This is great news for anyone that has been looking to add an EV SSL certificate to their Miva Merchant shopping cart. GeoTrust has authorized Morditech to offer their True BizID Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificate at the rate of $299 a year for a maximum of 2 years. This is the SSL certificate that GeoTrust offers for $899 a year which you can see on their website here: http://geotrust.com/ssl/extended-validation-ssl/
This is the SSL that makes the address bar glow green which is intended to boost online transactions by instilling extra customer confidence in your website.
Click here to order this certificate and learn more about it.

	Turns the address bar GREEN in web browser
	Toll Free Phone Support
	EV Upgrader™ included
	Your company’s name embedded in True Site seal
	Compatible with 99% of all browsers in use today
	Compatible with popular mobile devices
	$150,000.00 Warranty
	Fully owned roots.
What is an EV SSL Certificate? Extended Validation or "EV" is the new standard developed and agreed upon by the major Certificate Authorities (like GeoTrust® and VeriSign®) and the major browser vendors to authenticate and issue next-generation SSL certificates. EV SSL certificates help protect your site from phishing scams and assure your customers that they are dealing with a business or organization that has been thoroughly checked out using the New EV standard.

Matt Cutts from Google answers this question in the following video.

This letter is to tell you that we recently settled Federal Trade Commission (FTC) allegations that certain of our privacy and security seals were deceptive. Among other things, the FTC, the nation’s consumer protection agency, alleged that our Privacy Protected, Privacy Reviewed, Business Background Reviewed, and Registered Member seals falsely claimed to consumers that we had verified the privacy and security of the websites displaying them, when, in many instances, we had not.

We already have discontinued these seals, so you should not be displaying them. If you are still displaying any of these seals on your website, you must remove them immediately.

You may continue to display the Verified Secure seal.

If you have questions about this matter, please contact Joan Herbig at 800-825-3301 ext

Screen Shot of letter sent to Control Scan customers from support@controlscan.com

Our Miva Merchant stores are the fastest, most secure, and most reliable available. Try us out risk free and we will prove it to you. We are offering a 30 day unconditional money back guarantee. There is absolutely nothing to lose. If you already host with us then you can add a new store or transfer a store to us and receive the same benefits as a new customer. You can even sign up for our referral program and send friends and colleagues to us and get cash for it. Sign up for our referral program here. If you have questions or comments please send us an email or use our live help button at the top of our homepage or visit our support center.

ALERT: Security Metrics PCI Compliance Scanning is now picking up on non-compliant versions of Miva Merchant.

SOLUTION: Stream the latest Miva Merchant updates from the Miva Admin (If it has been a while since the last time you ran the updates and your store is customized you may want to check with your web master or Miva Specialist before running the updates).

Problem Summary per Security Metrics:
Possible blind sql injection on http://www.domain.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Category_Code=100&Current_Product_Code=&Store_Code=NTFL&Screen=OINF&Offset=&Attributes=Yes&%3FAction=ADPR style=”display: none;”> wp –bsql “http://www.domain.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Category_Code=100&Current_Product_Code=&Store_Code=NTFL&Screen=OINF&Offset=&Attributes=Yes&%3FAction=ADPR” “http://www.domain.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Category_Code=100&Current_Product_Code=&Store_Code=NTFL&Screen=OINF+and+1%3D1&Offset=&Attributes=Yes&%3FAction=ADPR” “http://www.domain.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Category_Code=100&Current_Product_Code=&Store_Code=NTFL&Screen=OINF+and+1%3D0&Offset=&Attributes=Yes&%3FAction=ADPR” POST cat <<EOF > bsql.sh curl -L -d “Category_Code=100&Current_Product_Code=&Store_Code=NTFL&Screen=OINF&Offset=&Attributes=Yes&%3FAction=ADPR” “http://www.domain.com/Merchant2/merchant

By default Miva Merchant does not allow any type of special characters including the ampersand and period in the “login” field when customers create a new user account.

The reason this happens is because a setting titled “Use Strict Validation for Codes” is enabled in the Miva Merchant Admin. Turn off “Use Strict Validation for Codes” and your customers can include any symbol they would like in their login name including a period and ampersand.

You should be careful when disabling this setting because it will also allow the use of special characters in product codes, category codes, attribute codes and just about every other code in Miva Merchant which can cause problems in the store URL’s. We never recommend using special characters in product codes or category codes for that reason.

Finally, there is a list of SEO recommendations to implement on your Miva Merchant store to make it more appealing to search engines when they crawl your site. Miva Merchant is not completely search engine ready straight out of the box. The Miva Merchant SEO recommendations made here are my opinions based on 10 years of experience working with hundreds of Miva Merchant stores. There is no guarantee that implementing these changes on your site will get you top search engine listings because that is mostly dependant on you and  your content and of course your competitors but I will guarantee that using these techniques will get you better search engine rankings than you have now.

