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1. domain name and category product codes in the following URL with codes valid for your site and type them into a web browser You should see a catego ry page a product page and the login screen from the following URLs http www domain com CATEGORYCODE html http www domain com PRODUCTCODE html http www domain com LOGN html Rewrite Rules continued A note You can modify these rewrite rules if you want to use a different for mat For example if you want your pages to end in htm instead of html just change the last line to RewriteRule htmS mm5 merchant mvc Screen NBSEOLINK amp thecode 1 L Or if you want your URLs to have a directory such as store in them http www domain com store CATEGORYCODE html then change it to RewriteRule store htmlS mm5 merchant mvc Screen NBSEOLINK thecode 1 L 301 Template Customization Category Tree Template Once your mod_rewrite rules are working the final step is to rewrite the URLs throughout your store This step involves going to each of the page templates in your store and changing any URLs to product or category pages or ad ditional screens to the new versions The first place to start is with your cat egory tree template To get to this template click the name of your store in the left side of the Miva Merchant admininstration screen Then on the right side click Category Tree Template If you do not see this temp2. plates you should thoroughly test your site Make sure all of the pages can be browsed that the search function works and that products can be added to the cart and checkout complete Support For questions or problems with your Smart Links for SEO module please send email to support netblazon com or visit our helpdesk
3. Ne SLA ZON Smart Links for SEO user manual Miva Module for Miva Merchant 5 Contents Introduction Requirements Installation Rewrite Rules Template Customization Best Practices Support copyright 2009 by NetBlazon LLC Introduction The Smart Links for SEO module allows you to have the shortest possible links URLs to your product category and additional screens within Miva Mer chant 5 Out of the box Miva Merchant URLs have the following formats Category http www domain com mm5 merchant mvc Screen CTGY amp Store _ Code yourstoresCategory Code clothing Product http www domain com mm5 merchant mvc Screen PROD amp Store _ Code yourstore Product Cod shirt Category Code clothing Other Screens http www domain com mm5 merchant mvc Screen ABOUTUS amp Store _ Code yourstore The use of querystrings and multiple variables makes these default URLs less than optimal when optimizing a Miva Merchant site for search engines It s useful to instead provide shorter URLs that remove the unneeded text from the URL An added benefit is that the URLs become more memorable to custom ers and the store owner as well The other problem with default Miva Merchant URLs is that the same product page can be reached by multiple URLs For example supposed you have a product with the code shirt that is assigned to two categories with the codes clothing and mens respectively In this
4. ain com p shirt html The problem is that the extra indicator text reduces both the density of any keywords in your URL such as clothing and shirt by making the URL lon ger than necessary as well as the relevance of the keywords by pushing them further from the beginning of the URL Many of these URL rewriting modules also include the category code in the URL which still results in the problem of having multiple URLs that resolve to the same page Smart Links for SEO takes Miva Merchant URL rewriting to the ultimate con clusion offering URLs completely void of indicators and with only the neces sary product category or screen codes in the URL The rewrite rules can be used to further customize the URLs when circumstances make it desirous to do so The final result is these short URLs http www domain com clothing html http www domain com shirt html http www domain com ABOUTUS html Requirements _ Miva Merchant 5 0 or higher including Miva Merchant 5 5 MySQL backend while the module may work on mivasql based stores it is not supported and may negatively impact page load time Apache or other web server that supports mod_rewrite via htaccess check with your host if you are unsure Installation Installing the Module ee Oia 2 11 0 Unzip the module s ZIP file to your hard drive Log into your Miva admin utility Expand the navigation tree next to Global Settings Click
5. ch engine ranks but that should be a temporary effect if the best practices are put into place To accomplish the 301 redirect add the following lines of code to your htaccess file RewriteCond REQUEST URI merchant mvc NC RewriteCond QUERY STRING Screen CTGY NC RewriteCond QUERY STRING Category Code amp NC RewriteRule http www domain com 1 html R 301 L RewriteCond REQUEST URI merchant mvc NC RewriteCond QUERY STRING Screen PROD NC RewriteCond QUERY STRING Product _Code amp NC RewriteRule http www domain com 1 html R 301 L Best Practices continued Robots txt You may also wish to block robots from your mm5 directory which may have a different name on some stores such as cart or Merchant2 This keeps search engines from finding pages using the default Miva Merchant URLs even if you miss some links somewhere To do this place a plain text file called robots txt in your main web server directory so that it is accessible from the URL http www domain com robots txt Add the following code to block all spiders from the directory User agent Disallow mm5 If you do this make sure you don t have any special pages that need to be spi dered by search engines that still have to use the default URLs This method blocks spiders from ALL URLs in the mm5 directory Testing Anytime you make significant changes to your htaccess file and or page tem
6. es in your Miva Merchant store You can edit Template Customization continued them to change the URLs to your category and product pages For example the CTGY Category Display screen links to each of the products assigned to the category so you will want to change the URLs in that template To do so click the Edit button Then click the Category Product List Layout screen Scroll to the bottom and click the Advanced Mode link This will cause the screen to refresh with a textarea containing a template for the products Locate the following code lt a href amp mvt global sessionurl Screen PROD amp Store_ Code imvlaistore code amp Product Code tmvla product code Cate gory Code imvtaicategory code gt And change it to lt a href http www domain com amp mvta product code html gt Make sure to do it in all locations within the template and then click the Up date button You will also want to make similar changes in the PLST Product List template click the Product List Template tab and then click the Ad vanced Mode link and in the SRCH Search template click the Search Re sults Layout tab and then click the Advanced Mode link Finally you ll want to make similar changes in the BASK Basket Contents template where you ll click the Basket Contents tab to reach the template code Best Practices Avoiding Unreachable URLs Because the module doesn t
