Xcart is a powerful shopping cart software solution which incorporates a great number of SEO functions and add-ons, which if taken full advantage of can provide many benefits. Xcart can however be tricky to fully optimise and does have some limitations and drawbacks for SEO professionals. Find below some examples of the advantages and drawbacks I have experienced whilst using Xcart
Advantages…
- Xcart provides the function of adding product descriptions and titles when you are uploading new products, take full advantage of this feature by being as descriptive as possible with your titles using the appropriate keywords.
- The ability to add an SEO plug which can remove dynamic links within the site, this provides you with the same benefits as the catalog, with the added feature of SEO-Friendly URLs
- A dynamic RSS Feed can be created using a simple script, this ensures all your latest products are regularly updated within your RSS Feed. Providing search engines and users with fresh regular content, which they all like!
- An Advanced sitemap plug-in can be added to X-cart, which is regular updated with your latest products. These sitemaps are then read by Google informing them of all your latest products added to your cart.
Drawbacks…
- As with most open source software solutions the code can be very messy. This is due to the amount of additions implemented to the original version. Because of this it can be difficult and time consuming to obtain w3c compliance code.
- Due to the vast amounts of code which Xcart can output it is sometimes necessary to reduce the nested <tables> and <JavaScript> included in the HTML code. This requires exporting JavaScript into external files, and re-coded nested <tables> to reduce the shear amount of code the spiders have to trawl through.
- Most code changes for the site have to be changed through the admin side of the cart, which is very cluttered and can prove difficult to locate the required files.
In conclusion, Xcart is a really powerful shopping cart solution with great SEO advantages, which can produce great results for users. It will however require much skill, dedication and time to optimise and therefore should be placed in the hands of SEO professionals only.
Paul
SEO Programmer
