A couple of SEO q's

[Stereo Steve]

Our site uses product per page with a full description and big pic. The main section list page has the description hidden and I'm starting to wonder if this is bad for SEO. A lot of searches I do on my products produce muliple item pages before single product pages for my competitiors. My multiple item pages are just a list of products and rank much further down.

So,

1. Is it better to have a short description on the section list page and a fuller decription on the single item page?
2. Another thing I have been reading is that it is good if the keyword is in the URL. For our extended info pages, actinic assigns a URL with the product code so it will look like www.website.com/actinic/CODE-101.html/. If you were trying to optimise the product, wouldn't it be better if the URL was www.website.com/actinic/mustard-yfronts.html for instance? I ask this because it appears obvious to me but all my competitors use the product code in the URL and they seem to do OK. Would this be a way to get a leg up? Just put the product title in the URL?

[Owen Drumm]

In an ideal world I would put the product name in the URL but if you have sites with over 5000 products like I do it's not an easy ask. I also find that the page Title along with the description are important ranking points.

Do a search for anything online and you will see some results that give a concise and easily understood description of what you will find when visiting the page and others with just garbage. Which would you click on?

[RuralWeb]

1. Yes
2. Yes

[Stereo Steve]

Thanks. I figured as much. I will probably implement keywords in URLs for new products. Ones that are already indexed can stay as they are or be converted gradually.

The short description is easier as they are all there but not showing at the mo.

[Owen Drumm]

You could always export your site to Excel and then create a new extended info page by creating a field populated with "info_" and join this with the product description field to make the extended info page name then import back into your site deleting the "info" field of course.

[los_design]

In an ideal world I would put the product name in the URL but if you have sites with over 5000 products like I do it's not an easy ask. I also find that the page Title along with the description are important ranking points.

Do a search for anything online and you will see some results that give a concise and easily understood description of what you will find when visiting the page and others with just garbage. Which would you click on?

We have a client with over 40k items and this is a 'relatively easy' task if you construct your items within a db ready for import as Owen rightly points out.

It is just a case of using the concatenate function and then dragging down for auto fill :cool:

[paulhesford]

Hi
I have created a query that you can import into your actinic catalog db

This query will rename your extended info url using the Product Name and Section id e.g.
A Product in section Products (with Section ID 1)
My Product Name
Will rename the extended info page

My_Product_Name_1.html

Let me know if this would help

My Problem is adding individual Meta Tags to extended info Page - i can add the site defaults but would like to add more relevant tags

see my extended info pages working here

Extended Info Example (http://www.powerbeckonline.co.uk/acatalog/Mass_Builders.html)

[Stereo Steve]

Hi Paul,

I'm going to leave them at the mo as we have ciao feeds and stuff to sort which might cause chaos with deep links. I will manually create URL's for new products and maybe edit older ones that I think will be around for a while as we go. I don't think it's mission critical but maybe an edge.

In terms of the meta's, we use this in the extended info layout

<meta name="description" content="<actinic:variable encoding="strip" name="ProductDescription" />" />
<meta name="keywords" content="<actinic:variable encoding="strip" name="ProductName" />, blank media, dvdr, cdr" />

Seems to produce relevant results. The blank media, dvdr, cdr is just text we added on as keywords for each product.

[Stereo Steve]

I guess you could also create a variable for the keywords and include this in the layout. You could then tailor this to each product.

[paulhesford]

Hi Steve
Thanks for the meta tags help - let me know if you change your mind about the query for changing extended info page names

Hi RuralWeb
I noticed your comments on another post, that you thought seo and extended info pages was a disaster waiting to happen - is this still the case? or was this applicable to earlier actinic versions. Would be nice to know your thoughts

Thanks Paul

[RuralWeb]

You can get my opinion here http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=30588&page=3