Skip to content
  • There are no suggestions because the search field is empty.

Meta Tags in ProductCart

About Meta Tags and Search Engines


Meta Tags do not carry the kind of page ranking importance that they did years ago, and today most search engines ignore the Keywords Meta Tag, and - according to some experts – Google's page ranking algorithm ignores both the Keywords and the Description Meta Tags.

Yet, Meta Tags still play a role in your overall search engine optimization strategy and experts agree that the Title Meta Tag is still a factor in Search Engine page rankings. Also, Keyword Meta Tags are used by ProductCart's storefront search script, so it's a good practice to enter relevant terms in the Product Keywords field (more on this * below). Also, under some circumstances, the meta description might be used as the description in the search engine result pages (SERPs), thus influencing the user to click on a given result. Providing a meaningful description has a positive effect on the click-through rate (CTR).

Beyond search engines, a Title that matches the page content definitely makes sense and allows for better bookmarks, for example. So take advantage of the features mentioned below to associate good Meta Tags - especially the Title - with your store pages.


How Meta Tags are Created


Meta tags are added to the page as follows, in the following order (e.g. think of a product details page):

Store Manager-Specified Meta Tags
If Meta Tags have been specified for a product, a category or a content page using the ProductCart Control Panel (when adding or modifying a category, a product or a content page), then that information is used on the corresponding product or category page. 

Automatically Generated Tags 
If Meta Tags have not been specified, ProductCart automatically generates them using the category/product/page name for the Title, and a portion of the category/product/page description for the Description tag. If you have thousands of products and therefore are unable to manually enter optimized Meta Tags for each of them, this feature provides a sensible solution.

Default Meta Tags
For pages other than product and category pages (e.g. “View shopping cart”, “Search”, etc.), ProductCart uses the default Meta Tags that are found in the file pc/include-metatags.asp.


Editing the Default Meta Tags


To edit the "Default Meta Tags" log into your ProductCart control panel and do the following:
  1. Click SETTINGS on the main navigation.
  2. Select Store Settings then click Store & Display Settings.
  3. Click the Company Details Tab
  4. Scroll down to the area titled "Default Meta Tags"
  5. Here you can edit the Title, Meta Description, and Keywords that ProductCart defaults to.
  6. Click "Save Settings" button at the bottom to keep changes.


How Meta Tags are handled


Imagine an e-commerce store that has 500 categories and 5,000 products: it would be close to impossible for the store manager to manually add Meta Tags to all of them one by one. The code that you have added to header.asp will take care of automatically creating the Title, Description, and Keyword Meta Tags for every page in the storefront.

ProductCart will automatically generate them based on product and category information available in the store catalog. Let’s take a closer look at this feature and see how you can take advantage of it. First, confirm that your header.asp file contains the following code towards the top of the page.
  
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> 
<!--#include file="include-metatags.asp"--> 
<html> 
<head> 
<%Session.LCID = 1033 if pcv_PageName<>"" then%> 
<title><%=pcv_PageName%></title> 
<%end if%> 
<%GenerateMetaTags()%> 
<%Response.Buffer=True%>

Among these lines of code are the ones that deal with the dynamic generation of Meta Tags. The following include statement:
  
<!--#include file="include-metatags.asp"-->


…loads onto the page the file that takes care of this task for you. The file is called include-metatags.asp and is found in the pc folder.


ProductCart and the Meta Keywords (Site Search)

Since not all web users search the same way, ProductCart's search logic is designed to cast the widest net possible when fishing for site search results. For example, if a visitor enters the search words " patio chair" then  the query looks for any results with the word ' patio' OR ' chair'... not just results that contain both. The search is performed against these specific fields entered in the site search box:
 
  • Product Name
  • Product SKU
  • Product Description
  • Product's Meta Tag Keywords (on the Product Details Page in the ProductCart Control Panel)

However, the Advanced Search Page (search.asp) allows customers to specify: "Search on exact phrase." if they want to limit results to Products that contain "patio chair" together.