X-Cart SEO Blog - X-Cart-SEO.com

Is Google overriding your x-cart titles or x-cart meta descriptions?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:44:05 -0600

If you've used customized your x-cart page titles and x-cart meta descriptions, and not had them show up in search engines, it could be because Google hasn't yet reindexed your x-cart pages, or it could be because Google thinks what they're showing is more relevant to the search. Matt Cutts recently spoke on the changing of snippets and page titles and how Google decides what's relevant:

Google doesn't know CDSEO's .html links are served by PHP

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

CDSEO Pro for X-Cart creates .html urls that serve dynamic php content, essentially creating fake static html pages that update dynamically when users login, add to cart, etc.. Some of our users have previously expressed concern that using .html pages that serve php could be seen as trickery and cause issues with Google. Our response has always been that Google does not know if your x-cart pages are served as html or php so your x-cart seo rankings will only be affected positively by the new x-cart search engine friendly urls. Matt Cutts of Google fame, while recently addressing a question about Cloud hosting, also commented on this issue: "We don't know what is happening on the side of your web server. Your web server could be running Perl, PHP, Python, or Ruby on Rails. All we know is what the web server returns. ... We don't even know whether a page is dynamically created or statically created. All we know is what the web server sends back."

Crawling rate depends on PageRank

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:26:42 -0500

You've done all your onsite SEO - page titles, urls, meta tags, content - all optimized. With excitement you submit your sitemap to search engines containing 4,000 urls, yet only 100 of them end up indexed. Why is that you ask? Google does not always crawl or index a site fully, and onsite search engine optimization is irrelevant on a page that isn't indexed, making it only part of the SEO equation. Google desires to have pages that are "relevant and reputable." Matt Cutts recently gave a talk at WordCamp San Francisco in which he says that Google crawls in decreasing order of Page Rank, whereas Page Rank refers to the number and importance of links pointing to your site. "Importance" is the operative word in this sentence. Not all links to your are created equal, and having less links from relevant and reputable sites will go further than having more links from spammy sites. What does this mean for you? Ensure that you update your site frequently to remain relevant, provide reputable content to establish yourself as an expert at the forefront of your industry, and seek links to such content from other reputable and relevant sites. The associated pagerank increase will help ensure your pages are crawled deeper and more often.

How Internet Marketing Can Get You In Hot Water

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 02:00:00 -0500

Did you know that it's a criminal offense to link to your business website without indicating that you are a representative of your business? As part of the "Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008", new regulations introduce a new criminal offense as: Falsely claiming or creating the impression that the trader is not acting for purposes relating to his trade, business, craft or profession or falsely representing oneself as a consumer" (sched 1 para 22). While I can see the theory behind this law, I'm somehow doubtful this will have any impact on the amount of url spam being dumped onto message forums and believe it will likely provide more hassle for those linking respectably than those who are not. For more details on this regulation visit: How Internet Marketing Can Get You In Hot Water

X-Cart Canonical: The answer to your x-cart seo duplicate content worries

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:57:27 -0600

Duplicate content worry is an issue we hear about daily from x-cart owners concerned about their x-cart seo rankings, so imagine my excitement this morning when I woke up and found that google has released a solution to alleviate these worries. Its important to note first that duplicate content is something people tend to worry about more than they need to, and that its ability to impact your search results negatively are highly over-estimated. What tends to happen when two pages share the same content, is that one is selected to rank high in google while the other is pushed towards the bottom. This is only a significant problem when search engines give weight to the wrong url. While distinguishing the correct url is something search engines - particularily Google - is very good at, clearly they hear about duplicate content concerns a great deal, resulting in the birth of the new canonical tag - a combined effort between Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Google's new canonical tag allows you to specify the page url you want to be given indexing priority. If for example you have the following pages: http://www.example.com/page.php http://www.example.com/page.php?sort=asc http://www.example.com/page.php?sort=desc You can now modify these pages to include the new 'canonical' tag as follows: We will be adapting our x-cart seo Custom Dynamic Search Engine (CDSEO) Pro module for catonical support shortly.

