OpenCart SEO
Five SEO jobs, and none of them started without you
An OpenCart 4 store needs URL keywords and meta text across its catalogue, the markup that makes a link unfurl and a search result show a price, alt text on its images, an XML sitemap with its crawl rules, and somewhere to send the URLs a catalogue change broke. This is all five in one archive with one Install button, and five screens that switch on independently, every one of them off when it arrives. The store that only wants a sitemap is not made to shop for one, and nothing about what your shop serves changes until you have been through a screen and said so. When you do generate, it never writes over what is already there: anything with a value is left as it is, so a run is safe to repeat over a catalogue you have been editing by hand.
![The URL keywords part of the URLs & meta screen, each template previewed against the first real entity of its type in the stock catalogue: the product template “[category] [name]” turns HTC Touch HD into desktops-htc-touch-hd, the category template turns Software into software, and the manufacturer template turns HTC into htc.](/images/seo-urls-and-meta.png)
URL keywords and meta text across a catalogue
Write one template per entity type (products, categories, manufacturers) and preview it against a real entity of yours before anything is written. A run goes in batches and resumes where it stopped, so a catalogue of tens of thousands finishes rather than dying in a request your host killed.
Links that unfurl, results that carry a price
Open Graph and Twitter Card tags so a pasted link arrives as the thing it points at, and JSON-LD for the product, the breadcrumb trail and the shop. Every value is read from what the page already computed, so the markup and the page cannot disagree about what a shopper would pay, and a star rating is claimed only where approved reviews exist to back one.
Alt text in the product’s own words
Core’s template announces every image of a product as the product’s name, over and over. This describes each one per language, reaching the product page and every product card in the store. Write the photographs that matter by hand under the picture on OpenCart’s own form; write one pattern and generate the rest, or do a catalogue’s worth in a spreadsheet over CSV.
Every broken URL recorded, and somewhere to send it
A hit count, when it was last seen and where it was linked from, so you find out which inbound links are broken without waiting for a customer to tell you. Give any of them a 301, a 302 or a 410; chains are flattened when you save and loops are refused, so a shopper never makes two hops. Slug renames can be captured automatically, and a migration’s rules import as CSV.
A sitemap of what each shop displays
Split across several files with an index over them when a catalogue outgrows what a crawler accepts, and swept clean of what a shrunken catalogue left behind. It regenerates on a cycle you choose through OpenCart’s own scheduler, with a command line door for the release where that scheduler is broken. robots.txt is edited from the admin into the block this extension owns, and every other byte in that file is kept identically.
Translation published, not claimed
Which of our strings a named native speaker has actually read is published per extension and per language, and anything unreviewed ships as English rather than as a blank or a raw identifier.
Everything it refuses to do sits on one page. Limits and guarantees says that it does not audit your store or advise you (it generates, publishes and redirects, and claims nothing about what a search engine will do with what it publishes); that manufacturers get a URL keyword and nothing else, because OpenCart holds no meta title or description for one in any 4.x release; that the markup covers five page types and that search results, account pages and the checkout carry none of it; that a theme whose image markup cannot be read gets no alt text and one with no closing head tag gets no markup, in both cases emitting nothing and saying so rather than rewriting what it does not understand; and that broken URLs are only recorded while OpenCart’s own SEO URLs are switched on, though serving a redirect works either way. One button overwrites and has no undo, behind a confirmation that spells out what it is about to do. It also says what an update keeps: no table is ever dropped, so your redirect rules, image descriptions, page overrides and crawl rules survive one, and every keyword and line of meta text stays where it is in your catalogue. Worth reading before you buy.
Questions people ask before buying
-
Will generating overwrite the keywords and meta text I have already written?
- No. Generate skips anything that already has a value and leaves it as it is, so a run is safe to repeat over a catalogue you have been editing by hand. Writing over the top is a separate button behind a confirmation that spells out what it is about to do.
-
Do I have to take all five areas?
- No. It is one archive and one Install button, but the five screens switch on independently and the suite arrives with every one of them off. An area that is off is not consulted at all, so a store that only wants the sitemap pays nothing on any page for the other four.
-
Does it work with OpenCart 4?
- Every Kyvero extension is built for OpenCart 4.x. Each one declares the lowest release it will install on and refuses to install below it, and its documentation lists the releases a full install-and-upgrade pass was run against.
-
Do I get the source code?
- Yes. An extension is PHP on your own server: readable, not obfuscated, and with no remote licence check to fail. Your copy is yours to modify and to keep backed up.
-
Who answers when something goes wrong?
- A developer, usually the one who wrote the extension. There are two official routes, the support portal and the support address, and both arrive in the same place.
Also for OpenCart
Merchants who run this usually want one of these
Product Feed
Google, Meta and Microsoft Advertising feeds generated from your catalogue on a schedule. Each channel’s own fields are set against your own values, and what every field will produce is shown against your own products before you save.
What it does OpenCart 4.xImport/export
Bulk imports for OpenCart that show you every change before they make it, and can be rolled back afterwards.
What it does