Duplicate content isn’t a problem for just for VPASP powered sites. It can cause problems for any site and many online catalogs suffer from this problem too. It is a particular problem for online retail sites because they may want to include the same product in several categories to enable their customers to easily find it whilst browsing through categories of interest. This typically means that a site has multiple versions of what is the same page content.

From the search engines perspective (and their users) they only want a single page to come up in their search results and the search engines (unless told otherwise - see below) will select which page they think is the most relevant. This in itself might not be a problem, but losing ‘link juice’ (inbound links from other sites) may well be and that is important when it comes to that product getting good search results for its keywords.

For example, a site has a product page display in several categories as follows:

/products/56-sony-bravia.asp
/shop/shopexd.asp?id=56
etc etc

The problem is that if other sites link in the ‘link juice’ most likely will get spread over several url’s.

Quite often people refer to ‘being penalized’ by the search engines because they have duplicate content. This is un-true. The search engines are simply trying to keep their listings uncluttered.

Fortunately, there are things which can be done to resolve this conundrum. The major search engines now recognise something called canonical urls. This simply allows the site to direct the search engines to a preferred version of the url. In doing so it is that url which will appear in the search engine listings and it will inherit any link juice from any duplicates. This is good news because it means that you can concentrate your SEO efforts on a single page.

Duplicate content can be a real problem for VPASP powered sites including those that use the SEO Pak.

We have a solution...

Product File Management Enhancements (BYZ163)

It gives the VPASP owner complete control over the way product pages are named (which is great for SEO) and you can specify canonical urls! It also cleverly eliminates duplicate content from VPASP’s dynamic pages by using 301 redirects to tell search engines that that dynamic page has now moved and to go look at your preferred page.

You can find out more about other useful VPASP SEO bolt-ons we’ve developed here.

I received an email from a client today, and after I finished the reply I realised I’ve been asked the same questions many times before.

Having looked at your site, I think that it would benefit you to use some of our add ons from this page: http://www.bigyellowzone.com/byz_vpasp_seo_bundle.html

As you will be well aware to get the best positions you really need inbound links from quality sites / pages to make a real difference. For most ecommerce site that’s a very tall order as it isn’t feasible to do that for thousands of products in inventory. The good news is that its the same for your competitors. I am aware of some sites who get inbound links to some of their products which are high margin or high profile for them. But that’s an expensive game and costs (especially in time soon outweigh benefits) However, there are things you can still do with the on page content that can help (see below).

As far as the bundle goes. I’d recommend implementing all the products on the page I’ve linked to above with the exception of the friendly pages. As you have a mature site with established pages it would be a step back (ed. less mature sites may benefit).

Something which can make a difference is by in site cross linking. I don’t know what your level of technical expertise is, but the content enhancements enable you to do things like cross link categories and cross link products. For example you could add a section on your category page that links to top sellers within that category. Or cross link products to the most popular products within category, or brands etc. Telling visitors a product is most popular is also a good psychological trick as where they are presented with 5 very similar alternatives they feel more confident buying something other people have bought are more likely to convert. There are many permutations, but what it does is to create in site links of relevance. If done well those links can help with navigation too.
You might also want to consider internal link building by using ( BYZ116 Enhanced Paging/Searching) to link brand names or other cross category relationships. BYZ116 builds search page results that can be indexed by search engine.

I’d also strongly recommend that you consider using the product feeds. Specifically, the Google feed (the others may / may not work out for you as they are paid for inclusion). The feed loads product data direct in to Google’s shopping engine so Google can make sense of searches where people put in things like product ids or UPC (unique product code).

Just an observation on your product pages (this may be applicable to other pages too). You may want to consider using standard heading tags <h1>Heading 1</h1> etc. for items of key data like product name and model. There are a few tips on stuff like that here: http://www.bigyellowzone.com/vpasp_seo_guide.html

As for improving conversions we’ve found that the best way to find out why people aren’t buying (or are buying) is to get as much feedback as you can about the site. Try running a contest or sending out a follow-up email a couple of weeks after a customer orders (offer them a coupon - it can lead to further sales conversions on its own). For example, when I used a Mac running Safari (it may look different on Windows) to look at your homepage and I can see that your links are blue on a black background which makes them hard to read. An important part of getting good conversions is getting all those small things right because they can add up.