SEO WWW or Not to WWW - Pick a Preference!

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:27:35 -0600

I'm frequently asked whether or not one should use www. (i.e. http://www.example.com/) or (i.e. http://example.com) when optimizing for search engines. It's not going to impact your SEO rankings one way or the other, but search engines will see the url with and without www as two distinct urls, so you should always pick a preference. While "w-w-w" was the buzz word of the 'old' days, it's now an accepted and redundant part of the web, so it would make sense to drop the www; call me a traditionalist though, I just can't do it. Here's how you configure your x-cart to force a single format. Set X-Cart Domain Preference Open your config.php file and look for the $xcart_http_host and $xcart_https_host variables and ensure the domains are input with your desired prefix: www. $xcart_http_host ="www.example.com"; $xcart_https_host ="www.example.com"; non-www. $xcart_http_host ="example.com"; $xcart_https_host ="example.com"; Tell Google In google webmaster central settings - if you don't have an account its an SEO must to register one - you can set a preferred domain: The preferred domain is the one that you would like used to index your site's pages. If you specify your preferred domain as http://www.example.com and we find a link to your site that is formatted as http://example.com , we'll treat that link as if it was http://www.example.com . In addition, we'll take your preference into account when displaying URLs in our search results. It may take some time for changes to be reflected in our index. Preferred domain Don't set a preferred domain Display URLs as www.example.com Display URLs as example.com Force Domain Preference In your .htaccess, you can then force to use or not use the www. using the approriate block of code below. Any www or non-www url usage will be automatically redirected to the desired type. # Force www. RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301] # Force non-www. RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Google Penalty Checklist: Rank Drop Troubleshooting Guide