Many of the recommendations that I suggest implementing are beyond the standard level Miva Merchant administrator’s level of expertise. If you would like to hire Morditech to make these changes for you we offer two services a ‘Miva Merchant SEO tune-up’ and a ‘Miva Merchant SEO Overhaul’. Contact us at eric@morditech.com or call 508-743-7758 for more information.

• Clean Design Code – The code search engines have to sift through to get to read your content the better. The Ideal way have less source code is by using CSS whenever possible. Using tables and standard html in your code is ok but you have to make sure it is formatted properly and all of your syntax is correct. There is software that crawl your pages and validate your code.
• Title Tags – Generally the first content on a page that search engines read is your title tag. It is important that your title tag is relevant to the particular page that the search engine is crawling. Make sure your title tag is what people will type to find this page when they do a search but do not overdo it because this is also the heading searchers will see when the result is displayed in a search engine. Just put in one or two keywords or just one key phrase and make it attractive to the searchers so they will click on it. If you stuff it with keywords then it will probably just look like spam to an Internet searcher. It may be a good idea to have your company name in your homepage title but it is not necessary to have your company name on every page of your Miva Merchant store. My recommendation is to remove the store name from your category and product pages leaving just the name of your product or category assuming that your product or category name is your optimal keyword. If you do not want to use your product or category names for the title then I suggest creating a custom category or product field and using that for the title. You could use conditionals that dynamically determine if the title tag should use the product name or your custom field. If you have additional information pages in Miva Merchant then I suggest changing your titles to reflect the best keywords for that page as well.
• Description Meta Tag – The description Meta tag is primarily displayed in search engine result listings below the title. The description has little to no affect on the actual search rankings but it plays one of the most important roles in getting click throughs to your site from search engines. Think of it as your sales pitch to get people in the front door. It should summarize the page and be grammatically correct and attractive. You have to make sure your Meta description supports your title tag and is relevant to the specific page that it is on. Your description should make searchers want to click on your link because it is exactly what the searcher is looking for. Even of your pages show up number one in search engines it is useless if no one clicks through to your site. Think about the search engine results you click on. Whatever it is that makes them attractive to you probably makes them attractive to other searchers as well. Use common sense.
• Keyword Meta Tag – Meta Keywords are important because they give the search engine an idea of what the content of your page is about and again make sure your keywords include what you think users will type in search engines to find this page. Miva Merchant lets you specify your Meta keywords per individual product and category. Optionally you can dynamically place your product and/or category name in the keyword list. I do recommend making sure whatever you use in your title tag is included in your keyword list. If you feel like you have to stuff your keywords someplace then this is probably the place to do it but I would not overdo it because search engines may not find the keywords specific enough.
• H1 Tags – You must put H1 tags around the category name on the category list page and around the product name on the product detail page. No exceptions. This one change alone should improve your search engine rankings. You should always have an H1 tag on every page. I highly recommend matching your H1 tag with your title tag and include it in your meta tag keyword list. If you use your product and category names for your title tags and you display the category and product pages within H1 tags then you will be in very good shape.
• Product and Category Names – Make sure to give your products and categories names that your potential customers will be interested in. And make sure the product or category name includes the main keyword or key phrase that you expect people will type in search engines to find it. Again, you should use common sense when naming your products and categories. The names should be short and sweet but you should also try to be unique. You may have to embellish the product name or category to make it stand out from other ecommerce websites that carry this same product.
• Product Descriptions – Your product description is going to be where most of your product page content is located. The absolute most important thing when optimizing your Miva Merchant store for search engines is original content and lots of it. This is another place where you really need to use common sense. The reason people use search engines is to find the specific information they are looking for so the more information you have on the page that is relevant the better. You should not stuff the content with keywords however because search engines will recognize that and penalize you for it, however you should you’re your keywords or key phrases in it. I recommend putting your keywords or key phrases in approximately once or twice per paragraph. Your descriptions should be informative about the product and it should be as specific as possible with as much detail as possible. The more specific and unique the content the more likely search engines will be to display your page results. If you sell products that come with stock descriptions that everyone else uses on their websites then I recommend changing, rearranging and embellishing the descriptions. Make the descriptions better and add value. Use your own words.
• Product Images – Make sure your product images have alt tags on them. Since search engines cannot recognize what is in an image alt tags help search engines understand what is in the image. I recommend using the product or category name as the alt tag for an image. You can do that dynamically within the pages templates. You should put in a title tag for that image as well. This may not have much of an effect on search engine ranking but it does help anyone using a screen know what the image is. Something else should do If possible is make the actual image names descriptive. Always use dashes when separating words in a file name, never use spaces, underscores, or any other characters. Aside from search engine rankings you should always have nice clear images of your products and categories whenever possible. There are studies that show customers are more likely to buy when a product image is attractive.
• Product and Category Headers – The category header area is a great place to put the description of your categories since there is no actual ‘category description’ field in Miva Merchant. Remember, the more information that is relevant and unique on a page the more likely it is that it will show up in search results. If you have an image for the category then you should put that in the ‘category title’ area of the category page template. It is not absolutely necessary to put in product headers because there is already a specific area to put your product description in. If you have notes or additional information about the product then you may want to put that in the product header.
• Short links – I strongly recommend updating your category and product links within the entire store to utilize short links with keyword pointers. This will put your keywords in the URL for each product and category as well as make the links to the categories and products easier to remember and navigate for the user. Some search engines have trouble reading long URL’s with characters in them like the standard Miva Merchant category and product links.
• WWW – redirect domain.com to www.domain.com or vice versa.

