Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a fundamental component to running an online business and is probably the most important form of marketing online. Using SEO makes your site visible to search engines so those engines can rank you properly – preferable high on the first page. The following ten items are suggestions to use within Magento to help improve your SEO on your eCommerce website.
Descriptive Page Titles
Having descriptive page titles and product names can make your SEO that much better. Descriptive page titles result in a higher clickthrough rate to your website and they improve your SEO visibility. When your page titles include keywords related to your product, they are more likely to appear in Google’s search results.
Product Reviews
Product reviews contribute to traffic of your online store. Product reviews from your customers influence the mindset of your new customers and improve the chances of conversion to your online store. You should try to persuade your customers to write reviews for your products after making a purchase as they will contribute to more traffic on your site.
Meta titles and meta descriptions
Search engines pay great attention to the meta description tags. This is what Google displays in the search results as a description.
Use Canonical URLs
Canonicalization is the process of picking the best url when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages. For example, most people would think of the following urls as the same:
- www.example.com
- example.com/
- www.example.com/index.html
- example.com/home.asp
But technically all of these urls are different. Using canonicalization will try and pick the best url that is a representative for the set.
When setting up links on your website, use a consistent url across your entire site. For example, don’t make half of your links https://www.example.com, and the other half https://example.com. Pick the url you prefer and always use that format for internal links.
If you want your default url to be https://www.example.com, make sure you add a 301 (permanent) redirect if someone requests https://example.com. Adding the 301 redirect is a good idea if your site changes often (e.g. dynamic content, a blog, etc.)
Smart Phone and Tablet Optimization
No website can afford to not have a mobile-friendly website. There is a great number of people who use tablets and smartphones for everyday needs, including shopping, payments, etc is extremely high. A poorly optimized site for tablets or smartphones can greatly harm the performance of online stores in Google searches.
Integrate with Google Analytics
With Google Analytics you will be able to learn the top sources of referral traffic for your website and your best search keywords. If you aren’t already using Google Analytics, create an account for your Magento store and integrate it as soon as possible. Magento includes built-in support for the Google Analytics tracking code in the Google API menu.
Add a Blog to Your Magento Store
Keeping your website updated with new interesting content is one of the best ways to generate traffic. Keep your blog updated frequently to Google to your website’s activity and get a valuable SEO boost.
Set up RSS feeds
Within Magento, you can set up multiple RSS feeds for customers or users interested in keeping in the loop with your storefront. A few suggestions for RSS feeds would be using a feed for updates on your blog or new pages, a feed about new products and another could be about specials and sales.
Image Optimization
Take the time to optimize your product images, both for search engines and the visually impaired. Label your image with a keyword that is unique to the image like purple-umbrella.jpg instead of a generic filename like image_33.jpg. Search engines use these file names when determining image rankings. Always use alt descriptions for your images, not only does it help with search engines but it will have those who are visually impaired; having a detailed description of the product will help the customer with all the information they need to make a purchase.
Robots.txt file
The robots.txt helps search engine robots to determine which information to index. The robots.txt file will help you to prevent duplicate content issues. The file will also hide technical information such as error logs, reports, core files, etc from unexpected indexing. By default, there is not robots.txt file in Magento Community or Enterprise editions. Google can now crawl and index JavaScript and CSS files, so having these files blocked may negatively impact search results for your site.
With these few aspects of Magento SEO, now it is your turn to execute one or all of these tips and see the results for yourself. It is recommended you pick a couple and get started and get the traffic you always wanted.
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