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Article by: Codex-M. Is your website not appearing in Google, and you're not sure why? It is possible that your site has been penalized for not following Google's webmaster guidelines. This article will walk you through troubleshooting your website to help you turn up some of the most common issues, and correct them so you can achieve the search engine ranking you deserve. Background Ranking is the most important objective in any search engine optimization activity. A high ranking equates to a high amount of traffic that usually increases revenue to any commercial website. A high ranking makes a site look glamorous and popular. Other sites will want to be associated with it (i.e. link building), because such an association can increase their traffic. This will speed up everyone's marketing efforts, simply because that one site achieved that status. The problem with websites nowadays is that they often practice techniques that are not good for search engine optimization and sometimes even result in a search engine penalty. A search engine penalty is a situation wherein rankings will not improve or even be decreased despite search engine optimization efforts, such as gaining links and improving onsite factors. A lot of SEO companies fail to conform their practices to the Google webmaster guidelines. As a result, they spend time troubleshooting and sorting out issues which could be very simple to resolve. In the worst cases, these companies are so greedy that they ask for their client's money in return for investigations which they never carry out. We have heard about a lot of issues between clients and their SEO firms. The objective of this article is to come up with a standard troubleshooting guide that follows Google's webmaster quality and technical guidelines. Other industry- accepted Google SEO ranking and penalty factors will also be considered. This troubleshooting guide can be applied by any webmaster, even one without an SEO background. By mastering this troubleshooting guide and completely understanding how to implement the solution, the webmaster or a site owner may not even need to hire an SEO firm to sort out Google ranking penalty issues. A highly important requirement fortroubleshooting is to add and verify your website in your Google webmaster tools account. You can find more important information here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/ Important note: It may take at most a few days to a week for Google webmaster tools to return data after the site is verified with your webmaster tools account. Understanding algorithm-based and manually-driven Google penalties In no way should the statements in this article be considered to be affiliated with Google or official statements from them. But as far as I know, there are two types of obvious penalties: algorithm-based and manually-driven. Before we can start troubleshooting, you must understand these types of penalties. Algorithm-based penalties result from your website being "filtered" by Google's algorithm due to some linking and onsite issues. Different types of filtering exist; the most common involve the duplicate content filters. Algorithm-based penalties could result from your site sending a poor relevance signal to search engines. It means that your site is not telling them that a certain page on your site is relevant to a certain query. Other algorithm-based penalties involve minor infractions in the areas of hidden text, cloaked text, nearly hidden text and hidden links, especially on your important pages. Details of these will be included later. Since Google prefers algorithm-based solutions to combat spam, it is obvious that most website problems are caused by algorithm issues. The other type of penalty is manually driven. For some types of penalties that are too serious, Google will take action manually. Google gives this type of penalty when it spots a serious violation of its quality guidelines. An actual human working at Google will take a personal look at your site and will send you a mail that the site's behavior is against the search engine's quality guidelines. Failure to correct manually-driven penalties can result in a site being banned from Google. The Basic Checklist Let us start with our checklist. Basically any search engine optimization deals with two major distinct areas: the link campaign, and onsite improvements. We will cover this in a step-by-step fashion, and then we will go deeper if there are related issues in a certain step. Check to see if the website is indexed in Google. Method of Checking: Using theGoogle search box, type the query below as your search query, replacing www.yourwebsite.com with your own website: site:www.yourwebsite.com The example above assumes your domain's canonical version uses www. If you are using the non-www version as the canonical version, then change the query to conform with the style below (remove the www): site:yourwebsite.com Interpretation of Results: If Google does not give any single result for your site pages: a. Check the following in your Google webmaster tools: Dashboard --- Overview. If the Googlebot has problems accessing your home page, it will return a message like the following: "Googlebot cannot access your home page because it is blocked by robots.txt." In this case, you need to remove the robots.txt in your web server root directory and submit a re-consideration request to Google. You can read more about submitting reconsideration requests here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35843 Also, you should go to your home page and view the source. You should NOT see this code: This code tells Google not to index your home page, and, at the same time, not to follow the links in your navigation menu. If you see this, then remove it and submit a reconsideration request. b. If the above test turns out negative, find out whether or not there are links pointing to your site. Googlebot can find your site just by following links. If there are no inbound links to your domain, then it will not be found, no matter how many times you submit the site to Google. You can check this data in Google's webmaster tools. Go to Dashboard--- Links---- Pages with external links. If Google does not find any links leading to your site, consider getting links before you continue with the rest of this diagnostic testing. Does your site hide content and stuff keywords? Check your home page first for possible hidden text and keyword stuffing issues: In your home page, press control A. This will select all, and can detect text using the same color as the background. If you cannot find a problem, try disabling the CSS using the Firefox web developer tool plug-in. Go to CSS ---- disable all styles. This will show the hidden text using a CSS method. Slowly look for signs of spam in that text, especially the kind that appears when CSS is off but is hidden when the style is turned on. If you cannot find hidden text using CSS and the Control A method, try disabling your browser's JavaScript. In Firefox, this can be done by going to Tools--- Options ---Content, then unchecking JavaScript. This method can detect text that has been hidden by using JavaScript. Be cautious about what changes when JavaScript is on, and when it is off. Finally check using an SEO search engine spam detector tool. You can use this one: http://tool.motoricerca.info/spam-detector/ However, you cannot just rely on this tool. It is important to double check the source code as well. Double check every section of your site, starting with the home page, then do a sample check of your category pages, product pages, site map and other related pages. Note that stuffing keywords can relate to using a sentence that is entirely unnatural to read and appears very spammy, such as: Buy Viagra online cialis is one of amazing SEO buy Viagra online , take free online personality test become famous cialis Viagra online buy one now. By the way, you should also make sure that all of the sentences in your content are perfectly legible, or else the search engines will consider them to be spam. Duplicate Content and Inbound Links Does your site has substantial duplicate content across pages within and outside of your domain? It is possible you have more than one indexed version of your home page. To spot this, take a sample phrase (one sentence is enough) and copy and paste it into a Yahoo or Google search box. Put quotation marks around it to emphasize that you are making an exact query. Example : "This is my first experience with site building and I hope my instructor gives me a good grade" It is possible that you have more than one result for this. If you do, it means that you have a duplicate content issue. You should consider blocking those duplicates or 301 redirecting them to your canonical home page. You can, however, check the percentage of similarity for those pages with respect to your home page by using this tool: http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php The result should also tell you whether there are exact duplicates of your pages outside the domain. Take note of this; you can also double check with http://www.copyscape.com/ Warning: Do not fall into the trap of assuming that duplicate content will cause a penalty. It simply means that the search engines will filter your pages, which otherwise should rank higher than those duplicates. If any substantial duplicates are found, shut them down or link them to all of your canonical pages. This will sort out this issue. What is the quality of your outbound and inbound links? Be completely honest. Have you been buying links and placing those links on the footer section of highly unrelated domains, or on spammy link pool pages? This is the time for you to forcefully ask them to entirely remove those links and submit a Google reconsideration request. Now, does your site link out to completely unrelated domains that provide no value to your visitors? Please remove all of those links, and then check all of the external links on your domain one by one. Unchecked external domains are a sign of carelessness, and one of the main reasons a site does not perform well in search results. This is especially true if you have link pages, directories within your domain, and/or forums that pass link juice. You can use Xenu sleuth, located at http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html to entirely scan your domain for external links. During the setup, please uncheck "Check external links," then filter all external links into a spreadsheet. Make sure all external links are pointing to highly authoritative and relevant sites that are trusted by Google. When looking at each link, ask yourself this question: "Does it help my visitors?" If not, then remove it. Put rel=nofollow tags on to forum links, blog comments, and everything that does not need to be associated with your site. What if you have gone through this check list, and everything seems fine? Then you are not being penalized; you are just losing out to your competitors. Consider doing some ethical SEO work on your site.

