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Trying to get your website to appear near the top of a Google or Bing search is both a black art and to a small extent a zero-sum game, because only 10 websites can occupy the top 10 search results. You are competing with all other relevant websites who are also trying to lift their search profile.
C9 powered websites now include a number of features to help SEO savvy web designers optimize your site. The following describes these and how to access them.
SEO Facilities in C9
C9 SEO Facilities are merely concerned with allowing you to manipulate website HTML to achieve SEO gains. The following outline what you can currently do and what is in place:
- /robots.txt and /sitemap.xml file being generated by c9. Currently you cannot influence this behaviour.
- <title> tags configurable
- <meta> tags configurable
- Ability to insert arbitrary HTML into <HEAD> and <BODY> sections
- Ability to configure above on a per page basis
- Ability to use substitution markers for certain kinds of dynamically generated content page
Simple Example - Configuring Home Page
Login to c9 and goto:
- Business
- Website
- Website Structure
- Highlight option 'Website' and click SEO.
In SEO you can then manipulate many things that should be familiar and obvious.
- Ability to set title
- Ability to set meta key="description"
- Ability to add additional custom meta. i.e. keywords
- Ability to add custom HTML and BODY - i.e. to setup analytics tracking
The fields you set can contain placeholders. Place holders are surrounded by {}. In above example placeholders defined are:
{shop} - name of the shop
{name} - the name of page you are looking at. Home page defaults to 'Home'
{catalog} - A list of suppliers for which OEM catalogs are loaded.
A full list of placeholders is provided below.
Website Structure Pages
C9 website structures pages into a hierarchy. You can configure SEO for individual pages.
C9 cascades from page down to home page getting SEO configuration. So if you don't define SEO items for a given page it will inherit settings from it's parents. This is why placeholders are handy, they save you having to key in SEO data over and over again.
Dynamic Content Pages
C9 websites define pages for looking a floor units, spare parts, and navigating to OEM fiche diagrams. All these pages can be configured too. Goto
- Menu Menu
- Business
- Website
- Settings
- Goto 'SEO' Tab. You can see main items here
A special item in the above list is the option 'Default'. This page is used by all other pages as the top ancestor for getting SEO confgiuration. So it even applies for the home page. This is where you should set things like google analytics tracking code.
A couple of suggestions to get started
C9 default SEO does not codify the products on offer. i.e. Motorcycle. If the word Motorcycle does not appear in the shop name then you'll definitely want to include this somewhere. Reason why is c9 serves multiple industries, Motorcycle, Marine and Power Equipment. The type of shop is not tracked in the c9 product itself, so c9 cannot meaningfully render this.
Place holders
| Section | placeholder | Description |
| All | shop | Name of the shop |
| catalogs | List of OEM catalogs available on site | |
| Home/ Content Pages |
name | Page Name |
| Unit | make | Unit Make : i.e. Honda |
| model | Unit Model : i.e. CB 250 | |
| Part | supplier | Part Supplier : i.e. KTM |
| description | Description : i.e. CM REAR SPROCKET ORANGE 50-T | |
| partnum | Formatted Part Number: i.e. 5841005105004 | |
| /find/years/ | supplier | OEM Supplier. i.e. Honda |
| /find/type/ | supplier | OEM Supplier. i.e. Honda |
| year | Model Year. i.e. 2006 | |
| /find/unit/ | supplier | Supplier. i.e. Suzuki |
| year | Year. i.e. 2006 | |
| yearcode | Year Coding. K6 | |
| model | Model. i.e. GSX-R600 | |
| /find/fiche/ | supplier | Supplier. i.e. Suzuki |
| year | Year. i.e. 2006 | |
| yearcode | Year Coding. K6 | |
| model | Model. i.e. GSX-R600 | |
| diagram | Diagram Description : i.e. Crankcase |
Would you like more place holders? Contact c9 and ask.