SEO checklist for volusion shopping cart software

Introduction

SEO Checklist for volusion store

1. 301 Redirects

   If you are moving from existing ecommerce site to volusion store, backup your all the url list (sitemap) first. This will help you to setup 301 redirects for old url to the new one on volusion store.
   Why: If you missed this step, you might have faced ranking drop from SERP.

   How to setup 301 redirect in volusion store?

   • Go to Settings tab.
   • Click Maintenance tab and find Manage 301 redirects and go to Redirect manager.
     Here,

     Source Path = OLD URL (i.e. example.com/product_cat/product_item )

     Target Path = NEW URL (i.e. example.com/Cat_p/product_item )

     You can also upload XML file generated with list of those backup URLs

2. Meta Canonical Tags

   Volusion store has default.asp is main index file and you can setup canonical tags for homepage simply pasting this HTML snippet.

   <div id="if_homepage">
   <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com" />
   </div>

   Why: If you run site:yourwebsite.com query in Google and you are getting multiple copies of your homepage, you might need to setup meta canonical tags.
   You can also place your Google Webmaster Tools verification meta tags here.

3. Submitting Sitemap to Google and other Search Engines

   Volusion software auto generates sitemap for all hosted stores. To submit your sitemap to Google,
   • Add and Verify your site first to Google Webmaster Tools
   • Navigate Site: Configuration > Sitemaps
   • Click “Submit a Sitemap”
   • Your website url is already there, just enter: “google_sitemap.asp” in text field and click “Submit Sitemap”
   • So the your sitemap location would be http://www.example.com/google_sitemap.asp and you can submit it to other search engines as well.

4. Setting up robots.txt

   If volusion store website structure is not properly built, website may end up with canonical issues. There are some modules like email a friend, gift certificate and options, photo details etc which we really don’t need to crawl and shows up on SERP. So we may block it with robots.txt
   Here is a sample robots.txt many people use for volusion store.

   Sitemap: http://www.example.com/google_sitemap.asp
   
   User-agent: *
   Disallow: /EmailaFriend.asp
   Disallow: /login.asp
   Disallow: /login_sendpass.asp
   Disallow: /GiftCert_sendvia.asp
   Disallow: /GiftCert_default.asp
   Disallow: /GiftOptions.asp
   Disallow: /shoppingcart.asp
   Disallow: /FileUpload/TextObject.aspx
   Disallow: /affiliate_info.asp
   Disallow: /Affiliate_signup.asp
   Disallow: /catalog_subscribe.asp
   Disallow: /donate.asp
   Disallow: /Email_Me_When_Back_In_Stock.asp
   Disallow: /Affiliate_thankyou.asp
   Disallow: /help.asp
   Disallow: /Help_EmailBetterPrice.asp
   Disallow: /Help_FreeShipping.asp
   Disallow: /help_answer.asp
   Disallow: /kb_results.asp
   Disallow: /mailinglist_subscribe.asp
   Disallow: /mailinglist_unsubscribe.asp
   Disallow: /one-page-checkout.asp
   Disallow: /PhotoDetails.asp
   Disallow: /returns.asp
   Disallow: /Register.asp
   Disallow: /Terms.asp
   Disallow: /Terms_privacy.asp
   Disallow: /Ticket_New.asp
   Disallow: /TrackPackage.asp
   Allow: /

   To configure robots.txt,
   • Navigate Marketing > SEO
   • At bottom of page, find Click here to modify your robots preferences
   • Paste above example robots.txt file into textarea field

5. Setting up custom meta tags

   There are fields called “CUSTOM METATAGS OVERRIDE” for products as well as categories.
   Example meta tags for volusion store

   <title>your product title</title>
   <meta name="title" content="your product title" />
   <meta name="description" content="your product description" />
   <meta name="keywords" content="your product keywords" />
   <meta name="robots" content="index,follow" />
   <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/Cat_p/id.htm" />

   Why:

   • To avoid duplicate title,description and keyword tags.
   • To control index,follow,noindex,nofollow meta tags.

6. Parameter handling in Google Webmaster Tools

   You can set cat, sort, page, searching, show, x, y parameters to ignore while crawling by Googlebot through Google Webmaster Tools, to avoid canonical pages indexing.

1. No following useless links

   You may nofollow login, signup, affiliate section etc whatever you feel less important than your product listing on SERP.

1. Use noindex, follow for canonical offer pages.

   If you are selling product with various offers, you might have the same description content on all those pages. So to avoid canonical issues on your site, you can use here noindex,follow meta tags.

About Vikas Bhagwagar

VikasBhagwagar is Web Developer, Frontend Engineer, Interaction Designer, SEO engineer, System Admin, PSD slicer, Database Developer etc etc in-short B.E. Computer Engineer from SVNIT-Surat