5 Basic Marketing Strategies To Increase Traffic To Your Website

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

by Cindy Floyd Ever wonder why some home business owners sites are ranking higher than yours? I hope you don't think it's because they know more about SEO than you! Really sometimes it's not about all the skills you have or don't have, sometimes its just common sense. Sometimes knowing how to attract prospects is not about fancy network tactics, it's just about being you. In today's online marketing we call this social networking or attraction marketing. Although being yourself is important, it's only half of the equation. The other half is the understanding of simple marketing basics. Below are 5 basic marketing techniques your site or marketing strategy should be using no matter what type of product or service you are selling. Start out with a good keyword rich domain name. Purchase a domain name for GoDaddy or your favorite hosting site that has keywords related to your niche. Don't make it too long, the shorter you can make it the easier it is for people to remember. Make your site easy to use. Navigation on any site is essential. If you are developing it think like a user. Make sure you always keep them on your site. If you are going to link to another site make sure you have them open another window, keep them with you as long as you can. Make sure all the information is relevant to your niche, in other words -stay on topic. Give back to your community. People love free anything; e-books, advice, product, resources anything that adds value to you and your community. This not only helps others it establishes you as the expert in your niche. Put your business URL everywhere. Make sure that you give your site massive exposure. Create business cards and leave them everywhere, in public restrooms, on bulletin boards and leave them with the bill at the restaurant. You can wrap you car with your url, and try bus benches, bill boards and don't forget the cart at your local supermarket. Use a signature tag. This is your online business card. You should create a short description of your product or service and attach it to all your emails, business and personal. The more opportunity you give people to get to know you the more comfortable people become with you and trust you. This will translate into profits for your business. Try just a few of these at a time of all of this seems overwhelming or outside of your budget. But the best marketing technique I can give you is to "just go do it". Take massive action and you will see results.

