X-Cart:SEO Options

The 'General settings/SEO options' page provides a set of options that you can use to optimize your store site for search engines.

Note: This section of the 'General settings/SEO options' page offers a brief explanation of Clean URLs and provides instructions on how this functionality can be enabled in your store.

Clean URL options

• Enable Clean URLs (requires Apache web server with mod_rewrite module enabled): This option enables the Clean URLs functionality at your store. Important: Additional steps are required; for details, see the Note on the usage of clean URLs on the 'General settings/SEO options' page.
• Maximum number of URLs that can be stored in the Clean URLs history for one page: The maximum number of previously entered clean URL values that your store must be able to keep for any object (product, category, manufacturer or embedded static page). When the Clean URL history of an object contains the number of clean URL values specified by this option, saving another clean URL value to the Clean URL history of this object removes from the history the clean URL value that was added earliest. If you do not wish to limit the number of clean URL values that can be stored, leave this field empty or set its value to '0' (zero).
• Redirect dynamic PHP URLs to the corresponding Clean URLs: This option allows you to specify whether a visitor who requests a page in your store using a dynamic URL must be redirected to the clean URL of that page. If this option is enabled, the visitor will be redirected to the clean URL of that page with the "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" HTTP status code. If this option is disabled, the dynamic page will be served (no redirection will occur).
• Clean URL extension for category pages: The extension to be used for the clean URLs of all your store's category pages.
• Clean URL extension for product pages: The extension to be used for the clean URLs of all your store's product pages.
• Clean URL extension for manufacturer pages: The extension to be used for the clean URLs of all your store's manufacturer pages.
• Clean URL extension for static pages: The extension to be used for the clean URLs of all your store's embedded static pages.

General options

X-Cart 4.3or above

• Default site 'Title' tag: The text value to be used in the title tag of all the pages in your store that do not have their own specific title tag defined (including product, category and manufacturer pages, embedded static pages and the home page). For pages using the Default site 'Title' tag, the value of the 'Page title format' field (see below) is ignored.
  

X-Cart 4.4or above

• Home page 'Title' tag: The text value to be used in the title tag of your store's home page. If not defined, the home page uses the Default site 'Title' tag value. If the Default site 'Title' tag value is also not defined, the home page title tag is created using the format specified in the 'Page title format' field (see below).

• Site META description: The description to be used in the description meta tag of pages that do not have a meta description of their own and are not using any other meta description (Maximum 500 characters).

• Site META keywords: The keywords to be used in the keywords meta tag of pages that do not have meta keywords of their own and are not using any other meta keywords (Maximum 500 characters).

• Page title format: The format to be used for the contents of the title tag of your store's pages that do not have their own specific title tag defined (including product, category and manufacturer pages, embedded static pages and the home page). This setting works only if the Default site 'Title' tag value (see above) is not defined.

• Maximum length of page title element (leave 0 or empty if not applicable): The maximum number of characters to be displayed in a page title. If the actual number of characters in the page title is greater than the number set by this option, the title is truncated. Please note that the truncation does not split words. For example, if this option is set to 50, and the fiftieth character happens to be in the middle of a word, X-Cart moves back to the nearest space character after the end of the last full word before the fiftieth character and cuts off everything that goes after the end of this word beginning with the space character. This mechanism ensures that page titles do not include partial words.
  

X-Cart 4.3or above

• Use canonical URLs for storefront pages: This option helps to improve the standing of every single storefront page with Google, Yahoo! and other search engines by clearing up returned search results for the store. See http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html for details.

Video tutorial

X-Cart 4.4or above

See also

• How to change my site title appearing in the customer front-end
• How to change my site title appearing in the admin back-end