Thread

Hi guys,

I don’t have tons of experience in handling SEO based modifications to EE core builds etc., or that much info on whether this can be done, but its way off the mark in terms of being optimal - I do SEO on a daily basis, so would like to implement some changes to how EE is handling the URL scheme. In WordPress it is 95% correct out of the box. If not plugins can ‘fix’ issues. I implement the following on every site I build in WP… Anyway moving forward:

Post URL fixes:

hxttp://cucinamoderna.ca/index.php/products/detail/easy-sousvide-stainless-package

Needs to have index.php removed, also ideally in this case this URL should have the corresponding category then post format:

hxtp://cucinamoderna.ca/electronicsl/easy-sousvide-stainless-package

is more optimal, even more optimal is to remove the category stem, but I am not that concerned about that.

Category URL fixes:

hxtp://cucinamoderna.ca/index.php/products/list/category/misc-electrics

Should be:

hxtp://cucinamoderna.ca/misc-electrics

force lower case, redirect to lowercase and remove underscores, some URLs have camel case and use underscores AND hyphens:

hxtp://cucinamoderna.ca/index.php/products/detail/Cook_Central_Mullti-Cooker_Cuisnart

hxtp://cucinamoderna.ca/cook-central-mullti-cooker-cuisnart

or optionally include the breadcrumb category…

Also the H1 tag - does this have to be the same as the URL/title?

Also we have duplicate meta data across site.

More to the point what module/plugin can allow granular control of these elements? For example I might want the following page title:

The Best Cooking Equipment Online - Cucina Moderna

But with an URL : /the-best-cooking-products

And a heading:

Best cooking equipment deals…

Being a category page as an example.

You might want to look on Devot-ee website for some plugins that can build the type of URLs you want.
You can also use htaccess to remove parts of the URL you don’t want.

There’s a default .htaccess at http://ellislab.com/expressionengine/user-guide/urls/remove_index.php.html - works on most servers.

There are some addons that can help with general meta, page titles etc as DevServe said, me I prefer to use standard EE facilities to roll my own meta data as far as I can etc…

1. Use custom channel fields for things like custom page title, meta description and other meta data. Syntax is easy for single entry pages…

{exp:channel:entries channel="mychannel" disable="categories|member_data|pagination"}
<title>{my_custom_field} or {title}</title>
<meta something="something" value="{my_meta_data}">
<meta something="somethingelse" value="{my_other_meta_data}">
{/exp:channel:entries}

...you can also use a channel category tage here with custom category field for category pages.

2. Use Lowseg2cat - http://wwwgotolow.com for using category data in your url’s and remove the need for the /category indicator, also Low’s Entry title addon is great for adding entry Title values without the need to use an channel entries loop.

3. You could always, at a stretch, use EE’s pages module with your entries to create fully custom URL’s per entry

4. http://gwcode.com/add-ons/gwcode-categories is useful for manipulating categories for navigation or breadcrumbs.

PS I’ve never ever had any problems getting URL formats like /site.com/template_group/template/entry_url indexed in search engines.

There’s a default .htaccess at http://ellislab.com/expressionengine/user-guide/urls/remove_index.php.html - works on most servers.

There are some addons that can help with general meta, page titles etc as DevServe said, me I prefer to use standard EE facilities to roll my own meta data as far as I can etc…

1. Use custom channel fields for things like custom page title, meta description and other meta data. Syntax is easy for single entry pages…

{exp:channel:entries channel="mychannel" disable="categories|member_data|pagination"}
<title>{my_custom_field} or {title}</title>
<meta something="something" value="{my_meta_data}">
<meta something="somethingelse" value="{my_other_meta_data}">
{/exp:channel:entries}

...you can also use a channel category tage here with custom category field for category pages.

2. Use Lowseg2cat - http://wwwgotolow.com for using category data in your url’s and remove the need for the /category indicator, also Low’s Entry title addon is great for adding entry Title values without the need to use an channel entries loop.

3. You could always, at a stretch, use EE’s pages module with your entries to create fully custom URL’s per entry

4. http://gwcode.com/add-ons/gwcode-categories is useful for manipulating categories for navigation or breadcrumbs.

PS I’ve never ever had any problems getting URL formats like /site.com/template_group/template/entry_url indexed in search engines.

Thanks for the info, I guess we will start with the htaccess rules. I will take a look at the modules you suggested, the last point is not really about indexing issues more so for SEO.