Need tips for successful search engine crawling, Google, Bing, Yahoo

I wanted to built some reports on successful search engine crawling, and tips anyone had for having products appear in Google's shopping engine, as well as search engine crawling for key words ect., I'm kind of new to adapting meta-data and internal-linking (to increase "organic search" level--man I love internet buzzwords)

Ideas, tips, tricks, ect. ect.!

Right now, I am working on adding a meta-tag generated by Google to my homepage, assuming this is 'default.aspx' that is generated when you visit the webstore, so I'm looking to locate this file.

-->Update: located the source of the HTML that the ASP handler sends to the front page, using a basic nopComm. installation v1.2, I found it in /masterpages/root.master/ from there I was able to add simple java-script for Google analytics.

I also added the google generated HTML page to my root directory to trigger the indexing.

Anyone have any thoughts on meta data that should be associated with individual products, or the page itself?

ps. I also wacked my meta file from the "All Settings" editor as I was trying to edit it to get it to push the meta-data into my main page...does anyone know about how nopCommerce distributes this meta data from page to page throughout the website and can it be adjusted using a central control, or is it something I need to find the source code for each page to change?

Hi, not sure what you mean by "wacked" the META info from settings but the default META Title / Description / Keywords can be managed from the Configuration > Global Settings > SEO/Display settings.

A SEOHelper class exists to add the META data to the page. The default store META data is added by the BaseNopMasterPage (that root.master derives from). Your entity pages (e.g. Product) will override the default META data - look in Product.aspx.cs.

Hope this helps,

Ben

Hi Ben-

Yes that makes more sense. I will try my hand at replacing this information since by "wacked" I meant "broke" -- lots of error messages and ultimately deleted.

SO...at this point I believe I'm going to have trouble setting this variable up correctly again unless I have specific notes on it, from my "LOG" - I have

http://www.xbox360outletstore.com/Administration/SettingDetails.aspx?SettingID=44

And this rather scary looking ASP error, obviously the result of something not fitting right since I changed the settings!

   System.Web.HttpRequestValidationException: A potentially dangerous Request.Form value was detected from the client (ctl00$cph1$ctrlSettingDetails$ctrlSettingInfo$txtValue="<meta name="verify-v..."). at System.Web.HttpRequest.ValidateString(String s, String valueName, String collectionName) at System.Web.HttpRequest.ValidateNameValueCollection(NameValueCollection nvc, String collectionName) at System.Web.HttpRequest.get_Form() at System.Web.HttpRequest.get_HasForm() at System.Web.UI.Page.GetCollectionBasedOnMethod(Boolean dontReturnNull) at System.Web.UI.Page.DeterminePostBackMode() at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest() at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestWithNoAssert(HttpContext context) at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) at ASP.administration_settingdetails_aspx.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) in c:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files\root\5121b5cd\81cd5d3d\App_Web_nghckjlx.13.cs:line 0 at System.Web.HttpApplication.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously)

Since meta-data is one of the factors in being located by a search engine (I think), I would like to correctly configure this information to display the correct meta data by default, and yes, like you mentioned change the specific meta data for each page.

Speaking of data, I am next going to see about a "data-feed" to add my products to the "Google Shopping" crawler!

Ill give any updates, in the meantime thanks for the help with the meta-data stuff!

"FROGGLE" error! I was successfully able to generate the XML-data feed from the FROGGLE generator built into the "Promotions" tab of my nopCommerce manager, however, after uploading and processing with google, I discovered that there were errors with missing descriptions for some but not all items (all items had written descriptions in nopCommerce's product database).

On closer examination of the XML file I discovered the following: <DESCRIPTION><![CDATA[]]></DESCRIPTION>

I was pleased with the export for some items as it was formatted etc. etc., and wouldn't like to have to re-write these descriptions! Any ideas?

Well never mind about that, Ill just build a development version and take a look at the file I am missing.

Still having "FROGGLE" problems with missing XML data!!! Typing this stuff in manually and seeing if google will take it is really time consuming considering I have to go through the XML file and match stuff up and than the google base requests at least an hour to process the data]!

Next up BING - cash back?!?

You have to set the description for each product variant (not product).

P.S. This issue will be resolved in the next release.

My only tip for you is make sure your site is pretty decently optimized and then start backlinking like crazy. If you want your site to get crawled and start gaining ranking, then you need to have good quality links on high trusted sites pointing back at yours.