InveoStore.com

[thedoc]

Hello,

My (new) client believes the results he is getting from his Zencart site are very poor compared to how it used to be before he changed to this software and compared to his competition.
I cannot really comment on this as I have only just inherited the problem (or no problem?).

One of the first things I would do is to run any number of programmes to check the 'broken links' and to acquire a complete list of all urls (a sitemap).

The problem is that these programmes never finish scanning the site. There are meant to be a couple of thousand products on the site, yet Xenu still runs after 4 hours and tells me it has found 28,000 urls and is only 45% complete. This number of urls increases by the minute.

My feeling is that the 'Magic SEO URL for ZenCart' software is accidentally producing a multitude of page variations for every 'real' page, and hence all these programme spiders are never able to finish the spidering process.

Does that make sense? And has anyone else seen this problem?
I have experienced this actual problem with another client (who used Atlas CMS) and the resolution was to simply remove the URL rewrite software.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[~J~]

It looks like as a pretty crippled Zen Cart installation. According to your post, it does not seem to be anything related to MSU.

What is your web site URL?

[thedoc]

Thanks for your prompt reply.
www. gointernational. co. uk

[~J~]

There is nothing wrong with this site.

The only problem that exists is in your scanning programs, which do not accept cookies and therefore, Session (zenid parameter in URL) is used (since such programs do not send proper identification).

You have two options:
1) Stop using such stupid programs.
2) Turn on Force cookie use in Zen Cart administration.

Hope, you are not working as SEO, because these are very simple basics. Instead I recommend you to track SERPs with "site:" operator if you want to see whether there are any duplicate pages.

[thedoc]

Thanks for your reply.

1. I have never used Zencart before. My client is unhappy with this website and the work done on it by his current programmer. He is convinced the site is failing him. One has to assume he has grounds for this dissatisfaction especially as it has developed since adopting ZenCart.

2. These programs (such as Xenu) are commonly used to help identify problems in search engine crawling. So I think you are a little harsh in describing them as 'stupid'.

It has always seemed strange to me when a piece of software needs 'add-ons' to work effectively with search engines. My view is that the core product should work adequately by itself. The more you add-on software, the more propensity for things to go wrong.

I thank you for your help, but feel the inadequacies still exist in my clients site. And I applaud your unflinching support of your own software.

[~J~]

2. These programs (such as Xenu) are commonly used to help identify problems in search engine crawling. So I think you are a little harsh in describing them as 'stupid'.

There are so many programs out which work bad and are widely used. Some times is better not to go with main-stream.

It has always seemed strange to me when a piece of software needs 'add-ons' to work effectively with search engines. My view is that the core product should work adequately by itself. The more you add-on software, the more propensity for things to go wrong.

Agree, Magic SEO URL is not Add-On. It is special layer written in PHP which operates at the top of Zen Cart.

[thughes]

I cannot determine where to get a copy of the .htaccess file or where it goes.

[~J~]

It depends on your Zen Cart installation, usually it is the root folder.