SOLVED - SEO Help & Advice Please

[Dahl99]

Hi all,

I maybe being a little thick when it comes to PS and SEO so any advice would be great.

I know about links as such as I have built my own photography website which I built using MS Frontpage and have a dedicated links page where I link to other photography sites but when it comes to PS I'm a little confused.

At the moment I'm constantly revising my meta-tags, meta-names etc for each product to try to increase my position in Google. I realise that it can take Google etc a while to crawl the PS site but at the moment it's position is very low and most of the visitors to the site are from the PS forum and as yet no buying customers.

How can I improve my SEO to get customers to the shop (www.funkyfashionjewellery.com)

Regards to all.

Edit - I have put a sitemap on the Google webmaster site and out of 1,500 pages 50 have been indexed. I have also submitted the site to various search engines.

[Trip]

Use forum search and you will find already a lot of threads which cover this topic for example
a) turn SEO url on (requires mod_rewrite)
look in google webmaster tools what the recommend you for example title and metadescription not the same and so on and so on...
Regards, trip

[Trip]

... äähh maybe some content on the pages besides the product name could help search engines also to index your pages.
regards, trip

[Dahl99]

Hi Trip,

thanks for the info. I have searched the forums but there isn't anything that really helps.

When you say "turn SEO url on (requires mod_rewrite)" do you mean friendly url? If so am I correct to generate the htaccess file first and then turn on the Friendly Url.

I've read a few posts regarding the Friendly Url and htaccess activation and in some cases it has completely messed their shops up. If I copy my shop (not the database) from the server to my hard drive via FTP and then should it all go wrong if I copy my previous copied shop on my hard drive back to the server will that rectify it?

Regards

[Melinda]

First make 2 .txt files ... one called robots.txt and one called .htaccess.txt. Change the name to .htaccess only. Upload these 2 files.

In BO -> Preferences -> Friendly URL and set the "yes" and save.

In BO -> Tools -> Generators and click each link to generate the info for these files.

The mod_rewrite has to do with your hosting server which most have this enabled. If not you would need to contact your hosting company.

If you have problems you can always delete the robots.txt and .htaccess files and turn off Friendly URL.

I have not had any problems. Usually I setup a store in another folder and get it ready to go and then after transferring the folder files to the site root I turn on friendly url and go from there.

Use the information on those 50 indexed pages and add the meta tags to each folder and product in your prestashop. The first paragraph of each folder and product description is important. It shouldn't be too long (25 words) and have keywords repeated throughout the first 25 words and again repeated in the rest of the description.

Hope that helps.

[Dahl99]

Hi Melinda,

thank you for the info.

I'm a little confused with the naming and renaming of the htaccess file. Could you explain it to me again.

Where do I upload these files?

Regards

P.S. I'm using PS 1.2.5

[Dahl99]

OK. Just a quick note as others might the info useful.

I created a .htaccess and robot.txt file and uploaded them to the root directory of the shop using ftp.
Both files were changed to CHMOD 777.
I then installed friendly urls in the BO and saved.
Next I went to tools then generators and generated the htaccess file which erased my original file and created a new one.

All appears well as the images and links in the FO are there.

[Melinda]

Dahl99 I did respond back to you yesterday but as soon as I clicked the post submit button the prestashop domain went down or something.

I think it might be good to put this info in the docs I posted for prestashop.

Glad you got it working.

[Dahl99]

Hi Melinda,

thanks for letting me know.

I worked it out myself in the end and as usual was quite logical. After hearing of sites corrupting etc I've been dopuble checking things before I hit the enter button.

There's lots of useful info on the forums but sometimes it's fragmented so you never quite get the answer you're after. Also sometimes a topic starts, a few questions and answers are posted then the thread dies. I can only assume it has been sorted but it would be good to know that, and how the problem was resolved.

Where have you posted the docs?

Regards,

Mark