Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Friends,

I had a new site designed by a web developer recently.  The developer designed it with PHP/OSCommerce technology using ZenCart as the shopping cart.  With this technology, my pages are not static.  There is one main index page and every other page is being dynamically generated - which means the Meta Tags/Keywords/Descriptions are not "out there" visible and available for SE spiders to crawl.  For successful SEO I need to individually assign the tags/words/descriptions and make each page a stand alone static one.  I currently do not know how to do this.  The developer seems to be at loss as well.  He keep indicating to be careful with the site`s code since any small error/change would ruin the site`s current content.

My options are 1) to pay someone and completely revamp the site into static pages (there will be close to 1000 due to so many products offered like my current site) and 2) to learn how to get my SEO objectives accomplished within the current site infrastructure.  I need help!!

I only know how to do SEO/SEM but I cannot do that without knowing how to solve my predicament with the new site.  As always, I will def appreciate the good advice you folks have been sharing around for so long.

Thank you in advance to everyone!

You don`t need the meta tags and the spiders should crawl is just fine.

Just add the keywords into the product descriptions.

Don`t move to static.

How about option 3, fire the developer and hire a better one? ZenCart is open source which means you can modify the software to do exactly what you want. There are plenty of members on this site this, including myself, that could create a patch for ZenCart so that you can set the meta tags for each item separately.

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Blog - http://www.buggy.id.au/

the key words are added indeed to the pdct descriptions...the spiders will crawl just fine-true-but the not while the page is not up or active, which it will only become when a query is sent to call it.  am i wrong?  why do you say not to move to static?

the developer was paid a one time fee to design the site...i did not foresee the issue coming up (my mistake solely since I do know what I need to do SEO).  in any case, what would the zen cart patch exactly do?  as it is, one can still go into zen cart and assign meta tags for each items in the item menu - however these are only visible once called upon (dynamically generated in response to a query).  will the patch solve this issue/how?

thanks for the advice

The use of meta tags is ... very limited now. Most of your major search engines won`t even use them.

Moving to static is not worth your time and limits your possibilities, like searching. Amazon.com uses all dynamic pages, and yet Google finds widgets just fine.

The real question is not if your site is dynamic ... it`s what the URL string looks like, what kind of static links you have, how you are limiting spiders in certain places, etc.

Here ...

Just go look at the top 10 or so results here for tips and products to help you do SEO with ZenCart. There`s several good links on how to work with what you have ... showcase pages, fixing the URL string, etc.

Google saved me some typing yet again.

If this is over your head in terms of programming, at least maybe you can read the info and know what to ask the next developer for, specifically.

I think you might be a little confused. The search engines will find your other pages by following links from your homepage to each product. It doesn`t matter that these pages are dynamic.


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Blog - http://www.buggy.id.au/

Well, yes and no.
This is all theoretical because we don`t know the setup.

Some query strings can get spiders stuck in an endless loop ... but some are smart enough to figure it out.

thanks guys,

i certainly did have some misconceptions to begin with.  nhgnikole, thank u for the link!