osCommerce Blog

It’s just about the end of January and time for my site of the month pick. After searching far and wide I decided to choose Knot Just Baskets.
Knot Just Baskets has a simple and effective design. They sell gift baskets and gifts for various occasions. I found there unique osCommerce site contained an effective navigation scheme.

In response to replies to my previous site of the month posting I have proposed a new idea to the osCommerce team. I suggested the integration of a poll module to the current blog system set up on the osCommerce site. That way I will be able to select 2 or more site’s for consideration for my “site of the month” title. By adding a poll osCommerce visitors and site users worldwide will be able to provide feedback. My “site of the month” title will be given to the site that receives the highest amount of votes by the end of the month. I would love to hear your feedback on this idea. Feel free to post a response to this blog.

Hi all, 

I hope everyone is not stressing out for the Holiday season!
I have decided to start Andrew’s osCommerce site of the month. Each month I will post my favorite osCommerce store based on all the live shops entries reviewed by me. It will be based on design and usability.

My favorite site for DECEMBER is:
The Rocking Horse
On line baby boutique & stylish gifts.

I really like the site’s overall layout. They did an excellent job with the design and navigation buttons. The osCommerce portion is nicely integrated into the rest of the website.

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