MIVA MERCHANT HELP AND TIPS FOR SEARCH ENGINE AND DIRECTORY
OPTIMIZATION
Miva Merchant did not have search engines in mind when they
created this shopping cart initially or any of its later versions.
It has the store name on every single page of the store regardless of
whether it is a category, product, or any other screen. This is
not very targeted. It could at least put the store name behind the
category and product names on their respective pages. To top it
off, it does not include any meta description or keyword tags. While
those tags are not as important anymore, especially the keyword tag, it
can be useful in some cases. There are quite a few commercial modules
out there, but we will focus on some free and easy ways to improve how
search engines see your Miva Merchant store.
Install the free search
engine tweak module by Pixel Composer.
This great module will flip the order of the title tag so your category
and product names appear first
rather than like the following:
Please note that Keith has been notified of this problem and will
be correcting it shortly. :)
Your store may have a conflicting module that cancels out Pixel Composer's
module. Your other option is to hard code it, which will be
lost in the next update of the OpenUI or Merchant. There is
a commercial module available that will be reviewed in our next issue.
We have also recently spoken to the OpenUI Consortium and advised
them about possible improvements to the next release of the OpenUI
in relation to search engines. We will keep you posted, if you do
not hear about it first on the list. *UPDATE - The
OpenUI Developer Consortium has taken our advice and switched the
order of the Miva Merchant store name and the Category/Product name
in the screen title tag. Purchase the OpenUI
today!
Change your store name! One of the biggest problems we see when
doing search engine campaigns is that people use their company name
in every single title tag of their site including their Miva Merchant
store. People will find you when searching for your actual company
name without doing this. When we used to work for About.com, one
of the things that the search engines told them was that they did not
like the fact that practically every single page's title tag had About.com
in it. Most people have their company name in their copyright
and on various pages with descriptive text. Use the title tag
to drive traffic to your site with targeted keyphrases. If you
still feel compelled to use it, try a targeted keyphrase and then your
company name. See an example.
If you have only one store, change category and product links in your
welcome screen, static pages, direct links on other sites, etc., so
that they don't have &Store_Code=YourStoreCode
in the url. Your product code should be http://www.yourdomain.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=ProductCode
rather than http://www.yourdomain.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=StoreCode
&Product_Code=ProductCode. For category links, substitute
PROD with CTGY and Product_Code with Category_Code.
Some search engines do not mind the long urls that Miva Merchant
generates. However, the top
dog does!. Every search engine will love the shorter urls,
and they work just fine. We are currently experimenting on other ways
to implement this method. We will keep you informed of any progress.
*UPDATE - We advised the OpenUI Devleoper Consortium
about removing the store code within Miva Merchant if there was only
one store, and they listened! Purchase the OpenUI
today!
If you do not have any category or product links on your welcome screen,
make some. Feature a few of your top selling categories and products.
TIPS FOR MIVA AND MIVA MERCHANT MODULE DEVELOPERS
When possible, have the option to turn off the Store_Code
in urls, whether in Merchant itself or in various add-on modules that
control the category, product, product list, and other related screens.
Try also to leave off the Category Code reference in product urls when
they are not needed. A great product sitemap would be the store
product list with the shorter url. This goes for images as well
as text links.