The most cost effective way to buy the software is to join our membership subscription program. You get all the add ons we have produced at a heavily discounted price: http://www.bigyellowzone.com/vpasp_add_on_hosting_plans.html

We’ve released our new predictive search add on for VPASP today. It’s one of those amazingly simple, but powerful, things that can make searching a site so much easier. Try the demo: http://www.bigyellowkey.com/mysoftware_product_details.asp?prdid=362&opu=n

We’ve added some real time demos so you can tryout our software before you buy.

We’ve started a featured products section on BigYellowZone.com. The idea is to provide more in-depth information, product images and movies. The first featured product is the new release of the invoice and packing slip. http://www.bigyellowzone.com/byz_packing_slip_invoice.html

Some things just keep getting better and better. Over the years people make suggestions. We listen and then eventually we get them done. Version 22 is one of those things - bulk printing. No longer do people have to print individual invoices and slips. It can be done in one go.

http://www.bigyellowkey.com/mysoftware_product_details.asp?prdid=199&opu=n&remtop=Y&remleft=Y&remright=Y&rembottom=Y&remmerchantid=0

We’re just finalizing a new super cool VPASP menu system.

You can see a sneaky peak here: http://screencast.com/t/1CpA8q9iQ4l0

The menu can be fully customized to match your site’s design and it is ‘dynamic’ so it will automatically pick up categories and sub categories.

An additional feature is that it will also create a ‘dynamic’ site map page.

More soon.

If there is something you would like to see developed then please let us know. We keep a log of all requests and suggestions and prioritize these based on the amount of times something comes up.

For example, several people asked if we could do something to improve the way VPASP checks for submission errors in the check-out process. To resolve this we wrote a Java Script validation utility which gives and immediate alert so the customer can correct their error on the fly instead of having to submit the whole page to find out what’s up. It’s a simple idea, but the feedback we’re getting is that it’s helped improve check-out friendliness and has avoided dropped carts for a number of sites who have installed it.

Googlebase have changed their feed rules for minimum quantity and we have updated our feed.

For full details please see: http://www.bigyellowkey.com/mysoftware_product_details.asp?prdid=264&opu=n

I was asked a few days ago why we decided to introduce a subscription service for our vpasp add ons. The person thought we’d gone a bit mad and commented that we were almost giving our software away for what we were charging.

Our aim with BYZ is to keep developing new addon software for the vpasp shopping cart and to keep that software up to date. One major problem for a software developer is that you need to have the finance available to allow you to work on new titles as well as finance your legacy applications. The membership plan is a way to do that. Because customers pay us a one off joining fee we can use this to finance our development work. It just means that we can concentrate on releasing new addons and implementing emergency fixes without our cashflow completely drying up as we wait for our investment to pay back.

The big bonus for customers is that they enjoy massive discounts by joining the membership program. We worked out that buying the addons individually would cost over £1500 + upgrades and membership only costs £150 (one off joining fee) and £7 per month. There is a risk for us in doing this because customers can cancel their subscriptions at any time, but because they enjoy regular upgrades and new releases we are confident they will stay (and the vast majority are).

This all means that we have access to funds sooner for our development work and customers enjoy the benefits from our software at a fraction of the real price. We think this is a good way to do business.

We just had an enquiry from someone asking how he could improve the pagination on a site he is working on. The site has 3000+ products and some categories which contain 1000 products alone.
I just posted the answer in our knowledgebase system here: http://www.bigyellowzone.com/support/issue_view.asp?ID=1529&CATE=0

There is a lot of useful stuff hidden in our knowledgebase, so please do take a look. There is also a lot of information in there that needs reviewing, editing and making public. I’ll be working on it over the next few weeks so please do check back as I know that there are some hidden gems.