osCommerce Blog

Well I was surprised to see the PR (Page Rank) increase on one of the stores I have been working on Nita Creations. The PR went up from a 3 to a 4. It looks like Google has preformed a PR update. On the subject of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), An osCommerce store owner recently asked me the following question “How do I get my store listed on Google?” This in my opinion is a very common question that new store owners encounter after setting up there osCommerce site. So what are some basic steps that can be taken to increase the chance of Google indexing your website?

Here is a basic list of things to do.

- First, find a niche for your site and select a group of keywords.
(proper keyword selection is essential and cannot be stressed enough)
- Next, find link partners to backlink to your website.
(links back to your website from high PR pages RELATED to your site are especially useful.)

Now on to optimizing your osCommerce store.

- Make sure your title tag as well as alt tags contain your selected keywords.
- Make sure you have a sitemap that will help Google and other search engines spider your page.
- Make sure to always have fresh content.
These are just the basics, I cannot guarantee your site will increase in popularity but following these basic steps will certainly point your site in the right direction.

What are some PR determining factors?

- Which website links to you?
- PR of the website linking to you.
- Anchor text used in the link linking to you.
- Whether or not the website linking to you are deemed by Google as authority websites.

Feel free to post a comment with suggestions that helped you increase page rank and the popularity of your website. I also recommend that you visit the Next Steps/ Marketing forum here: http://forums.oscommerce.com/index.php?showforum=40

If your live shops description is in a language other then English, please use a free translation service to provide a description of what you are selling in English. All too often when reviewing live shop directory submissions I run into submissions that are in a foreign language that I do not recognize. Sometimes, these entries contain products in which I have no clue as to what they actually are. This makes it hard when selecting an appropriate category for the entry. So to ensure that your store gets placed in the appropriate category, please include a description of what your store is selling in English.

Common questions on the general support/ installation and configuration forums answered:

I see threads pertaining to these common issues too frequently while surfing the forums.

1) SSL Questions

Before posting a SSL question, search the forums.
Then review this article:
Click Here

Also read the following article: SSL, A General Discription

2) Feature Questions

Example:
I need to set a minimum order quantity per product. How can this be done?
or
I want to give my customer’s a discount for orders over $30.00. How can this be done?

Before posting a question regarding the addition of extra features do a search on the contribution section of osCommerce.
Click Here

3) Password Protection of admin area

If you need to protect your admin panel consider using a .htaccess file.
Password Protect Directories

4) register_globals is disabled in your PHP configuration error

To fix this problem I recommend this solution:
a ) create a text file
b ) rename it to php.ini (when renaming be sure to rename the file utitled.txt to php.ini not php.ini.txt)
c ) include the following in this text file (now named php.ini):
register_globals = ON
d ) upload this file into your catalog folder

Feel free to add to this entry, hopefully people new to osCommerce will find this information useful.

Before posting a question.
Always remember to do a forum search. All to often your question will already be answered!