7. late you may need to upgrade to the latest version of Miva Merchant At the top of this screen there are two radio buttons labelled Default and Template If Default is selected change it to Template The page will re fresh and there will be a large textarea containing the code for your category tree template If the Template radio button was already selected this box will already be visible In this template look for the following code lt a href amp mvt global sessionurl Screen CITGY estore Code simvtaistore code amp Category Code amp mvta cattree_ category code gt This is the link to a category page on your store via the standard Miva Mer chant URLs You need to shorten this to the new URL format To do so change the code above to the following replacing www domain com with your store s domain lt a href http www domain com amp mvta cattree category code nem gt The default template has this URL in two locations so make sure you change both of them After you are done click the Update button Then go to your storefront and refresh the page Then place your mouse over the links in your category tree and make sure they have the new format Click on one to make sure it properly delivers you to the specified category page Store Pages Next click the link Pages on the left side of the administraction screen This will display a list of all the pag
8. scenario Miva Merchant generates three separate URLs to the shirt product page http www domain com mm5 merchant mvc Screen PROD amp Store _ Code yourstoresProduct Code shirt Category Code clorhing http www domain com mm5 merchant mvc Screen PROD amp Store _ Code yourstore Product Code shirt Category Code mens http www domain com mm5 merchant mvc Screen PRODE amp Store _ Code yourstoresProduct Code shirt Category Code Introduction continued In the above example the first URL is used in links to the shirt product from the clothing category The second URL is used in links to the shirt product from the mens category And the final URL is used in links to the shirt prod uct from the search results and product list pages Although search engines particularly Google are getting smarter about deter mining that the same page is served by multiple URLs it s still safer to insure that only a single URL is used to reach a given page Other short links modules have historically allowed store owners to shorten their URLs by using an indicator a piece of text that tells Miva Merchant or more accurately the mod_rewrite rules that support URL rewriting whether the URL points to a product or category page Some examples are http www domain com page yourstore CTGY clothing http www domain com page yourstore PROD clothing shirt http www domain com c clothing html http www dom
9. the link Add next to the Modules link Click the Upload File graphic Click the Browse button Browse to the location where you stored the files from extracted from the ZIP file Select NBSEOLINK5 mvc Click the Upload button When the module has been uploaded the small Upload File window will disappear leaving you with the main Miva admin screen visible Click the Add button on the main Miva admin screen Associating the Module with a Store 1 2 3 Under your store on the left side of the admin click System Extension Configuration In the module list you should see an entry for NetBlazon s Smart Links for SEO Check the checkbox next to this module and click the Update button Entering your License Key 1 After as signing the module to the store you should see a tab across the top of the right hand screen in admin labelled Smart Links for SEO Click the tab and the module will present you with a form for entering your license key Copy and paste your license key into the box and click the Update but ton Rewrite Rules Once the module is installed the next step is to configure the mod_rewrite rules and test your settings To do this locate a file in your root directory such as html or httpdocs the same directory as your index html file if you have one named htaccess Note the period in front of the name On Unix oper ating systems
10. use any identifier text to distinguish between a category a product and an additional screen you need to take care not to re use codes For example if you have a category called clothing and a product called clothing the module has no way to determine which one is intended So the URL will resolve first to a category then to a product and finally to a screen code Using this example the clothing category would always be returned by http www domain com category html and the clothing product would not be reachable Consistency First of all you want to do everything you can to make sure there s only one URL format in use on your store So when you start rewriting links make sure you rewrite them in all of your templates This includes the category tree tem plate all relevant Page templates within third party modules and any hard coded areas like the storefront welcome message page headers and footers category headers and footers and product headers and footers Also change any links from non Miva Merchant pages on your site such as hard coded pages a weblog etc 301 Redirects If your store is brand new you may not have any external sites linking into your product and category pages But if you do particularly if you have links within the search engines results pages you ll want those to redirect to the new URL format using a 301 permanent redirect This may temporarily effect your cur rent sear
11. which run many web servers the period at the start of a file makes it a hidden file Your FTP program may require special settings to show dot files refer to your FTP program s documentation for more information Or if you have the ability to log into your server via telnet or SSH you can list hidden files with the Is a command If the file doesn t exist create a new one with that name The following code should be added to your htaccess file If the file already existed on your server be careful that your additions don t duplicate any other code such as turning the rewrite engine on twice or come before other re write rules and interfere with them The code to be added is RewriteEngine On RewriteCond REQUEST FILENAME f RewriteRule html mm5 merchant mvc Screen NBSEOLINK amp thecode 1 L The first line of code enables the Apache module called mod_rewrite This is the module that allows you to rewrite URLs using regular expressions The second line is a condition that checks to see if the requested file does not physically exist on the server This prevents URLs to real files being rewritten and delivered to Miva Merchant The third line takes any URL that didn t meet the previous condition and rewrites it to be passed along to Miva Merchant and then by Miva Merchant to the Smart Links for SEO module At this point you should test that the URLs are working properly Replace the
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