Seo Optimization For Your Oscommerce Template
By Justin Hollenbaugh
First things first, you have downloaded a template for oscommerce and you have either picked categories and uploaded products or are ready to do so. The first thing you need to do to make your oscommerce site search engine friendly is to pick a title that is consistent with the products you will be carrying, also descriptive enough that search engines and people searching for your product are likely to find your site and glad they did. You do not want a page title of "oscommerce" . You will need to change your page title to fit your specific item, a small description of what your page has to offer is what you want in your title. If you are selling "gifts", do not use gifts as the page title, basic common sense should tell us that there is alot of competition for the keyword "gifts", and we are probably not going to rank high for that keyword. A good example of someone selling "gifts" page title would be (gifts at excellent prices - gifts for all occasions) this is a small informative description search engines will recognize and people searching will click on.

The best way to control your page titles and metatags for an oscommerce store is to download and install the header tags controller contribution. this will be the first search engine friendly module that you will want to download and use to start optimizing your site. I found the install to be complicated, confusing, and not work, until I found the full install that already had the modifications performed on each file. All you have to do is replace your old files with the new ones provided, and you will be ready to go.

If you already have categories and products, make a complete backup of your oscommerce template files. The best way to do this is to use your FTP program to download a complete folder to your desktop containing all of your site files. Then go to your oscommerce admin and make a backup of your database and save it on your desktop. Do this every time you are about to make major modifications to your site, and get used to it. The one time that you do not have a current backup of your entire oscommerce store, is the time you will be sorry that you did not.

Header Tags Controller allows for unique Header Tags for: Title, Keywords, and Description on a per page basis.

Download it, unzip it, and upload it to your oscommerce host with your FTP program making sure to overwrite the corresponding directories with the new ones. Because you are overwriting files, it is best to have none, or only a few categories and/or products at this time, that is why I pick this as the first module install for search engine optimization of your oscommerce website.

Now that you Header Tags Controller installed you will need to configure it:

1. login to your oscommerce admin
2. Go to header tags controller in the left menu
3. Click on text control

This is where you will enter in the descriptive title you have chosen to be on your index page. Enter it for index.php.

You can also put a description that is a longer version of the title and should also be written in a way that describes the goods or service you are selling.

The keywords box is not necessary to fill in. The 3 major search engines Google, Yahoo, and MSN will ignore this tag and will determine what keywords you are found under.

Save your work.

Next, if you already have products at your site you will want to go to the 'fill tags' option at the left menu and click button 'fill all tags' for categories and products and press 'update' you will now notice that you have unique page titles for your categories and products pages, based off of the names you gave your categories and products. This may be a good time to evaluate the name you have picked for your categories and products. Once again keep in mind what people will be looking for.

If you have not added products and categories yet, now is a good time to start. Every category and product will now generate the metatags and page title that you give it. This is the first step in optimizing your oscommerce site to make it search engine friendly.
mostwebdesign.com specializes in ecommerce web design and hosting for retail stores.