Magento is the most popular and fast-growing, open-source e-commerce platform on the planet, and there is no doubt that Magento is a necessity in today’s e-commerce marketplace due to its innovative and extensive customized features. Whether you are working professional and entrepreneur looking to build your e-commerce site or a large multi-channel retailer looking to enhance your online presence and increase your conversions, Magento is your premier e-commerce platform for growth.
Why Use Magento?
- Magento Open Source e-commerce is fully equipped with a variety of features.
- Magento gives merchants full control and flexibility over the design, the content and the functionality of their online shops.
- Magento is Open Source e-commerce platform and is free to download.
- Best eCommerce Platform for Online Selling
- If you need assistance with Magento Open Source Magento Forums is available for sharing tips, tricks and support.
- Like WordPress, Magento is one of the most search engine friendly e-commerce platforms.
- Magento platform offers Mobile friendly configuration.
- Magento e-commerce Platform is packed with various extensions that can be easily incorporated to fulfill business requirements according to the needs.
- Magento is independently supported by thousands of developers and merchants worldwide
The Must Use Magento SEO Tips:
One of the concerns of many Magento users is SEO. Although Magento is already very SEO friendly when installed, there are many things that can still be improved upon. There are a number of Magento SEO tips people offer, with the top technical Magento issues that need to be fixed immediately listed below:
- Duplicate content problem for many pages
- Not-optimized HTML sitemap
- Setup an XML sitemap in Magento 2
- Optimize product images
- Speed up your Magento 2 E-commerce site
- Modify Robots.txt File
- Issue with Magento 2 default Title and Description
- How to add Meta Title and Meta Description for a Product/ Category and Content Pages in Magento 2
- Enabling Search-friendly URLs in Magento 2
- Remove default store code from URL
- Add a Blog page to your Magento store
- Get quality links to your store via different platforms
1. Duplicate Content Problem for Many Pages
Duplicate content is one of most common SEO issues affecting the thousands of Magento store-owners. To get rid of duplicate content we can use canonical tag Go to the Stores >> Configuration >> Catalog >> Catalog >> on right side scroll down to Search Engine Optimization and set Canonical LINK Meta Tags for Categories and Products to Yes.
In Magento duplicate content, occurs because of the followings:
- Product filtering
- Product sorting
- Pagination
- Same product in different categories
- Variation of the same product
2. Not-optimized HTML Sitemap
Magento 2 does not support the auto-creation of HTML Sitemap by default. We need to implement some of the extensions which can solve the HTML sitemap issue in Magento 2.
Key Features of using HTML Sitemap for Magento 2:
- It auto-generates an HTML sitemap for users and search engines and includes links to categories, products, CMS pages and store views of your Magento 2.
- You can customize the listing order by comas.
- Easily add external links in your sitemap file.
- Your sitemap will be automatically updated when there are any changes in your store.
3. Setup an XML Sitemap in Magento 2
A XML sitemap is a file that contains all the pages of the website. Magento 2 equipped with better XML sitemap functionality. To enable the XML sitemap log in to your admin and Navigate to Stores >> Settings >> Configuration >> Catalog >> XML Sitemap.
In the drop-down menu fine-tune the settings for Category Options, Product Options and CMS Pages Options according to your necessities. And now open the Generation Settings select the following:
Enabled: Yes
Start Time: Insert time after 00:00 (Don’t choose exactly 00:00)
Frequency: Choose Daily
Error Email Recipient: You can leave this blank
Error Email Sender: You can leave this at ‘Use System Value’
Error Email Template: You can leave this at ‘Use System Value’
Finally, on Search Engine Submission Settings set Enable Submission to Robots.txt to Yes and save changes.
