SEO Settings

[Brandon MUS]

I can't seem to turn on the SEO settings in the domain settings. When I check the boxes to turn it on, the page refreshes and the boxes remain unchecked.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: SEO Settings

That is a MySQL bug. It is in fact working.

The way you can tell is if you turn them both on here's what you'll see (although we forgot to tell you):

1. going to www.yourdomain.com will forward you to www.yourdomain.com/mm5/merchant.mvc

2. You can also get to your products or categories via: www.yourdomain.com/products/productname/html or www.yourdomain.com/category/categoryname/html (where "/" is the delimiter you chose).

One final note, in RC1 the final "/" before html will be changed to a "."

[Brandon MUS]

Re: SEO Settings

When Miva inserts rules into an existing htaccess, I think that it should start with a carriage return or two. My htaccess looks like this now:

### BEGING NORMAL .HTACCESS ###
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteRule (.*) http://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]### Begin - Inserted by Miva Merchant

DirectoryIndex /mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT

### End - Inserted by Miva Merchant

The above causes a 500 error. If I add my own blank line at the end of the .htaccess, the code works perfectly. Two carriage returns would be ideal for readability :D

There is also a possible canonical url problem with .com/ and .com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT both redirecting to the same spot. IMO, if the SEO store front is turned on, a 301 or 302 redirect (open for discussion) should happen from .com/ to .com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFTN. The code for that could look something like:

RewriteRule ^/?(index\.(.+))?$ /mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT [R=302,L]

[wcw]

Re: SEO Settings

Rather than turning this on in a live domain, could you give an example of a real product and category link so I can see what this change is going to look like. If it is product name and category name, aren't there going to be spaces when the name contains more than one word. Or are you using &mvta:product:name;

[Rick Wilson]

Re: SEO Settings

This is in my 5.5 Demo store right now:

http://mm55.yellowtee.com/product/coffee/html

[wcw]

Re: SEO Settings

What happens when the product name has two words in it? Can you make an example of that?

[Rick Wilson]

Re: SEO Settings

It's based on the product code which requires: Codes may only contain letters, numbers, underscores (_) and dashes (-).

So this is what you got in this case: http://mm55.yellowtee.com/product/good_coffee/html

[Brandon MUS]

Re: SEO Settings

SEO Short-Links:
While it would be nice if the entire site auto-magically changed their links to the new format, I realize that this is impossible. I do have a couple real comments:

As you already mentioned /products/<product_code>/html => /products/<product_code>.html would be nicer.
Being able to keep category codes and stuff with your product links I think will be a must have for some people. This is a very simple change to the rewrite rule: [L] becomes [L,QSA] After that /products/ASDF/html?Category_Code=A becomes /mm5/merchant.mvc?Product_Code=ASDF&Category_Code=A
Since this is a domain specific setting, how do you set this up for multiple stores? If this was a store specific setting, you could have unique slugs for each rewrite:
/products/<PC>/html directs to Store_Code=C&Product_Code=<PC>
/catalog/<PC>/html directs to Store_Code=D&Product_Code=<PC>
For stores with multiple stores, the SEO store front could use a similar setting (deciding which store to redirect to).

Most of these are just feature ideas that I had. I probably won't use these settings in a production environment, but some of this stuff could be useful for other stores out there.

[wcw]

Re: SEO Settings

So it is not the product name? It is the product code and the category code?

[Brandon MUS]

Re: SEO Settings

What happens when the product name has two words in it? Can you make an example of that?

I think Rick said Product Name when he meant Product Code. With Product Names you would also have to deal with non-unique names.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: SEO Settings

Yeah I was wrong in my first post.

[Mark Johnson]

Re: SEO Settings

The above causes a 500 error. If I add my own blank line at the end of the .htaccess, the code works perfectly. Two carriage returns would be ideal for readability :D

I'm not sure why you get the 500 error. Could it be permissions that get fixed when you edit the file yourself? What's your platform and web server?

As for the blank lines, we can add these even if just for readability. I'll just have to make sure they don't multiply if we repeatedly update the file ;-).

There is also a possible canonical url problem with .com/ and .com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT both redirecting to the same spot. IMO, if the SEO store front is turned on, a 301 or 302 redirect (open for discussion) should happen from .com/ to .com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFTN.

I don't see the problem that you refer to. Can you elaborate?

As for the redirect, unfortunately I am not an SEO expert but as I understand it the whole reason for the SEO friendly store front is to avoid them because the search engines give big negative ratings when they find them.

[Mark Johnson]

Re: SEO Settings

I'm not sure why you get the 500 error.

Now I see why the 500 error. We will have a fix for this in the next release.

[Mark Johnson]

Re: SEO Settings

SEO Short-Links:
While it would be nice if the entire site auto-magically changed their links to the new format, I realize that this is impossible.

Not impossible just a LOT of code to change. I doubt if we will ever have all generated links in the new format. But I would like to eventually see all generated product and category links be short links. Don't expect that in the initial 5.5 release though.

[wcw]

Re: SEO Settings

As for the redirect, unfortunately I am not an SEO expert but as I understand it the whole reason for the SEO friendly store front is to avoid them because the search engines give big negative ratings when they find them.

This has been discussed in the forums many times. There have been varying opinions. I think most feel it is not a big negative if the different links are in the same domain. Maybe others will chime in on this thread. The big plus for using category codes in the product links is to provide breadcrumbs back to the main category. When you don't know the category they came from, you can't make a link to send them back.