OsCommerce SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

So you’ve decided to start selling your products online. Your hosting account came with this free shopping cart called osCommerce. After a few clicks and a little configuration you managed to get your store up and running. It took a little longer to get your products loaded up but you did it and now you’re ready to start selling to the world!

So where are the customers? ‘I have some really cool products that everyone should have but no one’s finding my site’, you lament. Does that sound familiar? osCommerce is a great, free, open source shopping cart that does allow you to get a fairly robust website up and running in a short period of time. But out of the box it’s not the most search engine friendly website. All is not lost though. When it comes to osCommerce SEO, there are a few contributions that can be installed that will fill in some of the missing architectural gaps found in the base installation.

First there is the Header Tag Controller contribution - http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/207. This contribution provides the ability to add unique titles, meta keywords and meta descriptions to all categories, products and static pages. This contribution is an important first step to in the SEO process. Any site that wants to be search engine friendly has to have the title, keywords and description uniquely defined for that particular page and they need to be exclusively related to the content found on that page.

Second is the Ultimate SEO URL - http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2823. As you drill down through the categories and products on your site, you’ll notice that there are different ID numbers passed in the URL. These ID’s are required in order for osCommerce to find the proper category or product. But they don’t provide any valuable data about the product or category to the search engine spiders. In simple terms, the Ultimate SEO URL contribution masks the default generated URL with a friendlier URL that incorporates the category name or product name. This provides you another opportunity to place keywords in a location where the spiders can access them.

For example, a spider finds a link to a page name of www.mysite.com/my-best-product.html. It’s expecting that the page content found there is all about “my best product”. If you’ve add to this page all you’re keywords and descriptions about “my best product” then the spiders rejoice and this helps your page ranking.

The final contribution is the Google XML Sitemap SEO - http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/6583. This contribution creates a Google “spider friendly” sitemap of your entire site. It’s not a page that users see, but it’s a hidden page that is only viewed by the spiders. ‘How do the spiders know where to find it’, you ask?

In order to tell the spiders where to look, you need to set up a Google account. Under the webmaster tools you specify the URL for the spiders to locate the page.

So if you’re feeling down because you’re website is not getting the traffic you wanted, try adding the contributions above. They will provide you the tools you need to improve your search engine ranking.
Remember though, that there is much more involved in building a successful SEO process. In-depth keyword research, content development and link building are also important parts of the process.

Courtesy: http://www.focuspointwebsolutions.com/blog/?tag=oscommerce-seo

SEO Friendly URL Mods For Oscommerce

Many people asked me how to make their shopping portals more SEO Friendly. There are many mods available for this but iam going to list here all of them for you to easily convery your dynamic shopping site to a seo friendly site.

1. Default SEO Friendly option in Oscommerce converts the site into bit seo friendly mode but the URL’s are not easy to remember, here is the option for that -
   Use Search-Engine Safe URLs (still in development) - Enable this option to True and the final Result which comes is www.yourshop.com/product_info?products_id=1 which is indexed by all Search Engines.
2. Apache + PHP URL Rewriting - This is a mod in Oscommerce where in you can convert URL’s using Apache URL Rewriting Engine and PHP HTTP Redirection.
   Example - http://www.yourshop.com/product_info.php?cPath=3_10&products_id=13 is converted to - http://www.yourshop.com/en/dvd-movies/action/lethal-weapon.html
   Download link to Mod
3. Yet Another SEF URL contribution - Uses mod_rewrite to map URLs of the form http://domain.com/catalog/Product+Name to the actual product info page or something like http://domain.com/catalog/Category+Name/Subcategory+Name/Manufacturer+Name to the appropriate index page.
   Download link to YASU Mod
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)- Advanced URLs for osCommerce - This is a very advanced mod and cannot be done by just replacing some lines of codes.Recommend only for advanced programmers only.
   Download link to Mod
5. SEF Link Transformer - This mod converts all links to search Engine friendly URL’s
   Download link to Mod
6. NIMMIT SEF - This Oscommerce Mod will convert URL in the following ways -
   Normal -
   http://www.yoursite.com/product_info.php?cPath=54&bla=bla&bla=bla
   Standerd Sef -
   http://www.yoursite.com/product_info.php/cpath/54/bla/bla/bla/bla
   to -
   http://www.yoursite.com/product/some_product.html - or…
   http://www.yoursite.com/brand/nice_brand.html - or…
   http://www.yoursite.com/contact_us.html
7. Ultimate SEO URL’s - This Mod will give the store owner the choice of the v1.X style cName or new v2.X style static HTML file.
   Download link to Mod - http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2823/

This is a complete list of the best mods for SEO friendly URL’s in case of Oscommerce Shopping Script. Let me know if you find any bugs or want to add any Mod i missed in.

Courtesy: http://www.amitbhawani.com/blog/seo-friendly-url-mods-for-oscommerce/

Are You Creating "Value"?

The way to be creative and different is by being 'yourself'... really be yourself... talk like you would talk to a friend in  your emails and let 'you' come through in everything you do. 

Most people are afraid to be 'themselves' because they might be rejected... you have to get over that.. not everyone will like you. Not everyone will be your friend either. That's life!  But...there will be enough people who will like you and those are the ones that will stay with you over the years and be good customers. 

I get emails once in a while saying I 'suck' or worse... but I also get emails from people who like what I say and what I teach. Now, let me ask you: Should I be disappointed that some people don't like me? No. That's literally their problem, not mine.  And, should I be feeding my ego every time someone says they like what I do and congratulate me on a great newsletter or info-product or whatever - again the answer is 'no'.  

The bottom line is: You have to do what you feel is the most benefit, the most help to your customers and subscribers and listen to honest feedback, but ignore everything else.  That's the blunt truth. You have to be strong. You can't let a little praise go to your head and you can't let a little blame or dislike of what you're doing discourage you in anyway.  You have to be yourself and whenever negative or positive forces try altering your path, you must ignore them and keep building value and usefulness into everything you're doing. 

Learn how to create VALUE... I'm talking about tangible, functionable products and services that are REALLY USEFUL to your prospects and customers. You create "value" by being yourself and building a little piece of "YOU" into everything you do.

Courtesy: gaborolahdotcom