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SEO - Search Engine Optimization
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Post SEO - Search Engine Optimization 
Hell-o
Search engine traffic for the majority of us, is extremely important. How you go about developing your web site in relation to the search engines can and will have an effect on your degree of success as an online merchant.
The gamut of importance placed on SEO by site owners/webmasters spans from total obsession to not addressing the issue at all. The obsessed wont live long enough to enjoy the rewards, grin, where the site totally lacking or non-search engine friendly will only see bot come and go in their stats. Rarely if ever realizing a visit from a search engine query.

Where we, as Agoracart users should have our most important focus is on the “agora.cgi?” program linking convention. Normally this is mandatory and defeating at the same time. Any content beyond the question mark is subject to be totally ignored or incorrectly indexed by the spider.

Most use Google as the search engine to use as the industry standard for SEO compliance. This is not a correct assumption (as far as an Agoracart owner is concerned) and may further inhibit your overall placement on other search engines, possibly leading to not being placed at all on other search engines. More and more search engines are developing their own bot to gather information. Most of which will not follow a link with a question mark in the string. Furthermore, even Google can’t fully accomplish indexing a dynamic dB driven cgi or php page with the ability it can as with static pages. There are almost always inconsistencies in the URL or content. In addition, I am not aware of any search engine that places a lot of weight on dB data as this data is often in a state of flux.

There are a few basic rules to consider when building a web site. The first and most important understanding is that if you want search engine traffic you must conform to the structure of a web site that will allow the search engine to maximize it’s efficiency. The more you help the search engine perform the more you will be rewarded. This is SEO but it is not the bottom line! You must have the structure as outlined below if you intend to compete with the 1.5 million returns on a query within your web site’s theme.

Overview
Firstly, never confuse a search engine’s service with a directory service. There is nothing in common between the two. Just because you have a web site doesn’t guarantee anyone will find you through a query or even that you will be indexed at all.
Search engines determine where to place you in a query by site importance, content and your ability to make your content understandable data to their algorithm. Placement is everything! Ranking by importance is barometer with many influences which in any event wont guarantee good placement. So, even though I personally link to my clients to help boost their “ranking by importance” their placement (even though their ranking maybe high) on a query maybe low or nonexistent. Their site structure and SEO techniques will determine placement.

Content
Search engines want content and lots of it delivered according to how their program can best utilize the data. There is no substitute for content! By this I mean, in our situation, data outside of the agora.cgi realm.
If you sell model rocket kits, for example. You may want to create tutorials on finishing techniques, launching safety hints, links out to NASA and Hubbell’s web site, the history of rocketry and etc. All with links out to your other pages and links out to heavy weight web sites integrated within your paragraphs.
Forums, chatrooms, guestbooks, memberships and other interactive tools can generate links to your site from other sites (importance) as well as indicate to the engines that your site is popular.
All of this and more, outside of the store directory.

Linking
The value of links to and from your web site cannot be overstated. The links from poorly ranked web sites, by the way, to your site may not have any boosting effect.
Search engines want to find the sites that act as the “hub” of the Internet. Contrary to popular belief, search engines are fast becoming more reliant on sites of importance based on links (and SEO) to determine what is the basis of importantance. Search engines really are a spineless 500-pound monster, they are nothing without data presented in a manner they can understand.


A couple of examples of techniques that will hurt you and or get you banned.
A redirect off your homepage to your storefront is not content. Further, you can and most likely will be penalized for such a tactic. Just as search engines will reward you they will also penalize you if they suspect spamming or encounter spammer’s tricks. You can also be banned if found doing things that spammers employ. A redirect off your home page is a spammer’s trick and even yet the search engines that wont follow a URL with a question mark will have nothing to index. The risks are just too great to utilize this technique.
Hidden text. This will get you banned. Suppose your bg color is #FFFFFF. You want to add a bunch of text either sentences or keywords so the spider will index it but, it wont visually be seen by the average visitor so you place your text in an open field like this:
<font color=”#FFFFFF” size=1px> keywords keywords keywords keywords</font>
If you’re caught you’re dead to the search engines. There are tons more silly things ppl employ. Beware. Do it right and do it all within the theme of your web site or page.

