adendum.Google, stat pages, and listing placement?

ARGGG, I am suffering from the "the more I know, the less I know" effect
of reading too much techie stuff.

I think I finally understand the usefullness of robots.txt, robot meta
tags, and .htaccess in relation to search engines and spiders. I have
no idea how to go about implementing any of these things. I am trying
to come up with an efficient yet, cost effective way to get things
straightened out. What I want to do is... Not drop lower in any search
engines and eventually increase my listing in Google (we all want that)...

As usual I need advice... (someday I will contribute something I hope)

What I need to do is:
1. Get the pages that have nothing to do with products out of the
search engines... (google has spidered my shopper login page in merchant
as and example)... that page does not need to be listed anyplace, since
it has no bearing on what I am selling. I use robots.txt for that
stuff?

2. Get rid of duplicate product pages so Google does not think they are
mirror pages. Options are:
(a.) I optimize the Merchant product pages URL's , and create a
site map of products and not have static pages.
(b.) Or keep using Static Catalog and generate product pages through
that, and use robots.txt to keep Google from spidering the pages in
merchant.
(c.) Or the do it all option... Optimize the merchant product
pages, have duplicate static pages, site map of miva products and use
robot.txt to keep Google out of the merchant pages and only let it have
the static pages?

3. A site map seems very important ( I have a lame one on site now,
that I did freebie on the net, but it only did static pages) .. so could
I use Swap Link from Bill Weiland, for the site map... but since I
already have Static Catalog Generator, do they duplicate stuff, or
cancel each other or what?

So which is it by popular opinion (a.), (b.) or (c.) I am leaning
towards (c.), but is that overkill? and is there one module out there
that will do all that?

Thank you

Linda T
http://corsetsandcostumes.com

adendum.Google, stat pages, and listing placement?



Main thing to get out of all the excitement is:

Stick with directing the SE's to static or dynamic pages not both.
Use robots.txt to control this.

Static and the associated management of your site this way is best
suited for high load sites that merchant and typical servers can't
handle. ( I wish we all had that problem) Kelly at extremerestraints
spoke in detail on this issue.
I'd really like to know how much traffic, request, whatever one has to
hit for that to be an issue.

Your site map at one jump off your index or SFNT page should use the
same link style method as the rest of your site.
.htaccess rewrites are how to control the link style.
We just happen to use SFL directory style that evolved out of the issue
where the SE's including google could not or would not spider dynamic
urls in the past. Also they are more human friendly for send links in
email for example.

I believe I'm up to speed and accurate in what I'm saying now - I'm
sure the rest on here will sanitize it if not.


On Wednesday, May 18, 2005, at 10:56 AM, linda wrote:

> ARGGG, I am suffering from the "the more I know, the less I know"
> effect of reading too much techie stuff.
>
> I think I finally understand the usefullness of robots.txt, robot meta
> tags, and .htaccess in relation to search engines and spiders. I have
> no idea how to go about implementing any of these things. I am trying
> to come up with an efficient yet, cost effective way to get things
> straightened out. What I want to do is... Not drop lower in any
> search engines and eventually increase my listing in Google (we all
> want that)...
>
> As usual I need advice... (someday I will contribute something I hope)
>
> What I need to do is:
> 1. Get the pages that have nothing to do with products out of the
> search engines... (google has spidered my shopper login page in
> merchant as and example)... that page does not need to be listed
> anyplace, since it has no bearing on what I am selling. I use
> robots.txt for that stuff?

I wouldn't worry about that.
Just another chance someone might happen upon your site.
If you have stuff with session ID's indexed that could be an issue - I
forget what causes that or maybe it doesn't happen anymore.


Thanks,
-Barrett
http://handmade-paper.us
Hosted by Hostasaurus.com (MM v4.20 OUI)
ShipWorks by Interapptive.com

>
> 2. Get rid of duplicate product pages so Google does not think they
> are mirror pages. Options are:
> (a.) I optimize the Merchant product pages URL's , and create a
> site map of products and not have static pages.
> (b.) Or keep using Static Catalog and generate product pages
> through that, and use robots.txt to keep Google from spidering the
> pages in merchant.
> (c.) Or the do it all option... Optimize the merchant product
> pages, have duplicate static pages, site map of miva products and use
> robot.txt to keep Google out of the merchant pages and only let it
> have the static pages?
>
> 3. A site map seems very important ( I have a lame one on site now,
> that I did freebie on the net, but it only did static pages) .. so
> could I use Swap Link from Bill Weiland, for the site map... but since
> I already have Static Catalog Generator, do they duplicate stuff, or
> cancel each other or what?
>
> So which is it by popular opinion (a.), (b.) or (c.) I am leaning
> towards (c.), but is that overkill? and is there one module out there
> that will do all that?
> Thank you
>
> Linda T
> http://corsetsandcostumes.com
>
>
>
>