Smart theme re-direction damaging SEO?

[GiftedLlama]

I had a call today from an "ecommerce specialist" for a free audit & apparently I have a small problem.

When you click on any of the options (eg; Best Sellers, Weddings etc.) on the left hand side section on my home page it apparently goes via a cgi address before landing on the correct page.

I was told that this is damaging my SEO opportunities with the search engines as this re-direction is confusing the spiders. I'm not intending to take him up on his offer to fix it for me (with a upgrade to v8 or a new shiny site using Zen Cart!) but it does have me wondering if there is any truth in this.

Why does it does it do this (when the right hand panel links go straight to the correct page) & is it really stunting my SEO growth?

(I'm using Smart theme)

Does anyone have any views/ thoughts on this?

Many thanks
Jackie

[RuralWeb]

This is common with all sites using the smart theme - there is a HUGE ammount of posts on the subject of cgi links within Actinic. Do a search and get a coffee!

The bottom line is yes they are not as good as html links but google has gotten better at following them over the last year or so.

[GiftedLlama]

OK thanks.

I originally did a search on "cgi" & nothing came up but I didn't think of trying "cgi links".

Ummm.. Glass of wine with that lot - I think!

Jackie

[RuralWeb]

I had a call today from an "ecommerce specialist" for a free audit & apparently I have a small problem.

These scam merchants look for any minor fault in your site and of course offer to fix it. I am 100% certain that I can find fault in any website and offer a fix!

[mythandmagic]

Jackie,

I get them all the time, damn annoying.....

And 99% of them are using IBP9 to optimize your site, which you can get/use for free yourself to a certain extent. (search for internet business promotion 9)

Ive got this myself and its a great tool, specialy for submiting links to similar websites.

Dont worry about the CGI scripts..

as long as you have a sitemap on all pages and plenty of hard coded links, all your pages will get indexed.

Kes

[GiftedLlama]

Thanks for your feedback - I thought as much.

In fact I was quite chuffed that was the worse fault that he could find on my site!

Jackie