Google to Launch Google Chrome, an Open Source Browser

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Google is set to release Google Chrome today. The browser promises some major improvements to the current browser market. Stability: Google Chrome boasts a threaded API that processes web pages and web-page tabs in a clean and concise manner to limit crashes and restrict crashes to single tabs instead of entire windows and/or entire computer melt-downs. Better Beta Testing: Google has used its search infrastructure as a base to automate testing. This testing Google claims, allows them to release a more stable version of the browser without having to wait for external beta data from its users. Improved Javascript Handling: Google focused heavily on making Javascript processing quick and reliable, which is sure to expedite the Internet website development to its more dynamic, ajax driven future. (Think Googles Apps). New Features: Google Chrome supports new features, providing unique tabs on top of the browser, integration with other apps, and a custom home page that makes your nine most visited sites, as well as your searches and bookmarks, more accessible. A new Incognito window allows you to browse sites without the data being recorded. Improved Security: Google Chrome provides protection against malware by 'sandboxing' certain processes so they can't write or read files from sensitive areas of your harddrive. Google has also declared their commitment to identifying and blocking malware websites. Open Source/Gears: Google Chrome will be released as open source and includes a Gears project with open standards for developers. This essentially opens the web for public development and will likely allow Google to shape the internet for years to come.

33 Ways to Increase your Inbound Links for Higher SEO Rankings

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Having a greater number of sites that link to you will allow search engines to increasingly see you as an authority in your field, and you will see higher search engine positioning as a result. This article by Ivan Strouchliak provides 33-ways to increase your search engine rankings by increasing the number of other websites to link to you. Links are the core of your search engine optimization campaign. Quality, authority and trust-building links are tough to get. Here we outline 35 methods you can use to attract links to your website. Why Links? Links are essential and natural connectors of the web. It's fairly easy for search engines to analyze links and judge the quality of a website based on the quality and quantity of its incoming links. Unlike on-page factors, links are harder to manipulate. Users abandoned former search leaders AltaVista, Excite, AllTheWeb, Hotbot and others because they could not maintain spam free indexes and return useful websites. It's harder to manipulate links and easier for search engines to keep their results spam free and relevant. Links will stay at the core of search algorithms, so it's important to learn how to get them. Authority links - These are links from highly important websites. Those are the sites you see on top of search results for the most competitive keywords in your industry. Authority websites also include university and college domains, and government and library sites. Trust Factor - Search engines don't trust all links. In fact Google discounts many links due to lack of algorithmic trust in the domain or link type (positioned on a generic link page, link scheme, etc). Join your local chamber of commerce and get a .gov trust link from their website. Network with local colleges and universities. Get to know professors. If you have enough valuable information you can get a link from an .edu page. Join the Better Business Bureau. It's a good idea to do so even if you aren't after links. Customers want to see proof of ethics before they open their wallets. Talk to your business partners, manufacturers, distributors and affiliates. See if you can get a link from their website. Submit your website to local, city and government resources. If you offer useful pages, webmasters will link. The Classics Submit your website to free directories like DMOZ. Quality is KEY. Submit to paid directories like Yahoo Directory and Business.com. Quality is key again. Submit to social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, reddit.com, Furl and others. Bookmark other websites on your own. If your build up useful collections, users may check your profile and follow a link to your site. There might be a webmaster or blogger who will link. Submit to social news sites like Digg, Newswine, Stumble Upon and others. Make sure your content is on a non-commercial domain since Digg fans bury commercial sites, even with quality content. Digg is famous for their bury brigades who bury anything with hints of SEO, marketing or hype. Commercial domains never survive. If your story goes viral on Digg, it will get visibility from bloggers and site owners who can give you incoming links. You can go back and plug a link to your commercial domain once the story is off the Digg homepage and once you gain some incoming links. Buy links. Google declared war against paid links, but smart link buying still works. Try to get links from content pages, as opposed to generic link lists. Content that surrounds a link is as valuable as the anchor text of the link. Stay away from link schemes. A reasonable proposition to a quality website works