collective.seobatching

Introduction

Some SEO validation services tell us that query parameters are bad for those pages which display different content based on those parameters. It usually means having the same page but with different content within it. Thus we end up with different pages with the same meta tags, title, etc…

This packages deals only with one kind of query parameters inside Plone: pages with batched listings. It replaces those query parameters with traversal sub-paths to make up completely different urls for the next items inside batched listings.

Overview

Plone batching mechanism uses b_start query parameter to tell where to start with displaying content items inside batched listing page. So url for folder1 containing batched listing might look like:

...folder1?b_start:int=10&-C=

Instead, after installing and setting up collective.seobatching package this url will have the next appearance:

...folder1/batch-10

This is a default look for batched page urls with batch-10 sub-path telling that now we’re displaying listing starting from the 10th item. batch-10 look could be customized if needed. How to do this? Take a look at Deeper Customization section.

Quick Start

Install this python package as described in docs/INSTALL.txt file. Then go to portal_quickinstaller tool and install collective.seobatching. After this seo_batch_macros.pt template will be available for you to use in your customized page templates.

For example if you need seo friendly batching in your folder_listing template, then customize it and replace this string:

<div metal:use-macro="here/batch_macros/macros/navigation" />

with the next one:

<div metal:use-macro="here/seo_batch_macros/macros/navigation" />

That’s it.

Deeper Customization

If you’re not happy with batch-10 in your batch listing urls, you can easily adjust it to your needs inside portal_properties tool. There you have seobatching_properties property sheet with batch_pattern inside telling how to represent batched sub-pages. Default pattern is batch-${num} which gives us the result we saw above.

And, for instance, to have start_from_10 component at the end of batch urls we simply have to set batch_pattern property to:

start_from_${num}

string. As you guessed already, ${num} is a placeholder for the number of items to start from for a given link.

Drawbacks

collective.seobatching doesn’t support any other query parameters apart from b_start. It also won’t forward any 3rd party query parameters which may be required by your page. So in case you need some extra variables provided by Plone Batch class or your own logic, this package won’t help. But this may be implemented in the next versions of collective.seobatching package.

Changelog

1.0 - April 21, 2010

Initial release