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12.13.06
SEO-Friendly Ecommerce
By Chris Richardson
One of the major drawbacks when taking the dynamic approach to web development is the resulting product not being optimized for the search engines. A number of issues contribute to this characteristic and most are them are correctable, but doing so is considered an advanced level of web design.
Therefore, the demand for an ecommerce/CMS package that produces search engine friendly output is certainly real. With that in mind, Mountain Media has heard your call and developed Mountain Commerce, an ecommerce content development package that produces the pages that include the necessary SEO components to rank successfully.
Jim Curley and Scott Fultz, who were partners in the band called Cold Sweat, founded Mountain Media. Located in Saratoga Springs, NY, Mountain Media takes non-template approach to assist your company in developing and managing your site while acknowledging the need for search engine-friendly web pages.
In order to accomplish this goal, Mountain Commerce was developed using PHP and MySQL, making their implementation process much easier than the original package, which was back-ended with Cold Fusion and MS MySQL. As I've mentioned, Mountain Media keeps the search engines in mind during the developmental process. The resulting web pages have their dynamic links mod rewritten, making them easier for search engine bots to navigate while avoiding duplicate content issues.
Pages also have correct title tags in place and they include proper meta descriptions (which do show up in search results). If a site needs to use Javascript, the document is hosted externally, as is the CSS file. Doing so reducing site load times, another underestimated benefit when you consider just how short a period of time you have to leave an impression once the customer engages your site. Mountain Commerce pages are also strictly compliant with the W3C rules concerning XHTML.
One stipulation concerning this product is sites need to be hosted by Mountain Media. They do approach companies with in-house servers on a case-by-case basis; however, the standard client hosts their site with the company. Prices for the Mountain Commerce package start out at $69.95. For further information concerning their prices, please consult their list page.
Because Mountain Media uses a no template approach to the design process, clients are ensured their product will not resemble a cookie-cutter site; rather it will be a unique, individual site reflecting the design wishes of the owner. Clients should provide their own graphics and be prepared to take an active role when deciding the look and feel of their site. Mountain Commerce should not be confused with template-based blog software that allows for very little alteration.
Not only does their software produce search engine-friendly web pages, they also have additional features to assist with the site marketing process including integrated email marketing tools that support up to 64 mailing lists. These tools also support multiple email templates, making sure you aren't limited in the appearance department.
During the Las Vegas PubCon, Mountain Media representatives asked a number of SEO experts to look at the pages developed using Mountain Commerce to see if they were indeed search-friendly. According to Dan Knight, Project Manager for Mountain Media, they received a tremendous amount of input and the reaction was very positive. Such reviews indicate their product does what it says - produces web pages that will be more appealing to the search engines - and that's something to consider if you are in the market for an ecommerce package.
About the Author:
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.
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