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By saturation - Fri 11 Nov 2011
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Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems like the category and product page meta tags are fairly static. Is there a way to make these a bit more dynamic, like inserting the product name into the tag? If someone can direct me toward the correct aspx page, I can probably adjust the code myself.
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By Neil - Sat 12 Nov 2011
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For products, the meta description is generated dynamically from the product description. Not sure about categories but these can be added in the backend. I guess the category meta decription would be made using the category description?
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By Mart - Mon 14 Nov 2011
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When you go to edit a category in the backend, on the main category edit tab (category information) there is a [+]SEO link. Click that and it expands to show meta tag boxes.
There is exactly the same setup for products. So you can have completely custom meta tags and page title (ie in title bar of browser window) for each category, subcategory and product.
Of course if you don't do this, it'll use some defaults (the above just overrides those)
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By saturation - Wed 23 Nov 2011
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Thanks! I overlooked the [+] sign.
I have 1 further question related to this. 1) Can you provide an example of the "URL Name" field? Is it the whole URL, the file name, or whatever we want it to be?
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By Paul - Wed 30 Nov 2011
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The URLname field is just the text part that will display for the item you're editing. It doesn't remove the numbered part from the end of the page. So for example, a product named 'Power Cable' would have a page name something like this:
Power-Cable__p-4.aspx
If you edit the URLname field to 'XYZ' then it would show like this:
XYZ__p-4.aspx
It should be noted that there is quite a lot of fluff talked by SEOs, and nothing perhaps more than 'friendly' links. You'll get SEOs telling you that the format is wrong, you need to move the numbers to the front, or the back, or get rid of them completely or your pages will die a death in search engines. An SEO cannot come to a site and say everything is fine, so they have to find minor things to diddle with. Of course, the vast majority of changes most come up with tend to be irrelevant - little more than Feng Shui.
But Google's advice is actually not to use friendly links... (you can turn them off in Kartris if you wish)
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html
I am fairly sure that originally there was some benefit to be gained from keywords in the URL (Google alludes to this in the blog). But as soon as URLrewriting became so common, it is pretty clear that Google realized it didn't really help filter good content from bad. I'd noticed years back that unfriendly links on our older CactuShop cart seemed to perform just as well in search engines as friendly ones. I even argued the point with some SEOs on blogs, but they just wouldn't have it - even though I had evidence and they had... none.
I have to say I still prefer the look of friendly links, and they help by implying folder hierarchy which I think aids perception of where one is in a site. But I personally don't believe they really aid SEO performance at all, and the Google blog tends to back this up. But it's a feature we include because there is widespread belief that they do help, and we refer to it under 'SEO' because that is really what the majority of people wanting this are looking for.
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By Neil - Wed 30 Nov 2011
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http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html
I wonder if this is really a static html page?!
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By saturation - Thu 1 Dec 2011
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Interesting article, thanks for the post! I may just have to do some testing and toggle the 'friendly' on for a few months then off and see if it makes a noticeable difference in rank.
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By Mart - Thu 1 Dec 2011
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If you turn the SEO friendly URLs off you'll be swamped with mail from SEO "experts" like [email protected] offering to get you to the top of google.
In fact, leave them on and you'll get those mails too. Hmmm.
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By Paul - Thu 1 Dec 2011
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Interesting thought, it never occurred to me... i think it almost certainly isn't.
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By saturation - Fri 9 Dec 2011
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I've filtered through those before with other sites...Honestly, I don't care if I get bombarded with so-called SEO experts--I'm doing this myself, with small tweaks here and there to see how the results turn out. And, most of all, I'm patient!
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