Some questions about SEO and i18n

[Pixelastic]

Hello,

I'm in the process of moving an existing osCommerce website to a new e-commerce platform. I'm currently trying to decide between Magento and Prestashop, but I think Prestashop would be better suited for my needs.

Before instanciating the transfert though, I have some concerns about SEO and i18n that need to be clarified.

My question is simple : How well the SEO features of Prestashop plays with i18n ?

I know that Prestashop allow for easy translation of product descriptions, and that is great, but how does it handle the url ? I need a different url for each language version, but keep them as the same product in the database. I also need the url to be seo-friendly, composed of a slug of the product name.
It is important for SEO purpose that the url reflect the language, and that we don't rely only on the cookie value. It is also important that each language url hold keywords in its language.

I've looked at the wbesites showcased on the official website and few of them are actually using the i18n feature. Of the few that does though, most of them have the same url for all their languages.
I must say that I have found several websites that handle it correctly (different url for different languages, with easy switching), but they were few. I also found a couple of blog post saying that achieving a true and seo-aware prestashop website wasn't as easy and 'out of the box' as advertised.

Those blogpost were quite old (version 1.2 or something), so I was wondering what was the state of i18n SEO in Prestashop today ?

P.S : I just need to know if what I'm asking is (1) packaged as a core functionnality, (2) achievable through existing plugins, (3) achievable if I write my own plugin or (4) impossible and not even considered.

Thanks for your time

[rocky]

If you enable friendly URLs on the Preferences tab, then generate a .htaccess file under Tools > Generators, you will see the product name in the URL. Prestashop automatically creates the friendly URL as you are typing in the product name. On the "1. Info." tab of the product editor, click the "Click here to improve product's rank in search engines (SEO)" link to reveal the Friendly URL. You can click the flag at the end of the text field to enter a different friendly URL for each language.

[Trip]

Hi all,
from my point of view (Presta 1.2.5) the I18n of Presta is better like in the past but still not optimal. The Problem is, that the culture should be reflected in all i18n urls. When you use the google bot to examine your internationalized sites in webmater tools/google labs I recognize the my I18n-Url's without the url/->lang-en<-/heregoessomething.html are actually not showing the english content. Maybe I missed something but from my point of view the I18n link generation in prestashop is not optimal for an I18n-Shop. Besides that this is my experience that my german SERPS's for some keys are excellent but I can not even see the top in other languages.
Best regards, trip

[Pixelastic]

Thank you for your answers, it defintly cast some lights on my doubts.

I've seen a SEO plugin that was supposed (as far as I understood it) to help in the process of generating SEO slugs in multiple languages. Does that mean that without the plugin I should have to manually enter the page slug in the various languages if my product is internationalized, otherwise the slug will be only generated in the default language ?
Doesn't Prestashop handle that by default ?

Once again, thanks for your time in answering those questions.

[tomerg3]

Prestashop will automatically fill the field for you with the product / category name.

The paid tool lets you easily enter more text in there.

You can check out my site for multi-language URLs, and alao try a site: google search to see all the indexed URLs.

I think PS 1.2 Is really great with regards to SEO and URLs.

[Trip]

Hi tomerg,
first of all thanks for your great work and time you spent for the community but maybe I miss something but I still think Presta I18n SEO is not good. Maybe I did something wrong but first of all I installed your automatic language switcher so
to proove my experience you have to use a crawler simulator.
When you use for example http://www.seobench.com/search-engine-crawler-simulator/index.php and look at my
url for example http://www.jing-shop.com/14-ethno-and-festivalpants I would expect a site in english language but it still shows up with the german language. This is far from optimal because the whole interlinking of the site is from a crawler view not optimal. If I did a mistake in my thoughts or misconfigured something than sorry for seeding confusion but if someone can copy this behaviour than I think this has to be improved.
Beste regards, trip

[tomerg3]

Search engines will see your site in your default language, even with my location detection module (since it's disabled for search engines).

If it is set to German, then search engines will index the English versions as http://www.your-shop.com/lang-en/14-ethno-and-festivalpants

If you google site:your-site.com you will see some English links there (mostly on the 4th page).

[Trip]

Yes tomerg,
I know that. What I tried to point out is that the templates with non-default language should link to to the www.../lang-en/... domains to have a better internal linking of the page. In current situation they link to a page where the crawler will see the default language but under a different url except it follows the link which is behind the language flag. This is the only link on the page which directs( from a crawler view) to the right site. No doubt that my english pages are indexed more or less but the current behaviour from PS is not clean,
I tried to rewrite the link class to automatically include the eg. /lang-en/ in the links if a non default culture page is requested but actually this is not the easiest task and I can not afford to test it properly in production environment.
To sum up, from my point of view I18n-SEO is working but it looses a lot of link-juice throughout the internal linking of the site. I am lookink forward for the 1.3 version and hope that this is further improved.
Regards, trip

[tomerg3]

For a search engine, once they are on the "-en" site, all their links will appear with "-en" (since they don't have cookies).

Also, if you have a proper sitemap, all the links will be listed there.

I'm not sure how you think think could / should be done better.

[Trip]

Ok,
I try to explain step by step. When you goto
http://www.jing-shop.com/lang-en/ you see for example new products on the right side.
Prestashop shows the link to http://www.jing-shop.com/thai-fisherman-pants-buy-online/902-thai-wrappants-for-kids-batik-cotton-size-m.html.
When you use the above mentioned SEO-Crawler simulator you will see that the link reflects the german content of the site which normally should be found here http://www.jing-shop.com/aladinhosen-fischerhosen-wickelhosen/902-thai-fisherman-hose-fur-kids-batik-baumwolle-grosse-m.html.
Instead of that the template should link to
http://www.jing-shop.com/lang-en/thai-fisherman-pants-buy-online/902-thai-wrappants-for-kids-batik-cotton-size-m.html
where the english content is found from a crawler view.
There already were some hacks for PS 1.1 to achieve that with the drawback that they rewrote the default language urls also which is not optimal if you are already indexed and have backlings for your default language sites.
I hope I could make things clearer,
trip

[tomerg3]

I see what you mean now, I'll have to think about this for a bit.
If you have a proper sitemap, it shouldn't be an issue though.

[msk69]

A point what i do not see mentioned here is that (what i've read) google also looks at the loadingspeed of the website. If you consider that, i'd keep my hands of magento..
I recently saw a boost when a site was moved from a cheap terrible host to a quality cluster hosting package.

[netcrawle]

I'm in the process of converting a site from Magento to Prestashop, for performance-reasons. But whats hitting me like a ton of bricks now, is that i discovered Prestashop doesnt deal with subcategories and friendly urls. IE: Out of the box, you can't have yoursite.com/category1/subcategory2/product .. which is.. well, killing the whole purpose of pretty urls. Unless there is something i've missed or misunderstood.

Perhaps someone could shed some light on that issue?

[msk69]

search the forum, i believe there is a mod which covers that.

[netcrawle]

search the forum, i believe there is a mod which covers that.

There is none that I'm aware of / have come across. I've searched and peeked through almost every thread in here But if you`re sure and could point me in the right direction I would certainly appreaciate it.

On a sitenote: Am I the only one puzzled over the lack of support for this in the core? I'ts pretty essential/basic stuff

[msk69]

last post, 2 links.. http://www.prestashop.com/forums/viewthread/47523/seo_search_engine_optimization/remove_id_from_friendly_url

[heronfisher]

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[oNine]

I did it 2 years ago, and before changing all backlinks around the web, you have to edit a htaccess to redirect (301) all former urls to news (category osc to category prestashop). I don't know about Magento.