One of our top Magento SEO tips is to never forget to optimize product images for better search engine rankings. Make sure that all the images have proper alt-tags that describe the images because search engines can’t read images and we need to add proper alt text. In addition, the important points to consider while creating alt-tags for images: To optimize the product Images In Magento 2, Login to admin >> Products >> Catalog >> in Configurable Products Double click on thumbnail >> Go to the detail page >> scroll down to Images and Videos >> Double click on images >> add alt text in the given field. Fast page loading speed can influence search engine rankings and this is one of the top Organic Search Ranking Factors. If your website loads quickly, the user will love to access it and search engines can reward you for it. There are several ways to increase the page speed of your site, the following tips can help you to speed up your site. The Robots.txt file instructs search engine robots which pages on the site to crawl or which pages not to crawl. To find your robots.txt file, All you have to do is enter the site URL into your browser and then add /robots.txt onto the end. http://www.xyz.com/robots.txt To modify your Robots.txt in Magento 2 just go to the Stores >> General >> Design >> Edit custom instruction of robots.txt File – if needed. When we set up a Magento store, it will pick the default Title and Meta Description and we need to edit these to optimize for SEO. So first Navigate to Magento 2 admin >> Content >> Design >> Configuration For Title tag use 50–60 characters You can leave the default keywords blank as Google no longer use the keywords tags in web rankings. Add Meta Title and Meta Description for a Product: Navigate to Magento 2 admin >> Products >> Catalog >> Click on Edit product and scroll down to Search Engine Optimization, There you can fill Meta title and Meta Description. Navigate to Magento 2 admin >> Products >> Categories >> choose a category and scroll down to Search Engine Optimization. Navigate to Magento 2 admin >> Content >> Pages >> Pick a page and Select Edit and scroll down to Search Engine Optimization. Every URL need to be unique, static, and perfectly optimized according to SEO guidelines. We should have the following URL structure for category and product pages: For Category page: xyz.com/category/ For Sub-category page: xyz.com/category/sub-category/ For Product page: xyz.com/category-sub-category/product-name/ Adding stop words (and, or, but, of, the, a, etc.) isn’t necessary Stop using unsafe characters (blank/empty space and ” < > # % { } | \ ^ ~ [ ] `) Enable SEO-Friendly URLs in Magento 2 follow the following steps: You can also Set the Global Search Engine Optimization configuration: Go to the Stores >> Configuration >> Catalog >> Search Engine Optimization and change the following fields for SEO friendly. Popular Search Terms: Enable Product URL Suffix : .html Category URL Suffix : .html Use Categories Path for Product URLs: Yes Create Permanent Redirect for URLs if URL Key Changed: Yes Page Title Separator: – Use Canonical Link Meta Tag For Categories: Yes Use Canonical Link Meta Tag For Products: Yes If your Magento is installed in the root of your domain (http://xyz.com), you need not perform any changes in the .htacess file. But, if your Magento is located under a subdirectory (http://abc.com/magento/) you need to edit your .htaccess file by changing the following line: #RewriteBase /magento/ To remove the default store code from URLs: Go to admin >> stores >> configuration >> General >> Web >> URL option >> Add Store Code to URLs >> No, No one can deny the power of the blog page, so it is very important to learn how to add a new Blog page in your Magento 2. We can use a FREE blog extension for the Magento 2 e-commerce store without adding a third-party framework such as WordPress. So if you want a Magento 2 blog extension that comes with responsive design, is100% FREE, is open source code, and builds your SEO friendly blog. Quality links are simply the process of creating relevant inbound links to a website, which will help the website to achieve higher rankings within the major search engines and it will also generate targeted traffic to your website. If you would like to build high-quality links then you will have to pick the best strategies for your store.
4. Optimize Product Images
5. Speed Up Your Magento 2 E-commerce Site
JavaScript Settings:
Merge JavaScript Files: Yes
Enable JavaScript Bundling: Yes
Minify JavaScript Files: Yes
CSS Settings:
Merge CSS Files: Yes
Minify CSS Files: Yes
6. Modify Robots.txt File
7. Issues with Magento 2 Default Title and Description
Then on Default Store View click on “edit”
Scroll down to HTML Head section and here you can edit these default values
Please note: Please make sure to add proper Title and Description.
For Description tag use only 150-160 characters
8. How to Add Meta Title & Meta Description for a Product/Category and Content Pages in Magento 2
Add Meta Title and Meta Description for a Category
Add Meta Title and Meta Description for Content Pages
9. Enabling Search-friendly URLs in Magento 2:
Important point to check:
to
RewriteBase /your-magento2-folder-here/10. Remove Default Store Code From URL
When done with the above steps, click on Cache Management link to flush the cache.11. Add a Blog Page to Your Magento 2 Store
12. Get Quality Links to Your Store