Remember that Agoracart is not a content manager program. It is a shoppingcart program that will afford you a powerful tool to conduct transactions, product presentation and more online. Developments are in the works that will absolutely even the score with the high end, cost, search engine friendly shoppingcarts. However, no matter what concept you employ for a web site, if the search engines don’t understand what that link is for or what that picture is about or what your site theme is or what relevance your content is or even in some cases content only beyond the restrictions of the bot’s program, your site will not be indexed well enough if at all. Your ranking will suffer, your placement will suffer, your traffic will suffer and your profit potential will suffer.

regards,
dan

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Post Search Engine Optimization 
Dan said "A redirect off your homepage to your storefront is not content. Further, you can and most likely will be penalized for such a tactic."

So, my home page must reside in PUBLIC_HTML.
The I have two questions:
1. Do I have to pace a store front in PUBLIC_HTML? I have to acces this page. And if it is not in PUBLIC_HTML, then the re-direct will follow. And I will be penalized (in accordance to your statement above). What is the solution?

2. If the user is trying to get to the specific product page, which has a specific content, keywords, etc. the redirect happens again. See the example (http://<my domain>/ipw-web/ecommerce/ac/agora.cgi?page=ring0070z.htm).

So, neither my store front, not the product page are being indexed by the search engine, because they are subject to re-direct.

So, how to get around this problem?

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Post RE: Search Engine Optimization 
hell-o
http://www.cartsolutions.net
is the same as
public_html/index.html
this is considered the portal, home page, front door or whatever term one can apply to your domain. this is where the redirect has the most effect on search engines.
according to what i understand you have a redirect (home page) leading to a page with a redirect with links that have pages redirecting? do you see how difficult that would be for a search engine to figure out what the heck is going on?
if you, for example, have decided to use ssi as your pages and an easy fix would be a redirect from
public_html/index.html to public_html/index.shtml and your shtml file has legitimate content then you wont get penalized. however, if you redirect from your homepage to a program such as agoracart which some search engines can index reluctantly and with dubious results and other search engines are incapable of going you will be penalized. the redirect off your homepage has a very narrow window of acceptability. generally it is to be avoided.

the whole point in the sticky is you need static pages (html files outside of your store folder) that contain information you want indexed for your product, site theme and more data to draw in traffic. the more you have that is fully indexable the more traffic you will get and the more chances of a high placement on a wider, more general search query.

you need a home page. properly structured with txt content links and images and all opitmized. you need more html files in the public_html directory. use sub directories if you have to but link to them from everywhere if used.

navigation takes some thought and planning. sometimes you have to go back and reorganize. sometimes you have to look at it backwards to understand how you will be presenting it in a forward fashion. the store front is an exceptional tool for navigation in some circumstances. you can direct links to the store only though this page and the store links will blossom out from it. or you can include the storefront with the category links to act as a store specific information page.
there are many ways to introduce your visitors to your store and many ways to defeat the entire purpose to get them inside to look at your products.
designing and constructing a sound e-commerce website is complicated and difficult. it takes time. it is always in a state of flux. if it isn't then someone isn't working hard enough.

regards,
dan

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Post  
Thank you Dan,
It was a great write up.
So, what would you suggest for me as the best soliution as far as integrating Agora with my website:

1. Re-install Agora right into PUBLIC_HTML, where all my static pages will be
OR

2. Am I better of referencing Agora functionality from my static pages in PUBLIC_HTML?
.

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Post RE: Search Engine Optimization 
Hell-o
There are infinite scenarios. The one, one chooses is dependent on ones skills and knowledge. However, very few, if any alternative scenarios will improve placement or ranking over the standard static web site SEOed properly. The new .htaccess solution in the proforum will help a lot. It will save time and benefit a site greatly but I don’t believe it will increase placement or ranking. Further, I believe that a properly designed web site as I have outlined in this topic will gain a better placement on a query and better ranking then a web site with nothing more than a store and .htaccess to assist search engines with.

The public_html or equivalent directory is the default directory for your domain. This is the foundation of your web site. All basic content html files concerning your domain belong there. Sub directories should be used for specialized content and linked to and from everywhere possible within the static pages. An example may look like this:

Public_html
Index.html
Privacy-policy.html
Return-policy.html
Sitemap.html (simple linking page. More elaborate content such as I create for clients linking to products in their store by p_id from static pages should go into a sub directory)
Etc. html files

For sub directories (public_html/)
/images
/css
/js
/chat
/guestbook
/forum
/catalog (this could be the static pages for SEO purposes for your store. Can also be called sitemap but contents should be more than just products.)
/members

It is best to install Agoracart to one of the paths as shown below. This will ensure functionality throughout most server setups. On the other hand your hosting company may decide to do things differently so check with them to assure SSL and executables can be run from the directory you intend to install Agoracart to.