The point of doing this is so that search engines only crawl your site with www or only without. Search engines will see your domain with and without the W’s as two different domain names. You can accomplish this with an .htaccess file.

• Canonical links – Canonical links are a great way to avoid duplicate content complications within your site. There are sometimes several different ways of getting to the same link within a Miva Merchant store especially if you have implemented short links and/or other rewrite rules for the site. Canonical links allow you to specify which links should be recognized by Google and other search engines as the master content page so all ‘Google Juice’ is given to the appropriate page instead of splitting the credit for the content between multiple pages within the same site. There is a way to setup canonical links dynamically on your product and category pages.
• Google Sitemap – Google really likes it when you give them a sitemap of your entire domain. Even brand new sites are usually crawled within a couple of days after submitting a Google sitemap.  You should create a Google webmaster account, create a site and add a sitemap to it. It is extra easy and it is free. There are tons of other great tools within the Google webmaster area that can help you as well. Explore it.
• Google Base – Google Base is the product search for Google. This is a free product listing directory that Google offers to ecommerce stores. This gives you free direct traffic to specific products directly from a Google product search. There are Miva Merchant modules that will export the products for you in a format suitable to feed into Google Base. Generally the more time and effort you put into creating your export feeds the better the results you will get from Google Base. This is a spectacular offering by Google that most merchants do not know about or just do not use. The search results for Base are independent and complete based on the product information you provide to Google. Everyone is on a level playing ground in Base. Make your feeds as detailed and specific as possible and you will see results almost immediately.
• Start a blog – Google admits that blogs are crawled more frequently and quicker than standard commercial websites. As a matter of fact the same day that I wrote my first article for this blog I submitted the URL to Google and it was crawled by Google and was result number one for the search ‘miva merchant best practices’ amongst other searches. If you do not already have a blog start one. I recommend using WordPress because it is very SEO friendly straight out of the box, it is free, and it has more third party plug-ins than I could possible list. WordPress is easy to install and I know most hosting control panels allow you to install it instantly. Put in articles relating to your products like tips and tricks or frequently asked questions then put links to your products from the articles. That has a way of working out nicely with search engines.
• Google Domain Submission – If you just registered a domain name and it has not been crawled by Google then you should register your domain name with Google at this link http://www.google.com/addurl.html

The Miva Merchant SEO tune-up® is a service that we offer to store owners that will make your Miva Merchant store more desirable to search engines. We customize your Miva Merchant page templates using Miva’s Store Morph Technology. This one time service insures that your storefront, products, and categories are SEO ready by addressing and applying the following.

A great quick way of getting crawled by search engines is to create a blog with wonderfully originally content.

If it seems like you have done everything you can yet you are still not getting crawled as often as you would like then you should add a blog to your website. Blog’s have a tendency to get crawled quickly especially if you submit a sitemap to the major search engines every time you post a new article. Often times your new articles and posts will get crawled that day.

I recommend WordPress because it is very SEO friendly straight out of the box as they say and it is absolutely free. We allow you to add WordPress automatically through our control panel. WordPress is extremely easy to use and you can add media such as images, videos, links to video etc. It has a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface option for those that do not know how to code in HTML.

Remember original content is always king. Since you can categorize your posts and links in a blog it is usually ok to post about ‘off topic’ subjects which really broaden your keywords and phrases. If you are trying to sell products on your site then you should stay away from controversial subjects. Don’t make it all off topic though. You do want to post articles that are relates to your Miva Merchant store and to your products and categories. The purpose of a blog is not only to get crawled but to create interaction with people that are browsing your site. If you post interesting material then you will get visitors and comments from your visitors.

The more frequently you post the better and put links to your products or categories whenever possible so that your Miva Merchant store is crawled when your blog is crawled.
Good luck, have fun and POST!

Morditech offers WordPress webhosting. Contact us for more information.

The name of the plugin is “Twitter Tools” and you can check it out here: http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress

In addition you can add a twitter “Follow Us” type badge to your blog like the one you see here on the right of the page. I used WP-TwitterBadge but there are several out there that all seem to do the same thing.

Have fun and tweet amongst yourselves!