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Volusion SEO: the five admin settings to get right, the trial block, and what to ask a Volusion SEO company

Friendly URLs, canonical links, the 301 config variable and per-product meta fields, as Volusion's own help centre describes them.

Published by AI Knows Us · Updated 21 October 2026

Volusion SEO comes down to a short list of settings in the admin, done in the right order: turn on search engine friendly URLs under Marketing > SEO, switch on canonical links, fill the meta title and description for every product and category, redirect the old dynamic URLs with a 301, and make sure the store left its free trial, because Volusion blocks robots during a trial. After that, the work that moves rankings is the same as on any store: product and category copy written for real searches, and links from other sites. This page walks through each setting as Volusion's own help centre describes it (read 22 October 2026), then covers what to ask if you hire a Volusion SEO company.

Step 1: turn on search engine friendly URLs

Out of the box, Volusion builds every product, category and article page from a database query. A category page looks like SearchResults.asp?Cat=1, and a product page looks like productdetails.asp?productcode=abc123. Volusion's help centre calls these dynamic URLs and says plainly that they are not the most SEO friendly.

Go to Marketing > SEO in the Admin Area. Under the Search Engine Friendly URLs heading there are four settings:

  • Enable Search Engine Friendly URLs. Volusion describes this as the switch that turns on its SEO engine. Without it, the Product URL Text and Category URL Text fields do nothing.
  • Use Hyphens (-) Instead of Underscores (_). Turn it on. Hyphens are the usual word separator in URLs, and it keeps the URLs easy to read.
  • Enable Canonical Links. Volusion marks this as recommended. It tells search engines which URL is the master copy of a page, which matters on a store where one product can be reached by several paths.
  • Enable Full URL for Homepage Canonical Link. A Volusion homepage can load as both the bare domain and the domain with /default.asp on the end. This setting stops the two splitting their value.

Once friendly URLs are on, a category URL becomes category_s/1.htm, and you can change the word "category" to real text in the Category URL Text field. The number stays, because it is the category ID. Products follow the pattern product_name_short_p/abc123.htm.

Step 2: redirect the old URLs

If the store has been live for a while, Google already knows the old dynamic URLs, and other sites may link to them. Volusion handles this with one setting: go to Settings > Config Variables, tick 301 Redirect to SEO Friendly URLs, and save. Anyone, person or crawler, who requests an old link is then sent to the friendly version with a permanent redirect. Google's redirect guidance says a server-side redirect has the highest chance of being read correctly, and a permanent one tells Google the new URL should replace the old.

Do this on the same day you switch on friendly URLs, not a month later. In between, every old link points at a URL that is no longer the main one.

Step 3: write the meta tags for products and categories

There are two layers. The store-wide defaults live under Marketing > SEO: a Meta Tag Title, Meta Tag Description and Meta Tag Keywords for the homepage and for any page that has blank fields. Then each product and category has its own fields.

For products, open Inventory > Products, pick a product and find its search engine section. The fields are:

FieldWhat Volusion says it doesWhat to put in it
Product URL TextA short, text-only version of the product name that shows in the URLThe product type and model in plain words, no stop words
Meta Tag TitleThe title of the page as presented to search enginesProduct name, the key attribute a shopper searches for, and the store name if room is left
Meta Tag DescriptionA short paragraph about the page for search enginesOne or two sentences on what makes this product the right pick, with price or shipping facts if they help
Meta Tag KeywordsA comma-separated list of keywordsOptional. Google said in 2009 that it does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking
Meta Tags OverrideFor advanced users; replaces the default tags with your own HTMLLeave empty unless you know exactly why you need it

Volusion's help centre adds one detail that catches people out: for the SEO engine to fully rewrite a product's URL, the meta tags for that product and for the categories it sits in must be filled in. So a half-finished category tree leaves product URLs half-finished too. Volusion also recommends doing categories and subcategories alongside products, and its category guide suggests two to five short sentences for a description.

Treat the Meta Tags Override field with care. Volusion's own examples show code there can add a five-second redirect or a robots tag that keeps the page out of search.

Step 4: check robots, the trial block and the sitemap

The Robot Preferences section under Marketing > SEO holds the robots.txt editor. Volusion states that during a free trial, the store is automatically set to prevent robots from indexing it, and that you can change this once you buy a plan. If a new store is not showing in Google at all, check this first.

The XML sitemap is generated for you and updated once a day. There is an Update Sitemap button in the Sitemap XML section for when you have just added a batch of products, and Volusion asks you not to regenerate it more than once a day. Submit the sitemap URL in Google Search Console so you can see how many of the listed pages Google has indexed.

Step 5: the work the settings cannot do

Settings make a Volusion store readable. They do not make it the best answer for a search. That part is the same on every platform:

  • Write product copy that is your own. Volusion's help centre makes the same point under the heading "Content Is King for Product SEO". Manufacturer descriptions copied across hundreds of stores give Google no reason to pick yours. Our guide to SEO for product descriptions covers how to write them at catalogue scale.
  • Give category pages a real introduction. A category page is often the page that can rank for a broad search like "trail running shoes", so a few useful sentences above the grid help.
  • Add product structured data. Google's Product structured data guide lists the price, availability and review properties that can make a listing richer. Check what your Volusion theme already outputs with the Rich Results Test before adding more, so you do not end up with two conflicting blocks.
  • Earn links. Supplier pages, local press, gift guides and genuine reviews still decide how far a store can rank.

Hiring a Volusion SEO company

Volusion's help centre says Volusion itself offers SEO packages, and independent ecommerce agencies also list Volusion as a platform they work on. Whoever you talk to, the useful questions are specific to the platform:

  • Will you audit the four friendly URL settings and the 301 config variable before anything else?
  • How will you handle the meta fields across the whole catalogue: by hand, or by export and import, and who checks the result?
  • What will you change in the Meta Tags Override field and in robots.txt, and will you list every change in writing?
  • If we later move off Volusion, will your URL work make the redirect map easier or harder?
  • What will the monthly report show: indexed pages, clicks from Search Console, and revenue from organic search?

Google's own page on hiring an SEO says that no one can promise a number one ranking on Google, and tells readers to be wary of anyone who claims a "special relationship" with Google. That advice applies to Volusion specialists as much as to anybody.

Volusion SEO questions

Is Volusion good for SEO?

It has the settings a store needs: friendly URLs, canonical links, per-page meta fields, a 301 option for old links, a robots.txt editor and a daily sitemap. Most of the gains come from switching those on correctly and then writing better product and category content.

Why is my new Volusion store not in Google?

Check whether the store is still on a free trial. Volusion sets trial stores to block robots from indexing. After that, check robots.txt in Robot Preferences and submit the sitemap in Search Console.

Should I fill in the Meta Tag Keywords field?

It does no harm, but Google has said it does not use the keywords meta tag for ranking. Spend the time on the title and description instead, since those can show in search results.

Will turning on friendly URLs break my old links?

Only if you skip the redirect. Tick 301 Redirect to SEO Friendly URLs under Settings > Config Variables at the same time, and the old links forward to the new ones.

When a shopper asks an assistant instead of Google

Some shoppers now type "where can I buy a good replacement part for this" into ChatGPT or Gemini before they ever reach a search results page. The stores an assistant names tend to be the ones whose product pages state plain facts, price, stock, shipping and returns, in text a machine can read. A Volusion store with clean URLs and complete meta fields is in a better position for that too. Whether an assistant actually names your store for your best products is a separate reading, and AI Knows Us is a tool that takes it.

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