Public_html/store/agora.cgi
Or
Public_html/cgi-bin/store/agora.cgi

There will be conflicts in the program I believe if you install your store here:

Public_html/agora.cgi

The common structure of web sites has evolved from simple plain text pages to all of the great programs and features we enjoy today. One cannot just lump every file in one directory and expect to make sense of the listing or expect server speed. In addition, there may come a time when search engines won’t have to rely on common structure to understand and interpret content. But until then a web site must offer content as per requirements if search engine benefits are desired.

Regards,
Dan

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Post  
1. Can Agora serve as a plig-in shopping cart?
2. Can it be called from a static page? I would like to have a static product page, and to be able to use Agora program in the form to add a specific product to the shopping cart; to be able to inquire on shopping cart contents from a static page

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Post  
Agora is not really a plug-in cart. You can however have static product pages that are called from within the cart. Those pages are housed in the html/pages directory and are called using, agora.cgi?page=whatever.html

HTH!~


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Bonnie - AgoraCart Moderator

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Post  
Thank you,

I know hot to call a static page. What I do need, though, is to know how to call the Agora functioanlity from such page. Is there a possibility to put "Add to Cart button to a static page?

Tahnk you

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Post  
You can create static product pages within the cart.
On the page, you will want to put the following around each product:
Quote:

<FORM METHOD="post" ACTION="%%scriptURL%%">
%%make_hidden_fields%%
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="item-00111|Category|3.00|Name of Item||1" SIZE="3" MAXLENGTH="4">
<INPUT TYPE="IMAGE" NAME="add_to_cart_button" VALUE="Add To Cart" SRC="%%URLofImages%%/add_to_cart.gif" BORDER="0">
</FORM>


HTH!~


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Bonnie - AgoraCart Moderator

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Post RE: SEO - Search Engine Optimization 
Hell-o
I have been asked by several ppl how to SEO data for the search engines that have the ability to index the dB and script in their store.

A really short background. The most important first thing that one should do to SEO anything is title tags and alt tags. These two alone will encourage the engines to index your pages and give you a firm ranking base. Elementary, indeed but absolutely essential.

If you’re hard coding links then hard code the title tags. DOH! If you’re using agorascript then you need to include title tags. This is easy to do but may be difficult to implement universally. I will offer a solution for general purposes. Adapt, as you need to. If you can come up with a unique method then post here for the benefit of others. Thanks.

<!--agorascript-pre { # code to count up the CART contents
local(%db_ele,$sku,$category,%category_list);
if (!($sc_db_lib_was_loaded =~ /yes/i))
{ &require_supporting_libraries (__FILE__, __LINE__, "$sc_db_lib_path"); }
&capture_STDOUT;
&get_prod_db_element($db{"product"},*db_ele);
foreach $sku (keys %db_ele) {
$category = $db_ele{$sku};
$category_list{$category}++;
}
foreach $category (sort(keys %category_list)) {
$category2 = $category;
$category2=~s/_/ /g;
print "&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=\"agora.cgi?cart_id=%%cart_id%%&product=",
"$category\" title=\"$category products\"> $category2 </a><br>\n";
}
&uncapture_STDOUT; }
-->

It’s actually quite simple but it will be beneficial. The bold area is all you need to address.

The next step is just as basic and not really what I would do for static pages. However, in both of these cases something is better than nothing.

Be warned. If you are not comfortable with editing the dB directly then don’t attempt this. It is very possible you can lose your entire dB contents! If you want to play around with the dB and get familiar with how it works then install a test store on your domain and play all you want.
Another disclaimer. If you do install a test store you best be very careful not to overwrite your current store. If your store directory is named “store” (public_html/store, for example) then you run a risk of losing all your data on installation. Make sure you know what you’re doing. Ask questions!

Ok this is quite simple as well. Download your data.file via ftp in ASCII. Make a copy of the current version! Make a copy of the current version! Open it up in Excel, dBwiz, or like I prefer to do, open in my html editor that has the ability to find and replace and doesn’t take Einstein to learn how to use! Make sure your editor doesn’t auto correct and will save in plain text.

Open the find and replace feature and enter this as the string to find:

BORDER=0>

Then enter this as a replacement:

BORDER=0 alt=%%name%%>

Hit enter and pray! LOL

After the search and replace is final check out the dB to be sure there are no errors. Then save. Ftp your site and rename your store/data_files/data.file to data.file.old or something. Upload your edited data.file via ftp in ASCII. Match the new file, file permissions to the old data.file permission.

