The URL
Session IDs often generate long chains of letters and numbers in the URL, (starting with "ID=" or "session=") and include a number of parameters (represented in the URL with question marks "?" followed by characters interspersed with ampersands "&"). These do not work well with search engines.
The URL has been made as short as possible to make it easier for a user to understand the results a search engine displays. In order to change the link, a special "Short URL" entry field is available for all products and categories (see page
1). Here are a few examples:
Home page: http://<domain>
Category page: http://<domain>/Jackets
Product detail page: http://<domain>/Family-Tent-XYZ
The position of the search term in the URL and whether it is included as a parameter are both unimportant. However, the URL is clearer if the search term is included (see above). You can read about URL settings you can change beginning on page
1.
Sitemap.XML
ePages 6 automatically creates a file called sitemap-xml. The
http://www.sitemaps.org project is sponsored by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft—operators of the leading search engines on the internet. The existence of this structural overview on an online shop or website makes it easier for search engines to analyse the site and provides information about timeliness and the relative importance of specific pages, for example.
Some areas of the shop do not need to be indexed in a search engine. At times, indexing could also be undesirable, examples being the shopping basket or the My Account area. ePages 6 prevents indexing of these pages by using the rel="nofollow" link attribute.