linkOverview
linkFeatures
linkGeneral information
Add-on is a part of SEO package for CS-Cart (comes for free for the owners of the package with an active subscription for update).
What an issue for SEO promotion does the add-on solve?
Very often (especially for promoted SEO studios websites) a page (or even a group of pages) must be promoted by a specific city or a group of cities. As an example such a request may be:
- “Buy iphone14 in New York”
- “Buy iphone14 in Los Angeles”
- “Buy iphone14 in Chicago”
- and so on.
As a standard, store owners use one category page or SEO page for filters, adding to its meta tags all possible cities. However the efficiency of such a practice is pretty low, though it is determined with a basic technical ability of any CMS. Any competitor that makes a promotion at a separate physical page for a concrete city will be higher in the search engines than one page promoted for all cities.
How does the add-on solve an issue to promote store pages for a particular city?
Add-on creates and supports a management for all necessary SEO attributes of a page as follows:
- mydomain.com/new-york/phones/iphones14/
- mydomain.com/los-angeles/phones/iphones14/
- mydomain.com/chicago/phones/iphones14/
- and so on
Add-on does not use subdomains of the website to promote cities!!!
Subdomains promotion needs a large budget as each subdomain is a separate website for a search engine. Correspondingly your charges at SEO will increase proportionally to city quantity that you wish to promote.
Integration with the other add-ons from SEO package (attention!!!)
- Advanced sitemap
- SEO pages for filters
- Indexation management
- Advanced meta tags and placeholders
linkCompatibility
Available add-on version | CS-Cart/Multi-Vendor compatible versions |
---|---|
v1.0.0 |
4.14.3 – 4.17.2 |
Add-on is compatible with the following Themes:
- YoupiTheme (compatible with correspond CS-Cart version);
- UniTheme2 (compatible with correspond CS-Cart version);
- Responsive.
linkSupport
General technical support conditions are available at this link (be sure to review these conditions, all solutions from the AlexBranding development team come with limited technical support).
In order to use our technical support, you need to:
- Log in with your order owner account on https://cs-cart.alexbranding.com;
- Go to the page My Account → Orders;
- Find the corresponding order with the problem add-on in the orders list and pass to its details;
- Find the “Support” link next to the corresponding add-on name (near you can find Documentation link also) and click on it;
- Fill in the data with the problem, provide access to your CS-Cart installation (path to the administration panel, admin mail, admin password + FTP access) and create a ticket (after you will create the ticket, you will receive an e-mail and a special code to track the ticket in the future);
- Wait for the specialist answer in accordance with the regulations of the technical support service and the priority of your ticket.
If you didn't receive an answer within the deadlines, according to the chosen ticket priority, send e-mail info@alexbranding.com with the ticket number, for which you did not receive an answer in time, and the team manager will solve the problem in compliance with regulations.
link Demo
You can test the addon work with admin access using our demo server Demos for CS-Cart solutions from Alexbranding by choosing it in Addons list or just follow the link.
linkRestrictions and warnings
We recommend to note general restrictions:
- All solutions from AlexBranding developers team require pre-installation of the AB: Addons Manager service addon. It is delivered free of charge and is responsible for such services: installation, upgrades, license verifications. Excluding this service addon usage is not possible;
- Addon files may have a closed (encoded) part, in which only a license check is located;
- The addon will work only on those domains, that are specified in the user's license. If you try to use the solution on CS-Cart installations, whose domains are not included in the license, the addon will be automatically turned off;
- Local installation is not possible, so that the addon works on the additional domain (subdomain), enter this domain (subdomain) in the Domain field, when ordering (or write to info@alexbranding.com) - adding technical domains for the developing or for testing is always free.
linkUsage
linkInstallation
After your order has been processed by our manager, it will be transferred to Completed state, you will receive an email to your mailbox with ordered add-ons license numbers (usually it takes from 15 minutes to 8 hours depending on the day time and week day).
Then follow the steps below, which differs depending on your version of the CS-Cart platform:
You can also install the add-on with a standard installation for CS-Cart. To do this, download the appropriate archive with an add-on version compatible with your version of the CS-Cart platform.
Go to the website cs-cart.alexbranding.com, log in under the account of the order holder and go to the page My Profile → Orders → Relevant Order, go to details and you will see a list of available archives for the ordered add-on. Download the version (archive) you need and make the installation (standard for CS-Cart installation: Add-ons → Downloaded add-ons and in the gearwheel menu select Manual installation).
linkQuick start
To start using the add-on do the following:
- Create a template for category pages and/or Home page.
- Create geolocation.
- Assign appropriate template on the add-on page General settings or assign a concreate template for a specified category page.