Now access your store with your browser and mouse over the links and the product images. Your link titles should be “category_name products” and the alt for your product images should be “product name”.

Play around with it and have fun.

Regards,
Dan

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Post  
Dan,

I've actually implimented both of these for the next version.... the only difference being that for images i use the file name instead. i may look back into changing it to the product name but we shall see..... the title tags are in place on all hyperlinks though including the cartlinks so that should definitely make things easier for the final user.....

just thought i'd give ya that FYI

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Post  
My home page is simply a "welcome to our online shop - click to enter" sort of page. It is in public_html.

It then sends people to the agora cart, located in public_html/shop.

At the moment google references 2 pages, the main index page and the storefront page, but all other search engines only reference the main page.

Are you saying that most search engines won't follow the link to the shop?

If so, do I need to make my home page a "proper" page, with links to static pages as well as to the agora store?


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Post RE: SEO - Search Engine Optimization 
hell-o
oh man! sorry your post went unanswered. i don't know how i missed it.

you are correct on all counts. you need to develop your site just as if there was no shoppingcart and you wanted to present your product information (less things like price). then from the static pages link to the product by id and not to the category in the store.

to clear up a misconception

Quote:
You can however have static product pages that are called from within the cart. Those pages are housed in the html/pages directory and are called using, agora.cgi?page=whatever.html


this is fundamentally incorrect. anything beyond the question mark in a query string ceases to be considered static. especially by the SE. furthermore, if you use any agorascript, header, footer or any code (perl, ssi, cgi, php, etc., etc.) whatsoever, the page regardless of the location, is not a static page by any definition. the only label i can think of is it is a non-dB parsed page (a dynamic page). static has nothing to do with it. you can see the proof by looking at any search engine result where their bot will not follow beyond the question mark in the query string.

sorry for missing your question!
regards,
dan

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Post Duplicate html pages outside and in agora.cgi 
Hi,

I read all the above only after I have finished doing my website using agoracart. I have only one static page which is the index page in public_html. All links on this page start with <a href="store/agora.cgi?etc, etc>. This index page is also found in 'store/html' folder, as suggested by Bonnie in some where in the forum.

From what I read, it is better to have a few static html pages outside 'agora.cgi?'. If I am to redo all the linking, it is major work for me. I am afraid I may mess up some things. So, would it be ok if I were to duplicate my html pages in my 'store/html/' and 'store/html/pages' folders and place them in public_html. Of course, I would have to change
any links in these html pages to :

for example:
from <a href="agora.cgi?cart_id=%%cart_id%%&keywords=etc">
to <a href="store/agora.cgi?keywords=etc">

Would that be damaging to my site in terms of SEO or the functionality of agora itself? Any advice is greatly welcomed.

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Post RE: Duplicate html pages outside and in agora.cgi 
hell-o
please post a link to your store.
regards,
dan

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Hi,

The index page for my new site with agora, which is in public_html, is temporarily named http://www.1childrenbooks.com/agorastatic_index_Jan18.htm . This will be changed to index.html when it is live.
This index page is repeated in agora and can be accessed via http://www.1childrenbooks.com/store/agora.cgi?

In the store/html folder resides pages like 'Contact_Us.htm'.
In the store/html/pages folder resides pages like '1_Peekaboo.htm' which is the 'more details' page for the books themselves.

Thanks.

Kim

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hell-o
the current structure of your site is just great. good ranking, nice layout, lots of text and information.
i see you tried some sort of php process for your old order form. just replace the links for the buy now buttons to lead to agoracart and the p_id for the product.
your site is well indexed by google so i wouldn't change too much as far as what you already have for static pages. just use agoracart as a store and don't try to make is a content management program.
your site is functiona and very nice as it is. i would keep it that way.

regards,
dan

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Post  
Hi Dan,

Thank you so much for taking the trouble to view my site.

Sorry if I sound dumb, I am very much an amateur on web designing and coding and really need to clarify the following:

1.
Quote:
your site is well indexed by google so i wouldn't change too much as far as what you already have for static pages.

Do you mean to say I should keep my current structure? Oh..I have spent the past six months putting everything into agora... Was going to delete the current site once my agora website is up. So, I should sort of take out the html pages from agora?

Err.. my original idea of duplicating the agora's html pages to be placed in public_html should be abandoned?

2.
Quote:
just replace the links for the buy now buttons to lead to agoracart and the p_id for the product.

Is this how I should hyperlink the 'Buy Now' button:
<a href="store/agora.cgi?p_id=00001">. This means the customers would have to click 'Add to Cart' button to actually get the product into their basket?


