Posted by E-commerce businesses are increasingly focussing on their digital presence. The visitors use the website to learn about their favourite brands before purchasing. With a rush to increase mindshare, businesses are increasingly using Magento for eCommerce website. They must focus on SEO activities to improve search rankings for their Magento website.
The optimisation of the Magento websites requires a set of coordinated activities. Magento 2 is a popular CMS that provides features that help online stores enhance their revenue potential. They must follow a few Magento SEO tips that can help boost website traffic. We will discuss them in this article.
Effective Magento SEO Tips that can Enhance your Online Store’s Visibility and Sales
- Optimising the website URLs
You must optimise the Magento SEO URLs. Developers must edit the URLs in the Stores settings. Next, you go to the Configuration section and then to General. Click on the Web tab and open the “Search Engine Optimisation” section. We must set the “Use Web Server Rewrites” field to “Yes”. Finally, we save the changes. Clear the cache too.
The developers can generate the product URLs automatically. There is a Unique Product URL extension, and when set up, it can work automatically. When you optimise the URLs, it improves the user experience. A friendly URL allows both the visitor and the search engine crawler to understand the content on the web page.
- Ensuring the images are optimised
One of the critical points to note when undertaking SEO activities is checking whether the images are optimised. It is essential that the name of the image file is accurate and describes the image to the fullest. It helps the search engines to understand the picture, and it is possible if you write relevant alt text.
The image size must be optimised, too, as it can optimise the page load speed. Studies show that visitors will wait for a website to load for three minutes. If it takes too much time, they will readily abandon the website.
- Mitigate duplicate content risk
Your Magento website must not contain any duplicate content. Duplicate content can creep in due to product sorting, product filtering, product variations, paginations, etc. Remove the duplicate content and tell the search engine which URL is canonical for the web page. Unless explicitly done, the search engine will make its assumptions. It can also give equal weightage to similar URLs.
You must go to the Stores and then into the Configuration tab that you will find. Next, you click on the Catalog tab, and you will find another Catalog tab and click on it. Scroll downwards to “Search Engine Optimisation” on the right side. Set the “Use Canonical Link Meta Tag For Categories” tab to “Yes”.
- Always optimise the HTML sitemap
The crawlers will follow the links in the sitemap across all the web pages. The sitemap can help the crawlers scan the content pages with a streamlined guideline. Configure the sitemap in Magento by visiting the Store tab and clicking on Configuration. Next, click on Catalog and click on the Catalog tab. Finally, you click on the XML sitemap. To generate the sitemap, you can visit Marketing and click on Sitemap. After adding the sitemap, you must add the name and path of the sitemap.
Remember that Magento 2 will not support the automated creation of the sitemap. It can only provide XML sitemaps. You can use an extension “Dynamic HTML Sitemap for Magento 2″ to create one. It will auto-generate the HTML sitemap, including the links to the categories, products, store views and the GMS pages. You can customise the listing order by using commas. Also, you can add external links to the file.
- Configure the robots.txt file
The Robots.txt file is critical for a website as it can instruct the search engine on the pages that the website must crawl. In Magento, you can readily modify the Robots.txt file. You must click on the Stores tab and then on the General tab. Next, click on the Design tab. You can make the necessary changes at “Edit custom instruction of robots.txt File” if needed.
The adjustment of this file will depend on your store. You must block the search engine from crawling any low-value web pages. However, the search engine must crawl high-value web pages. You must stop the internal search pages of the website and the shopping cart pages from crawling.
- Writing the title tags and meta descriptions
Website owners can set the meta tags and title descriptions for individual products. It is a default feature in Magento. Scroll down to find the “Search Engine Optimisation” drop-down at the respective category or product page level. Enter the title tag in the “Meta Title” field and the meta description in the Meta Description” field.
Add the information for a category, the content pages, etc. It is a critical portion of your SEO activities and substantially contributes to your success in SEO rankings. If you wish the website to rank higher, you must have a better meta title and an engaging meta description.
- Configuring the URL Rewrites and Redirects
As SEO practices change, the ones for Magento change too. You may have to create new URLs too for existing pages. Create Redirects that will allow the visitors to land on the correct pages. The search engine crawlers can also follow the right path when they try to find your web pages. You can create custom and automatic redirects on Magento.
Automatic redirects in Magento 2 will require the website owner to carry out this sequence of activities.
Stores > Configuration > Catalog > Catalog > Search Engine Optimization.
Once there, you must enable the “Create Permanent Redirect for URLs if URL Key Changed” field. You can carry out custom redirects manually.
- Adding a blog page to the website
The use of a blog section on a website is tremendous. It can act as an important way of drawing more website visitors. You can use the blog section as a prime case of introducing internal links across the website and helping create external links. It can help move link juice to the website through social bookmarking techniques.
Magento 2 allows website owners to manage blogs without having to take the help of other platforms. It can get readily integrated into the main Magento website, and you can easily manage categories, comments, and blog posts.
- Optimising for handheld devices
Being mobile responsive is critical if you wish your website a higher rank during a keyword search. Google moved to a mobile-first indexing procedure in 2019. You can integrate the AMP technology into the web pages to the fullest. Other techniques like parallel loading, iframes, etc., make web pages load faster.
Also, using mobile-friendly animations and styles can help optimise the site. Hardware-accelerated content and CSS separation are other means to optimise for a handheld device. The website must have a lighter design that suits mobile users.
- Creating enticing content
Content is known to be the driving force of all websites. Your Magento online store must have enticing content. It will make visitors like your website and help in boosting more sales. Content managers must stay abreast with the latest trends in the industry. Spy on your competitor and assess the topics they are stressing. Consider various forms of content that you feel will draw more visitors. You can try out some product videos too.
Conclusion
Businesses are increasingly focussing on their website to boost search rankings. It can improve search engine visibility and increase revenue potential. We have some of the Magento SEO best practices listed in this article.
Experienced Magento website developers can help you optimise your online store. We have developed, and SEO optimised websites for several online stores. Our experts can help you optimise your website for SEO. You can be in touch with our experts, who will be happy to help with specific Magento SEO tips.
FAQs
- How quickly can I expect to see results from these Magento SEO tips?
Results may vary, but you can typically start seeing improvements in a few months. SEO is a long-term strategy that requires patience and consistent effort. - Is it necessary to hire an SEO expert for Magento optimization?
While it’s not mandatory, an experienced SEO expert can provide valuable insights and accelerate the optimization process. However, following these tips can still yield positive results.