- Add block АВ: Geo pages to a layout page of the category and/or Home page.
linkSettings
For access to the add-on settings you should go to the page Administration panel → Add-ons → Manage add-ons and at the add-on name in the gearwheel menu select appropriate menu item.
Page Locations management (Administration panel → Manage add-ons → AB: Geo pages → Locations management) is designed to create and set locations for category pages and Home page.
Pay attention that the main SEO name is considered to be taken from a language by default. This issue is important when the add-on setting Use the same URL for all languages (located on the page Goe pages → General settings).
link1. Location name
link4. Status
link5. SEO name
Page Templates management (Administration panel → Manage add-ons → AB: Geo pages → Templates management) is designed to create and set templates for category pages and Home page. All fields on the page are multilingual. It allows to set SEO-data for all languages at once as well as for each language individually.
The following placeholders are available:
[original_value]
- Field value before progress with a template. For example, if a placeholder is used in the field Template of description, placeholder value will be taken from the description of the appropriate category.[name]
- Entity name (category name);[location]
- Location name;[location_form_1]
...[location_form_7]
- Forms of location names.
Placeholders from the add-on AB: Extended meta tags and placeholders from category pattern are available as well.
For the Home page you can use only the fields Template of page title (title) and Template of meta description (meta_description). You may use the field Template of title only when using a modificator Smarty in a separate block (see the details about Smarty modificator in the section Change title of the Home page for geo page).
link1. Template name
On the editing category page in the tab АВ: Geo pages there are settings that allow to manage geo pages individually for each category page.
- Enable ‒ activates location which has a manual mode of link with the categories;
- Exclude page from the indexation ‒ excludes page from the indexation (when the add-on AB: Indexation management is installed) and does not add the page to a sitemap (when the add-on AB: Advanced sitemap is installed);
- Change canonical link (category_id) ‒ allows to change canonical link of the page (when the add-on AB: Indexation management is installed) and do not add the page to sitemap (when the add-on AB: Advanced sitemap is installed);
- Select template ‒ allows to select the most suitable template for a category page. The following variants are available: By default, Existing templates, Your template. Extra fields will be available when selecting Your template.
To display a link of all available geolocations on the storefront, you shall add a block AB: Geo pages to a layout page of the category/Home page. Using wrapper of a block, it is possible to set maximally suitable appearance of the block. And using templates of a block, it is possible to locate a list of geolocations separated by a comma or in column.
To display a dynamic title on the storefront according to selected location, a special modificator Smarty has been designed:
<h1>{"*Title of the Home page*"|fn_ab__gp_modify_h1_for_location}</h1>
Modificator works as follows: on the Home page without selected location, there will be a text from nested brackets (at this example it is “Title of the Home page”). On the geo location page, value from the field Template of title will be used (located on the editing template page).
To work with modificator Smarty, you shall use the block HTML block with Smarty support and add modificator to the tab Content.
linkChange language variable for pages without geolocation
Add-on adds the language variable ab__gp.default_location
that uses a name when storefront pages will no longer have geo pages and correspondingly no SEO names in links of pages.
To change the language variable go to the page Administration panel → Administration → Text and languages → Edit texts.
linkIntegrations
Home page and category page with its own geo pages can be added to the sitemap (at the condition that there is no canonical link and pages are not hidden from indexation).
During the integration with AB: Advanced meta tags and placeholders add-on, placeholders from a category pattern are available for the template of geo pages. Full list of available and actual placeholders you may review on the page Categories placeholders.
SEO pages for filters can have its own geo pages that can be added to sitemap (when the add-on AB: Advanced sitemap is installed). To activate the geo page for all SEO pages at once, you should select the value Automatically (all together) on the editing page of the appropriate geo page. But pay attention that the checkbox Activate won't be checked on the editing SEO page in the tab AB: Geo pages.
Add-on АВ: Indexation management is needed for the settings Exclude page from the indexation and Change canonical link (category_id) that are located on the editing category page in the tab АВ: Geo pages.
linkHow to update
AB: Add-ons Manager will notify you about available updates (you will see an indicator of new alerts). The recommended way is to update via the CS-Cart Upgrade center (a regular procedure of the platform). This method will allow lossless configuration of the transition to the new add-on version, that is guaranteed to be compatible with your CS-Cart platform version.
To make updates procedure:
- Go to the Administration panel → Administration → Upgrade center;
- Find the appropriate update among the available updates and click the Update button;
- Follow all the instructions, that will be shown during the upgrade procedure;
- Clear CS-Cart cache and start using new add-on version.
linkList of releases
Subscribe to our Telegram-channel to get info about new releases.
v1.0.0 from 19 September 2022
Release video:
New features and improvements:
[+] Research and Development of the main add-on functionality.