5 ways to make your Oscommerce store search engine friendly

All store owner’s need traffic and organic search engine traffic is the best way to get alot of traffic.
The following tips should help your ranks on Google, MSN and Yahoo to go up.

Tip 1: Install the SEO URLS Mod.
This mod makes your urls easier for the search engines to index.

It will change a url like this:

http://www.website.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=45

to this:

http://www.website.com/catalog/laptops-c-45.html

Product urls look like this:

http://www.website.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=45&products_id=5667

to urls like this:

http://www.website.com/catalog/dell-inspiron-p-5667.html

This helps users and search engines both and makes your store more user friendly.

Download it here

Tip 2: Install the Header Tags Controller Mod.

This mod will allow you to add meta tags and titles to each of your products.
This will help people and search engines know what your pages are about.

Download it here

cDynamic Meta Tags v1.6 is better if you do not want to go through every single product adding meta tags.

Tip 3: Upload a robots.txt to your site

A robots.txt is a file on your server that tells the search engines which files not to index. You need to have one because you do not want the search engines to index duplicate content.

Example (my robots.txt):
User-agent: *
Disallow: /catalog/affiliate_info.php
Disallow: /catalog/affiliate_affiliate.php
Disallow: /catalog/affiliate_faq.php
Disallow: /catalog/contact_us.php
Disallow: /catalog/account.php
Disallow: /catalog/create_account.php
Disallow: /catalog/shopping_cart.php
Disallow: /catalog/checkout_shipping.php
Disallow: /catalog/ask_a_question.php
Disallow: /catalog/popup_image.php
Disallow: /catalog/catalog/
Disallow: /catalog/images/
Disallow: /catalog/includes/
Disallow: /catalog/paypalipn/
Disallow: /catalog/pub/
Disallow: /catalog/privacy.php
Disallow: /catalog/contact_us.php
Disallow: /catalog/shipping.php
Disallow: /catalog/advanced_search.php
Disallow: /*action=
Disallow: /catalog/create_account2.php
Disallow: /catalog/create_account3.php

The Disallow: /*action= stops the search engines from indexing add to cart pages.

Tip 4: Write unique descriptions for each category and product

Many store owner’s are using manufacturer data for descriptions which would be okay but it is duplicate content which means you have to have a very good link reputation in order to get good rankings on product pages. The more unique product descriptions the better you will do.

Tip 5: Cull out the bad products

You may think that it is the more products the better but you may do better if you cull out the products that do not sell.
If customers are not interested in some of the items you sell they will just clutter up your store.
Here is a little known fact: The less pages you have indexed in Google the higher each should rank.

There are many more things you can do to raise your rankings on the search engines (I may post more about it at a later date)