Recommended setup to keep search engines happy

I could think of enough tips and tricks for the Yahoo Store platform to fill a whole book (hint: it’s coming…), but there is one issue that keeps coming up over and over again when I work with new Yahoo Merchant Solutions customers.

When you sign up for a new account several domains are established:

  1. www.your-domain.com, which by default links to your web hosting space.
  2. store.your-domain.com, which by default links to your store editor pages.
  3. **store.yahoo.com/yhst-yourstoreid, **which also links to your store editor pages.
  4. shop.store.yahoo.com/yhst-yourstoreid, ditto.

This is not an ideal setup because search engines may think that you have duplicate content (which is bad) and there is the real possibility that your site will be indexed with store.yahoo.com/yhst-yourstoreid instead of the preferred www.your-domain.com. Furthermore, if you use the (in my opinion) preferred way of building your store – the store editor – your store pages will be under store.your-domain.com instead of the more logical www.your-domain.com.

Fortunately, Yahoo does provide the tools to rectify this situation, which I will detail here. Again, this tip applies to new Yahoo Merchant Solutions customers, who have built their store in the Store Editor and not inside the web hosting space with store tags. If this applies to you, also make sure that you do this as soon as possible before the search engine crawlers come knocking on your door!

Step 1 #

Dcp


Step 2 #

 Manage_domains_2


Step 3 #

Domain_destination


Step 4 #

Domain_names


Step 5 #

Www_redirect


Step 6 #

Editor


Step 7 #

Contents


Step 8 #

New


Step 9 #

Newobject


Step 10 #

Pagenotfound_name


Step 11 #

Caption


Step 12 #

Override


Step 13 #

Meta


Step 14 #

Publish


Step 15 #

Preferences_1


Step 16 #

Errorhandling


Step 17 #

Publishmanager


Now, site visitors and search engine crawlers will only see one domain – www.your-domain.com. Your web hosting space is now accessible via site.your-domain.com, which you can obviously continue to use. Note also that your email settings and accounts are not affected.