3.
Quote:
just use agoracart as a store and don't try to make is a content management program.

This means agoracart be used to facilitate the buying process only and not to control the whole website?

I would very grateful if you could find the time to answer the above questions. I feel kinda of disappointed because what I had tried so hard to do the past 6 months is not an improvement to my current site, after all.

Regards,
Kim

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Post RE: Duplicate html pages outside and in agora.cgi 
hell-o
if you would please PM me with your email i'll help you fix your delema. there are many ways to publish a web site but the path you're taking is not going to bode well with the search engines and your traffic will suffer.
i'm really sorry you and others got the wrong impression on how to impliment agoracart or any dynamic content. i have done all i can to help ppl avoid this "trap".
pleas PM me and i'll fit you into my schedule.

don't worry too much. everything you're done so far can be fit into a concept.

regards,
dan

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Post Integration options to preserve Search Engine Rankings 
Hello Dan,
It sounds like you understand the difficulties of search engine optimization and I would like to ask your advice regarding a client project. I currently have a client with an HTML site with approximately 180 static pages of all of their categories and products. You can view the site at www.healthstylesexercise.com. They get a tremendous amount of traffic from search engines (primarily Google) which I do not want to disrupt. I've put a lot of work into optimizing pages for keywords and have a lot more SEO work that can be done. Unfortunately, it just isn't possible to easily update and manage the volume of products that they have manually and their current shopping cart system lacks any decent functionality that most online shoppers need. It looks like AgoraCart could offer all of the promoitonal, merchandising, and order processing functions that I want. But how can I integrate it into the current site without killing search rankings? Could I insert price, inventory, and add to cart buttons into a static HTML page? I don't mind the extra time setting up pages with code to pull price and buy links but I would like to be able to update inventory and price files easily for the entire site. If possible, I would like to use a database system to manage content more efficiently. Can I accomplish this with Agora Cart? Let me know what you recommend.

Thanks!
Pete Stevenson

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Post RE: Integration options to preserve Search Engine Rankings 
hell-o
you're absolutely correct not wanting to mess with an established optomized website.
funny thing, my google ranking meter is grayed out on your home page and others. your sitemap has a ranking of 4/10. any idea why the home page would have no data at google?
you may want to strip DW comments for publication. especially in the head tag. you may also want to move the js to a remote file (like the css file) to free up page load. more keywords.
i noticed it appears that you currently have an offsite shoppingcart? oh and their "back to the product page" at your site opens in a new window. Crying or Very sad
here's what i would do...
retain your pages just as they are and install agoracart. populate the dB with the products and integrate just as your current store is integrated. depending on customer sales trends you may want to limit the navigation from your store back to the static pages. with all of the products in the dB it maybe adventagous to use the static pages for introductory information then when they add something to the store they can navigate to other products within the store. as long as the client has cookies enabled they can go anywhere on the net, come back later and still have the products in their cart. by default this is timed for 12 hours before the cart contents are removed.
if you don't have a lot of technical options that would be best handled by the store then you could add buy now buttons to the static pages and not run a dB at all. here is an example of this:
http://www.avedastore.com/
for best results cookies must be enabled by the client to maintain cart contents.
regards,
dan

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Post Re: RE: Integration options to preserve Search Engine Rankin 
Hi Dan,
Thanks for the advice. ...I'm not sure why your Google ranking meter isn't working for the Healthstyles home page. My toolbar is working and shows a page rank of 5/10. But thanks for the code advice - this site is a bit of a mess as many other designers worked on it before I did. I'd probably be better off re-building from scratch but the client has limited funds so I do what I can within their time budgets. And I agree that the current shopping cart navigation is horrible which is why I'm looking for a better solution.

As for the integration, with our current offsite cart we just ad the purchase link to go from the static HTML page to the shopping cart system. Unfortunately the pricing is static and we do not display any inventory or sale pricing information on the product page. To update a price, I currently need to change the shopping cart file and hunt down every static page and category listing that the product appears on and edit the HTML manually. With AgoraCart, can I display the add-to-cart AND price, sale, and inventory information within the HTML dynamically?

For example, on your Aveda site, this product page shows the basic product info and has a box with the suggested retail, sale price, savings, and add to cart buttons:
http://www.avedastore.com/abun_shampoo.htm
Is it possible to pull these details from the product database? The main issue that I want to try to avoid is manually editing multiple HTML pages every time a sale price changes.

