Also, if you have none present, Google will make up it's own based on what's on the page - sometime not always the right context - if you include your own, you're more likely to have control of what's displayed.

Agree with Anthony - a unique meta description should be present on each page. Won't help with rankings but will help with click-through-rates

Hi Sha - I think you meant Serge not Woj

But yes, good pick up - I omitted that detail in my hasty reply

301 - try this (in it's simplest form):

RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R,L]

301 = permanent redirection

302 = temporary redirection

If the change is permanent then 301

The htaccess rewrite looks fine

It's just saying to Google that the page it's on is the originator of the content

and = & (much of a muchness really)

I'd go with "&" i the directories if that's what's in the logo so consumers get familiar / see consistency with the brand - also it's shorter

The "&" character is typically reserved for the querystring portion of the URL

I'd avoid using "and" or "&" in url's except for in the TLD if it's critical for the brand

Also, another tip.. if you use "and", make sure it doesn't get confused with the surrounding words, e.g.

• camelandhorse.com may be read as "came land horse" or "camel and horse"

(sorry, no real-word example came mind lol - except for the old expertsexchange.com URL)

I'd be inclined to remove the decimal point.. reduces the URL by 1 character Use the title & meta tags for this

I'm guessing the paths used to reference the images & css files are relative to the the results.php file.. now that there are "/"s the best thing to do is to change the template to either hard code an absolute path or use forward slash at the start to always start at the root.. eg

Old code:

New code

or

Generally the shorter the URL the better - both from an indexing & usability perspectives..

Also, shorter URLs attract higher click-thru rates

Further discussion/reading:

• http://www.seomoz.org/q/why-isn-t-seomoz-using-file-extensions-html-etc-on-any-of-their-web-page-urls
• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls
• http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/8183/do-file-extensions-matter-anymore

I'm not familiar with Cartweaver but these are just guides..

First define an organised URL structure - on bartramgallery.com, at a quick glance, a good one could be:

• bartramgallery.com/photographer (e.g. bartramgallery.com/gordon-michael)

• bartramgallery.com/photographer/photo (e.g. bartramgallery.com/gordon-michael/juniper-study-joshua-tree)

  OR
  bartramgallery.com/landscape-photography/photo (e.g. bartramgallery.com/landscape-photography/juniper-study-joshua-tree)

Keep in mind that the shorter URLs the better (could even have bartramgallery.com/photography/juniper-study-joshua-tree)

Second, rewrite the URLs using Rewrite Rules in the htaccess file (see this post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/rewriterule-split-personality-explained)

I did a search on the Cartweaver support forums and found this:
http://forums.cartweaver.com/topic/google-analytics-identifying-products-and-categories

Oli, from the Cartweaver Support Team, seems to suggest the same "untested" approach as above

Let me know if you need any further help

My pleasure If you set up redirects, you shouldn't loose any traffic

This can also be controlled via htaccess

In google, search for this "site:bartramgallery.com" (without the double quotes) & you will see all the pages you need to redirect

I see the Charles Cramer page as the first photographers page that comes up & the redirect would be something as simple as:

Redirect 301 /results.php?category=10       http://www.bartramgallery.com/charles-cramer

To achieve a balance between visual aesthetics and search engine interoperability, you could use a Javascript font renderer like cufon: http://cufon.shoqolate.com/generate/ - which will give you nice anti-aliasing.

Look at Google Fonts too - http://www.google.com/webfonts#ChoosePlace:select

I would redesign & work towards getting a H1 on there rather than working backwards

@Simon agreed - could be a 302 & check WMT

Also, it may not be a bad thing having results in position #1 & #2 in the SERPs Means your client has listings in the best positions

Another option could be to use a rel=canonical to wipe the site out very quickly - see Rand's example of how he removed his old blog: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/cross-domain-canonical-the-new-301-whiteboard-friday (generally, be extremely cautious with this approach but given your goals , i.e. remove site from index, it should be fine)

Thanks

I'd use folders or categories if the amount of products/items is large and/or going to expand

If it's a small amount & finite then make the URLs as short as possible

There are 2 issues here:

1. Need to fix the URLs for better user experience & search engines and can do so by using rewrite rules in htaccess

   The one suggested by the support forum (I've modified to better match your site but it's untested):

   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteRule ^photographer/([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/([0-9]+).php$ results.php?category=$2 The URLs would then be:
   http://www.bartramgallery.com/photographer/charles-cramer/10.php (not ideal with "/10.php" at the end but may be best given the limitations of the cart)
   rewrites to: http://www.bartramgallery.com/results.php?category=10

2. Clean up the Google index (remove old URLs & add new ones)
   Since both URLs will render the same content we can fix by adding a
   tag - attributing 1 source to the duplicate content - check if you can do this dynamically in the templates but be very careful not to canonical everything to the homepage or all your pages will be wiped out the index except the home page!)

Will the site categories/products grow? If so, then the slash could be used to organise the structure & prepare for the future

In the example, you presented:

1. www.example.com/accounts-titanium
2. www.example.com**/**accounts/titanium

These are the same length & make no real difference

When we compare these 2, however:

1. www.example.com/open-demo-account
2. www.example.com/accounts/open-demo-account

You can see that #1 is shorter, doesn't repeat keyword (even though they are plural) & would be more likely clicked in the SERPs

Does that help some more?

It's just saying to Google that the page it's on is the originator of the content