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Shopping Carts and Static Pages

Adding Static Pages: an Option or a Problem

         

LockUp

2:08 am on Jan 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Some shopping cart programs recommend adding static pages to the root folder of the website. This is to malke more content available to crawlers...and content that is less likely to cause problems or dilute results.

What kind of linkage is recommended from the static page to the corresponding dynamic URL?

Is anchor text in the static page of any value to a dynamically generated text block on the shopping cart page?

Are the static pages subject to any prejudice as "doorway" or "hallway" pages?

Has anyone had success with this technique that they care to share?

bcc1234

2:10 am on Jan 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Has anyone had success with this technique that they care to share?

Yeah, mask them as static.
Google does not care much, but sure helps with other engines.

Check the site in my profile. Not a single static page.

Birdman

2:27 am on Jan 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>>Some shopping cart programs recommend adding static pages to the root folder of the website. This is to malke more content available to crawlers

Yes, because these carts are designed to hold all the details of your product but the cart urls aren't spider-friendly. So you publish your details(spider food) on static pages and link to the purchase page with the dynamic url. You've already served up all your content, so it doesn't matter if the bot follows the dynamic link.

LockUp

2:41 am on Jan 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



If the static page content is the basically the same as the dynamic, is there a mirroring issue if the dynamic page gets crawled? Should a "disallow" robot text file be used here?

Or, if the static page is used like a category heading and links to several product pages, is there an issue that the category page is a hallway or doorway page?

Marcia

5:48 am on Jan 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>>Are the static pages subject to any prejudice as "doorway" or "hallway" pages?

Not a problem at all. You just make regular, normal site pages with original descriptive text, graphics and all, integrated into the site navigation.

It's far better to link to those from the homepage because a load of long links into the cart bloats the code a lot. You link to the static information or product pages - short URLs and link into the cart from those for purchasing. I block the cart with robots.txt it's totally ignored except for consumer purchasing and browsing.

>>Has anyone had success with this technique that they care to share?

Excellent, couldn't be better.

What you end up with is a fairly small static site that's search engine friendly instead of a big one that's spider hostile.

The only hitch is that you have to continue to make more pages when different products are added. They won't rank until you do.

Grumpus

11:46 am on Jan 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



If it were me, I'd buy a shopping cart that was spider friendly and call it a day. That's just me, though. ;)

G.