I could reduce the static pages down to just the informational pages and category pages to link products to the database driven content. But some of my top entry points are specific product pages and not the home page. "Bowflex TreadClimber" is currently a top Google term linking to our Bowflex category and the TC5000 TreadClimber page. I'd dislike kinda sorta maybe to lose this advantage by replacing the detailed product pages.

Let me know if you think it's possible for me to find a good middle ground to preserve static content for the search engines while increasing the efficiency of pricing, content, and merchandising on the site.

Also, I've looked into O-S-C-o-m-m-e-r-c-e and there are claims that the shopping cart pages can be indexed by the crawlers. Do you have any experience with this? What is your opinion between Agora and O-S-C-o-m-m-e-r-c-e? (Agora seems awfully paranoid about using that name so I assume I should give them serious consideration)

Thanks a lot for the help. I really appreciate your advice!

Pete

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Post RE: Integration options to preserve Search Engine Rankin 
hell-o
it maybe possible to pull inventory data to the static pages. however, you will have to do some apache tricks to make the static pages dynamic with the htm or html extension. i am currently testing how the spiders handle this. i think it will take a few more weeks to get out of the sandbox.

agora pro has an inventory hack for the flat file dB. it isn't quite as good as a true inventory solution but is pretty good. the soon to be released mysql version of agoracart should handle inventory and other features just dandy.

that other cart solution... well they like to spam agora yahoo board so ed filtered the name here. it's not paranioa so much as it's we have ppl to help and work to do and there is no place on this or any other agora board to promote other solutions. however, we do encourage ppl to seek other solutions if agoracart doesn't fulfill their needs.

i don't see whay agoracart can't do everything you've outlined. it will take some insite to develop the store so the client knows they can surf either the store or the static pages. i understand that the home page is not always the entry page. this is why you should keep things as they are and not attempt to use the store as a site management program.

personally i don't care whether or not a program is written in cgi, php or what have you. none of them can compete across the board with plain text html files properly optomized. a trend amoung the SEs is that the merchant send in a dB so they can accurately present your stuff. this is silly for most ppl, especially the small guy. html pages with all the product data isn't that difficult and the advantages are tremenduos. a shoppingcart is simply that, a means to handle transactions. php/mysql, cgi/mysql, flat file databases alienate tons of spiders. mod rewrite is very complicated, programs to generate static pages from php/mysql abound and for good reason.

the simplest most effective means is to do exactly what you have. the only question is how to integrate the store. if dynamic content is an absolute then you need a dB. don't use buy now buttons from the static pages simply link into the store by p_id and not category from the product on the static page. client will know when they're in the store and not in the store. if they can find the information from within the store then they'll stay there.
well gotta run. i wouldn't be too concerned about anything but navigation and maintaining your static pages.
regards,
dan

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i had a site running for a friend a while back with just the standard agoracart with dynamic pages and the spyders hit the generated product pages often. One product page even was in the top 10 on google. so spyders can hit on the dynamicly created pages and give them good rankings.... it's just a matter of making sure your entire site is SEO

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hell-o
that is correct. i get ok ranking from a default store with default products.
the two main issues are the links the SE provides have the cart id embeded in the link. the second issue is msn, google, yahoo and inktomi can parse dynamic content. however, it isn't always correct and by not developing a proper presentation in html (without a ? or other switches in the url) there will be directories and other spiders which will be unable to index the content. in addition much more can be accomplished with html than with the limitations of dynamic content. even dynamic content embeded within html files can be detrimental as i am discovering here:
http://www.hgltd1.com
the featured products on all pages outside of the /hgltd1 are dynamic and the products change with each page transition. i am getting lots of errors by spiders that ...content cannot be displayed. thought the scriting technique works flawlessly.
many issues are changing with developments in the leading SE R&D. however, there are more resources out there than the top 4 SEs which may never have the ability to parse dynamic content.
the edge over competition and true site importance can be directly related to methods of presentation. if i had a product which i used descriptive, non common words ("pearls of mars" for example) i could probably establish a SE placement of #1 without too much effort. but if i was in the pearl jewelry business i would be most concerned over my placement when "pearl jewelry" was searched for as that's where the compition is. the edge attained over the compition would be through SEO techniques. html is the pivital factor. listings in directories and other sources on the net boost the site's ranking of importance and placement by which in many cases dynamic content is excluded.
site concept to encompass these issues from the very begining is important. it takes months to recover from a poorly conceptualized site when proper techniques and presentation are finally employed.
regards,
dan

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