SEO friendly shopping cart...
 

I'm starting a site that requires a shopping cart and I would like to know your opinions on the most SEO friendly shopping cart with the best security and features...please no referral links. Thank you.

Depends on your products, how many or how few

toy shop...quite a few...

OK, now define SEO friendly you are requiring?
Because SEO optimized, and SEO friendly are two entirely different terms

.com/product/toys/dildos/vibrator_01492_acb_45.html
and .com/model-b-vibrator.html are 2 entirely different worlds.

.com/product/toys/dildos/vibrator_01492_acb_45.html
being friendly replacing
products.php?cat=dildos&pid=01492&trackme=acb&tp=4 5

but doesnt neccessarly mean its going to help your se traffic grow


Also, what other needs are there, affiliate programs? shopping cart tracking via server session or user saved cart? all this matters and hurts

For some reason I think this guy knows something... ^^^

What do you suggest for the best results?

Best results meaning, SE traffic growth and ability to eventually include an affiliate program...

Thanks for your help...

im using this on 2 sites http://www.avactis.com/ found it easy to set up and has a lot of stuff going for it ...

there are a lot of others out there ...this one was better for me as we are from Au and had most of the things i needed for our area..

icq: 261-070-140
yahoo messenger: [email protected]

a lot of pro shopping carts generates also a " seo friendly " html catalog ( same as the sites, but with friendly url ) . When you change/add items, you must regenerate the catalog.
X-cart offers that.

there's alot of things that would make or break a company when choosing software like this. I'd hate to suggest anything that would make you lose some functionality that you need, you should sit down and figure out whats most important.. ease of importing items, ease of transaction, template / source editing, ease of managing changes, billing integration etc..

While SEO should be a major factor in your site construction, other features matter, custom is always the correct way to go, but if you're on a budget. These days internal pages are very weak, focus on your home pages to do your SEO work and you will be ok

Any suggestions at all...maybe some that I can look at and maybe make a decision from...

mmm, at best i can probably tell you which ones to stay away from?

actually I got a better idea, go find a shopping cart you like and think you can live with, then i will analyze it and tell you any pro's and cons from my experience.

goog google's
open source shopping carts
php shopping carts (if you plan on using php?)
seo shopping cart

here's a starter page with some clues on what you want to be looking for
seoshoppingcarts.com/shopping-cart-reviews/comparison-chart.htm
(sorry i cant post urls yet)

meta tags (google can careless about keyword and description meta tags, however the description tag can be used to convince surfer to click if worded to his satisfaction as that is displayed in results if available)

page titles - definately must be able to support unique titles

breadcrumbs - pretty nice to have, a complete and proper sitemap can override this if not available

alt tags definately help with images , you really want alt and title tag support

as you can see the - _ on word seperation seem to think the underscore is undervalued compared to -, something to think about when using a cart

all in all though you are going to find your internal pages these days not getting accessed but from the page that calls them... so its not best to fuss with this too much, get the functionality you need and go from there