vast amount of Social Media sites that would effectively do the same thing.

So, regardless of what Google says, having duplicate URLs for the same content is bad, mmmmkay.

d7a7z7e7d wrote:So now that you understand what the problem is, wouldn't it seem obvious that a NOINDEX, FOLLOW would make sense when sort is being applied?

Well, if you had bothered to read the whole post, instead of selectively quoting, perhaps you'd understand.

sooskriszta wrote:

alex1 wrote:You're wrong. I have a bunch of indexed pages with the sort tag in Google.

So the pages are being indexed. So what's the problem again?

Are they being endexed twice?

What ignoring the sort parameter means is that Google looks at the first page that comes it way...whatever the value of sort parameter. Then if it comes across more URLs that are the same except sort (and any other ignored parameters), it considers those pages to be same as the first and does not index them.

Which part of Google doesn't penalize you for using parameters such as sort do you not understand?

@Moderators: Sorry, we've gone completely off-topic. Please split this topic if appropriate.

some one mentioned before about a site that can parse pages and give you seo tips. anybody know the address?

sooskriszta wrote:Well, if you had bothered to read the whole post, instead of selectively quoting, perhaps you'd understand.

Perhaps it is you that has missed some of the conversation since I've been reading along the entire time and I think alex1 has been clear as day. I'm not sure why this is so difficult to understand but let me spell it out for you as simple as I can...

Google index pages, right? If a page has identical content but in slightly different order, it would be considered duplicate content, right? If Google indexed every variation of this content it would be a bad thing, right? According to alex1, google is doing this and while you may say that it gets ignored, he is simply trying to say that it is not being ignored and therefore this is a bad thing.

Now, let us pretend that there are other search engines out there (who knew?!) that may not simply ignore sort fields. With that knowledge I could draw a rather simple conclusion that the NOINDEX, FOLLOW rules would be beneficial. Once again, great idea alex1.

SEO Doctor is a great FF addon that tells you exactly what could help

Qphoria wrote:SEO Doctor is a great FF addon that tells you exactly what could help

Along with PageSpeed and YSlow - although these are more to do with the mechanics of the page (load times, redirects, sprites, caching, etc), which also improves user experience

I'll indulge you

d7a7z7e7d wrote:Google index pages, right?

Right! Hey, you got one!

d7a7z7e7d wrote:If a page has identical content but in slightly different order, it would be considered duplicate content, right?

Errr...NO! Scroll up and read what I said earlier. Also check what Google has to say about this.

d7a7z7e7d wrote:If Google indexed every variation of this content it would be a bad thing, right?

No, actually what would be bad is that if Google penalized those pages and ranked them lower.

d7a7z7e7d wrote:According to alex1, google is doing this and while you may say that it gets ignored, he is simply trying to say that it is not being ignored and therefore this is a bad thing.

Who died and made alex1 king of SEO?

I asked one simple question: Are pages with sort parameter being indexed multiple times? He hasn't replied.

If you are so confident that this is happening show me 2 URLs that Google has indexed and where the only difference is the sort parameter.

d7a7z7e7d wrote:Now, let us pretend that there are other search engines out there (who knew?!) that may not simply ignore sort fields.

Really? Well, Google and Bing ignore sort parameter. So which Search Engines are so concerned about?

d7a7z7e7d wrote:With that knowledge I could draw a rather simple conclusion that the NOINDEX, FOLLOW rules would be beneficial.

Oh, yeah? Well, what makes you so confident that the search engines idiotic enough not to ignore Sort parameter actually look at Noindex, Follow meta tags?

sooskriszta wrote:Errr...NO! Scroll up and read what I said earlier. Also check what Google has to say about this.

So what you're telling me is that Google is actually bothering to index pages more than once, they actual appear as separate pages in the search engine, but somehow, a magical unicorn is telling Google that those are the exact same page? Why would Google even bother to list the pages more than once if they are the same? Isn't it a bit naive to say that if Google supposedly does something, it's ok to base your entire SEO around that? I suppose you design all your sites for Firefox only as well?

sooskriszta wrote:Who died and made alex1 king of SEO?

I asked one simple question: Are pages with sort parameter being indexed multiple times? He hasn't replied.

If you are so confident that this is happening show me 2 URLs that Google has indexed and where the only difference is the sort parameter.

He didn't respond because he already posted the answer to your question before you even asked it. This is where I jumped in to hopefully shine some light on your oversight and actually commend someone for making a suggestion. But somehow, even after all this direction and explanation, you still manage to miss the obvious.

Oh and, I just checked, I have several pages with the sort parameter being indexed twice, or in my case, even more. Gee, what do you know, I guess even magical unicorns need a day off sometimes.

http://www.google.com/search?&q=site:co ... om+flodger

soozkriszta wrote:Really? Well, Google and Bing ignore sort parameter. So which Search Engines are so concerned about?

d7a7z7e7d wrote:With that knowledge I could draw a rather simple conclusion that the NOINDEX, FOLLOW rules would be beneficial.

Oh, yeah? Well, what makes you so confident that the search engines idiotic enough not to ignore Sort parameter actually look at Noindex, Follow meta tags?

Oh Bing is ignoring this now too? Prove it. And what about Yahoo, the second largest search engine, I suppose they have a magical unicorn as well?

The only idiotic thing is to think a W3C standard like NOINDEX is going to be overlooked by a company whose primary task is to index. Is it really that hard for you to admit a good idea when you see one? Here, lets try another route... Is NOINDEX, FOLLOW on pages that use sort a BAD idea? If so, why?

d7a7z7e7d wrote:And what about Yahoo, the second largest search engine, I suppose they have a magical unicorn as well?

It's pointless to argue with you since you don't even know that there is no such thing as Yahoo! Search engine.

I noticed a link for trolling in the google search

Just trying to add some brevity to this

sooskriszta wrote:

d7a7z7e7d wrote:And what about Yahoo, the second largest search engine, I suppose they have a magical unicorn as well?

It's pointless to argue with you since you don't even know that there is no such thing as Yahoo! Search engine.

Oh my, excuse me, Yahoo uses Bing since last year, my apologies. Where was your proof that Bing ignores sort again?

No comment on my multiple indexed sort pages in Google?

NOINDEX, FOLLOW is a bad idea then?

The answer to your question wasn't in alex1's response? I mean, this is really where we started isn't it? Alex1 stated something, you didn't get it, I come in and point it out and now you are still just as oblivious as ever.

SapporoGuy is right though, this is really a waste of time. I'm done here.