best. Rent links from link brokers. Make sure to stay away from shady brokers and use trusted names: Text Link Ads, Text Link Brokers, Patrick Gavin. (no affiliation) Buy websites. If you have a big a project, big client or deep pockets you can purchase quality websites for around $10,000 - $20,000 per site. Use domain power to pass pagerank to your site. Sponsor a charity - they will link back to you. Make a donation to a charity, sometimes they link back to donors. Plus... you'll feel good :-). Search engines trust old, established domains with quality link profiles. It's usually easier to purchase an old domain for a couple thousand dollars than to build a trust profile from the ground up. Search GoDaddy.com. On-site Link Building Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. - Google Corporate Mission There must be a good reason for Google to show your website on the first page of search results to achieve its corporate mission. To get to the first page of search results, other webmasters must link to you, and they need a good reason as well. So the saying goes: "Content is King." With content as your king, it's easier to get the Queen - links (or many "Queens," since we men are like that). Build a site with plenty of quality content. Quality content (as much as we hate that phrase) is still the king. Look at seochat.com, seomoz.org and seobook.com. More than half of their existing search visibility is due to quality content and voluntary links from other webmasters. Of course there's plenty of SEO, but because those sites entice webmasters to voluntarily link to the content, those links helped them build strong brands and made them leaders in their fields on search engines. Make a sexy design. A cool web 2.0 look with extreme features can entice links on its own. Create lists of the best material on your topic. This will cause people to bookmark your page and possibly link to it. Lists include 101s (any number), best resources, best tools, best pictures, best websites, best blog posts, best experts, best whatever, top myths, worst whatever, and more. Find out what webmasters want. Contact webmasters and learn what they think the Internet lacks in the field. Create it and email them back with notification (and a possible request for a link). Most people are good-hearted, so they'll give you the link. Did you find something new? Are you sure no one knows about it? Create a page on that topic and mail it to authorities in your field. If it's worth what you think it is, you'll get links from networks. News -- fresh, updated news get links as a rule. Posting news needs a commitment and a 24 hour watch for stories across the web. The web is HUGE and you can't be awake 24 hours a day. Keeping track of news needs at least two people to monitor and post stories. So plan well before tackling the news niche. Sometimes you can stumble into a hot story before everyone else does. Reaction is KEY. Be swift and email all news sites and authorities in your field; links will follow. Entertain people. With everyone so busy nowadays, we don't smile much. An article that can make people smile will get you some back links. Create controversy. Challenge views, propose new ideas. Check George's Orwell's Politics and the English Language to see how to challenge world views. Blogosphere and Social Networks as Link Building Get a blog. But don't have one just for the sake of having one. Share your insight. Use it to discuss industry events, knowledge and developments with fellow industry professionals. Head out to Technorati, learn who top bloggers are in your field and network with them. An insightful comment on their post, a suggestion or new idea will entice them to check your blog. They may subscribe and link to some of your good posts in the future. A referral from an industry authority is gold to your profile. Comment on other blogs. People love attention and as you give it, you will receive it, sometimes in the form of back links. If you know a lot about a sub-topic of your industry, create a blog about it. In SEO we have blogs on search patents, link building, keyword research and even robots.txt - all part of SEO, but focused on a specific sub-topic. Get some social media accounts like FaceBook, Twitter, Friendster and LinkedIn. As you pay attention to others, they will pay attention to you. Eventually they will follow a trail to your website and possibly link. Link to other blogs. Content management systems provide link trackbacks, so whenever someone links, blog owners are instantly notified. Even authority figures check their trackbacks to see what others say about them. They also use it as a brand management measure. Blogosphere and Social Networks as Link Building Network with industry peers in your local area. Get to know them. Social interaction has link potential. Get out to trade shows, conferences and industry gatherings. Network there as well, it's good for your link profile :-). Put a URL sticker on your car. This won't get you links, but might send some quality referrals. Seduce a librarian. Try to get a link from a library site. Seduce a university professor. Get a link from an .edu domain. (Okay, not literally seduce, but you know what we mean). Put your URL on pens, T-shirts, pencil sharpeners, caps, cups and other promotional merchandise. Some web owners might see it, visit and link! Put a URL on the roof of your house. Google Earth users will see a website address on your roof and who knows... maybe link to you!