Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engines, such as Google, are considered to be one of the most important channels for a site to reach new customers.
to reach new customers and search engines provide an effective way to reach new customers.
Problem::
Dynamic, database-driven URLs, such as those generated by WebSphere Commerce, contain stop characters (?, &, and %) that can easily overwhelm search engine crawlers. For this reason, search engines limit the amount of dynamic URLs that they index.
To overcome this limitation, WebSphere Commerce provides functionality to help improve the results of search engine indexing.



WebSphere Commerce's search engine optimization feature consists of the following functions:

1. URL mapping that provides the ability to remove the stop characters by mapping WebSphere Commerce's dynamic URLs to static ones so that search engines can index the dynamic pages.
2. Site map capability that provides an entry point for the search engine crawler to easily follow the links within your Web pages.
3. Page content optimization that facilitates keyword modification so that the page is ranked high in search engine results. It provides the ability to easily modify words in the locations that are important for crawlers, by using the Product Management GUI, or by using the Change Pages GUI in WebSphere Commerce Accelerator.
   

URL Mapping

The URL mapping function allows Web pages to be accessed through a static looking URL by converting the URL from static to dynamic based on a mapping file:
I mean it will simplies the complex urls i.e urls which are dynamic(having special characaters etc..,) to simple one's.

For example, it can map the following static URL:
webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_10001_10001_10032_-1
to the following dynamic WebSphere Commerce URL:

webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&productId=10032&langId=-1

Site Maps
A site map is used to address the following two challenges:

• Changes to the site are not quickly reflected in the search engine indices.
• Most Web pages are designed for human visitors, not crawlers, and the design can reject crawlers due to an excessive number of graphics and large page size.
  

A site map builts web pages specifically for crawlers to quickly access and index a large number of embedded pages.
The following image shows how the site map function is implemented:

It is possible that the site map might affect positioning within search results in search engines such as Google, as if the search engine finds two URLs that link to the same content, they might rank that result lower if it assumes the site is attempting to manipulate the search algorithms in repeatedly discovering the same content.

Optimization of page content for search ranking

There are many different factors that search engines use to determine the ranking of pages. Search engines have crawlers that follow the links in a site's Web pages, collect the content from Web pages, and analyze the content by conducting sophisticated pattern matching.
When a search engine analyzes a page, some specific locations are given more weight than others. It is important to put appropriate keywords in these locations. Some of the locations that are ranked high in search results are:

Page title

The page title is the text that appears in a browser's title bar. The page title tag is an important consideration in how searches are ranked. Put the most commonly searched keywords in the title.

Page heading

The page heading is also an important place for keywords that are used by search engines.

First sentence of the body

Use words in the first sentence that describe the purpose of the page and attract visitors to click on this entry in the search results page.

WebSphere Commerce helps you optimize your page content by providing the Change Pages function and the Product Management tool to allow marketing personnel to easily update text in these locations.



Making of website/webpages/url's SEO friendly.
for home page we have following url in wcs7
http://www.myclient.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategories_10101_10101

In order to make this SEO friendly we have to shorten this even more by removing the /webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ portion and store, catalog ids in the URL If possible.
Now question is where and how do make this change.
the final URL to look like.
for the home page:
http://www.myclient.com

for catgeory:
existing:
http://www.myclient.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Category3_10101_10101_11655_-1_Y_Design%20Your%20Car%20Mats%E2%84%A2

to modify
http://www.myclient.com/Categoryname






ANSWER(this didn't work for me)
1. Need to make changes to the web.xml and change the Stores webpath from /webapp/wcs/stores --> /<some value>
and the Stores Request Servlet from /servlet/* --> /<some value>

I don't think you can have empty values specified, so you may need to specify a context path

2. You'd also have to modify the "context-root" in application.xml under your <EAR_ROOT>/META-INF/applicaiton.xml and change the following to a value you have specified above in web.xml.

<module id="WebModule_1041293846133">
<web>
<web-uri>Stores.war</web-uri>
<context-root>/webapp/wcs/stores</context-root>
</web>
</module>

3. Lastly, you have to change the <instance>.xml file and make the necessary changes to StoresWebPath and WebAppPath attributes.

Propagate your instance.xml, restart your server and test the changes.