11 replies to this topic

[Mike1]

Hi,
I was told by a SEO company that the Shopping Cart
for my site was not Search engine friendly.
I'm a little confused about this.
Does anybody know exactly what that means?
Why would the actual Shopping Cart matter to the search engines?
thanks

Could it be that they were referring to the
"Shopping Cart Software, or application" and
not the actual "shopping cart" page?
I didn't speak to the seo company so I don't know.

Edited by qwerty, 25 June 2006 - 10:27 AM.

[Jill]

They probably just mean that the pages one gets to after clicking a product to add to their shopping care, cannot be indexed by the search engines.

This may or may not matter to your site.

[chrishirst]

welcome to HR Mike

Yep, they are referring to the catalogue application rather than the small part that is the actual cart. Which of course doesn't matter whether it is "spider friendly" or not because crawlers shouldn't be in there anyway.

[franco81]

Who here has seen/used shopify.com?

real nice admin area, sounds seo friendly, although perhaps not as many features/modules as I would like.

[QuillDesign]

SEO companies refer to your website/catalog when talking SEO / SEF. The shopping cart is completely dynamic and can be different for everyone who enters items so it wouldn't be helpful to index it.

Our Shopping Cart utilizes meta tags and absolute filenames for maximum optimization.

Our product pages look like /product/product_title_name_123.cfm which ranks higher in search engines because to a search engine it looks like a static page.

Opposing would be pages with query strings such as

/product/product.cfm?id=xxx123&pagename=whatever

The ? and & and = still get ranked and can still be ranked good, but because of the "query" string, the search engines can tell it is coming from a database and since it comes from a database it can change continually (ie per minute, hour day etc). So that lowers it's ranking and you have to work harder to get good positioning.

That is why we went from the query strings to the absolute file names, though our pages are still dynamic, they will tend to get better rankings.

I hope this helps!

<edit to remove live link per [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?act=boardrules]Forum Rules[/url]>

Edited by torka, 26 June 2006 - 11:47 PM.

[projectphp]

The ? and & and = still get ranked and can still be ranked good, but because of the "query" string, the search engines can tell it is coming from a database and since it comes from a database it can change continually (ie per minute, hour day etc). So that lowers it's ranking and you have to work harder to get good positioning.

Popycock! The reason those URLs are no good is because SEs dont like too many variables, because they get the same page over and over with just a different URL. If you have less than 3 variables, it makes no differene. And even with SEF URLs, it can still be an issue if the variables are not in a consistent order.

Consistency is important, not the ? or the &.

That is why we went from the query strings to the absolute file names, though our pages are still dynamic, they will tend to get better rankings.

Well then you did it for all the wrong reasons

[Jill]

Well then you did it for all the wrong reasons smile.gif

And also used underscores instead of hyphens....

(Not that the file names matter, but if you're gonna do it and all.)

[QuillDesign]

File names verses query strings will absolutely make a difference. It is not the "only" thing that makes a difference, but it definitely helps.

/this-file-name.cfm shows signs of a static page, one that most likely doesn't change often ... where /page.cfm?id=123 shows that this information can change every second and though it still ranks, it may lack in higher rankings. But it doesn't stop there, it is a missmash of links to and from that page and other factors such as keywords, content related content on the site that contribute to the overall ranking.

(also, we use hyphens, it was just late when I replied and hypens make for easier reading and I had read someplace that it made a difference on Google, but not validated).

[Ron Carnell]

... where /page.cfm?id=123 shows that this information can change every second and though it still ranks, it may lack in higher rankings.

Sorry, but that simply isn't true, and hasn't ever been true since search engines first started indexing dynamic pages.

The search engines know that most dynamic pages don't change all that much unless the parameters change (in which case, they no longer consider it the same page). In the rare instance where a dynamic page does change frequently, such as a news site, the search engines simply visit more often and, indeed, frequently rank the page very highly.

Software that emulates static pages can arguably have indirect affects on SEO, but those are only through benefits accrued to the visiter. As such, there's no reason not to give the users of your software the option to use traditional dynamic URLs or seemingly static ones. But, in my opinion, it MUST be a choice because you are right at least about one thing -- the search engines do react differently to dynamic pages than to static page, not in ranking as you erroneously suggest, but rather in crawling.

When a spider sees an obviously dynamic URL, it will intentionally slow down so as not to overwhelm the server with page requests. It knows the server is working much harder on those dynamic pages than it would on static pages, and it paces itself accordingly. Conversely, the spider can very quickly bring a server to its knees on even a moderately busy web site when you fool it into thinking all the pages are static.

As usual, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. There is no this-is-good or this-is-bad. Any site can rank highly with a well designed dynamic URL. Not every site, however, can rank (or even survive) with a poorly designed static URL. Good software will offer choices, not ill advised search engine myths.

[torka]

File names verses query strings will absolutely make a difference.

I'm assuming you have some proof of this? It is certainly not my experience, nor that of many of the SEO professionals around here. I'd be interested in seeing your evidence to back up this claim.

Where did you get the idea the SEs prefer data that doesn't change? This is like the flip side of the old idea that SEs prefer "fresh" pages that had newbie webmasters twiddling with the text on their home pages every day in an attempt to boost their "freshness." And it's just as wrong, IMO.

Simply having query strings in a URL, or having a database driven website, does not necessarily indicate frequent changes. My company has a shopping cart with entries in our catalog that haven't changed one iota in nearly two years. I know static HTML pages that get changed almost daily (ref. the newbie webmasters and their home page text-tweaking, above).

SEs don't rank pages based on what "might" happen with them. They're computer programs; they have to work with actual facts.

--Torka

[QuillDesign]

Well, as much as it is tough to swallow .. I can admit when I am wrong. "Rank" isn't tweaked by the static / dynamic, but speed is as Ron suggested is.. Part of me didn't want to reply .. but I believe that it is important to do so.

BUT the one advantage over absolute file names verses dynamic filenames (assuming we are talking page.asp?id=xxx) Is if you use keywords as your filenames such as product-name-title.asp then those additional keywords should/could/i believe give you an additional boost in rankings over page.asp.

My understanding is page file names and image file names all have bearing on SEO.

[Scottie]

No, that's a myth that refuses to die.

File names and image file names have little to no impact on SEO. I definitely wouldn't change something that was working to incorporate keywords in the file names, but if you are setting something up from scratch and you have the option, there's nothing wrong with having them.