Updates

March 7, 2012 – V2:

• Fix to show canonical tag only when the URL shows extra parameters. Other wise penalties may occur. (also added parameters for category sort filter and popular affiliate program, Commission Junction, so if you have any affiliate traffic, the Search engines will not index any affiliate ID’s)
• Fix manufacturer keywords when visiting a product page VIA a manufacturer link.
• New function to remove the trailing separator in the list of keywords.

To update, there is no need to uninstall module, just overwrite: includes/classes/meta_controller.php
and
includes/modules/header_tags/ht_dynamic_tags.php

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Dynamically generate meta info for your osCommerce online shop! This simple to install module will dynamically help your web store with your SEO campaign.

One of the weakest areas of osCommerce is search engine optimization. A default osCommerce installation generates nothing more than a page title, and then appends the store name to that! The store name is not something potential users will search for when shopping. And to make matters worse, the osCommerce URL structure can very well cause a shop to receive duplicate content errors.

You can now have complete control of your shops default titles, as well as generate unique titles for each and every page of your osCommerce online merchant. And you’ll never worry of duplicate content errors, as this module ensures the SE’s know which page is really served. Simply set your default values from within the admin, and let the module do the rest of the work for you.

What does it do?

• Allows administrator to input default site title, meta description, and keywords. If no keywords are set, then category names will be generated in place.
• Generates titles from category, manufacturer, product, review info, and static page names.
• Generates meta descriptions of product pages and review info pages. If a product description is not available, then the default meta description is used.
• Generates keywords using category hierarchy or product names, depending upon the page loaded.
• Categories and Manufacturers will use product names from within their hierarchy as keywords.
• Product pages will use other product names as found within their same category. New products page will generate list of new products.
• Static pages and home page will use a list of all categories, unless a default keyword list is input.
• All dynamic descriptions are trimmed at the nearest whole word after 250 characters.
• All dynamically generated keywords are limited to 16 words.
• Generates canonical URL structure to ensure search engines know the default URL path and there is no duplicate content penalization.
• Admin may choose their own character to use as meta delimiter.
• Allows input of ID for Google Site Verification
• Allows input of ID for Bing Webmaster Tools
• Allows input of ID for Alexa Site Claim,

Aren’t there other modules like this?

There are other meta tag contributions available, however, most are:
A. Not thorough enough.
B. Overly complicated.
C. Add huge overhead.
OR
D. Outdated!

Remember, this meta tag module is for osCommerce Version 2.3.1. Just upload 3 module files, add 2 small code additions, and the hard part is over. Next install from your shops admin and configure how you like.

I have been coding custom solutions for osCommerce for over 7 years and will offer full support for this module.