Optimize your online shop — how to do SEO on Magento
With its powerful features and flexibility, Magento is a popular choice among e-commerce store owners. However, without proper SEO optimization, even the most well-designed Magento online shop may struggle to attract and retain customers. In this article, we will explore Magento SEO tools and the steps you can take to drive more traffic and sales to your website.
In general, positioning a Magento-based online store doesn’t differ that much from any other e-commerce website. Whatever website you’re working on, you must fulfill Google requirements, which revolve around five major questions. Let’s have a look at them:
1. Optimize all URLs
Transforming standard Magento URLs to SEO-friendly URLs can make it easier for search engines to understand your website’s content. You can do it by simply logging in to your Magento admin panel and enabling the “Use Web Server Rewrites” option.
If you start from scratch with a given address, you can also delete “.html” from “Category URL Suffix” and “Product URL Suffix”. The URL will become more aesthetic and easier to migrate in the future. Remember about creating permanent redirects for changed URLs too. This will help you avoid any broken links.
2. Configure sitemap
A sitemap is an important aspect of Magento SEO optimization. It helps search engines discover and crawl all of your website’s pages, ensuring that they are indexed properly in search results. You will find its configuration in Catalog > XML Sitemap tab.
Once there, set the desired frequency of how often the sitemap should be updated (weekly or daily). Next, choose the maximum number of URLs you want to include in each sitemap file and set the location where you want to save it. Do not forget about setting the generation start time too. You can also request email notifications in case of any errors in your sitemap.
Once you have configured and saved your settings, you can create your sitemap by clicking on the “Generate” button.
3. Adjust metadata
When creating meta titles and descriptions, it is important to include relevant keywords that accurately reflect the content of the page. This will not only improve the website’s visibility but also help users understand its specifics. To do so, you should navigate to Products or Categories in the Magento menu and scroll down to the “Search Engine Optimization” section.
Update the “Meta Title” field with a concise, descriptive title with relevant keywords. It cannot have more than 70 characters. Next, fill in the “Meta Description” field with a brief and compelling description that cannot exceed 160 characters.
Remember that Magento has a feature that allows you to customize the meta titles and meta descriptions for category and product pages in bulk, which can save time if you have numerous pages to optimize.
4. Use SSL
Implementing SSL is an important step in ensuring the security of your Magento online shop, as it encrypts data that is transmitted between your website and your customers’ browsers.
To take care of your website security, purchase an SSL from a reputable certificate authority (CA) such as Let’s Encrypt, DigiCert, or GlobalSign. Remember that some web hosting companies may offer SSL certificates as part of their hosting packages. Next, find Base URLs and Base URLs (Secure) sections, and set to use HTTPS protocol instead of HTTP.
After making the changes, save them, log out and, clear your browser cache.
5. Optimize website loading speed and Magento SEO
Optimizing the loading speed of your Magento store is crucial to providing a good user experience and improving search engine rankings.
Here are some tips to achieve this:
- Choose a reliable hosting provider that offers high-performance servers, low server response time, and a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to improve page load times.
- Use image compression tools or extensions to reduce the file size of your images without compromising quality.
- Minimize HTTP requests by reducing the number of external scripts and stylesheets and combining them into a single file.
- Use caching, which helps speed up your website by storing frequently accessed data and serving it to users faster.
- Remove unnecessary code and whitespace, minify JavaScript and CSS files, and optimize database queries.
Wrapping up: Magento SEO tips
In summary, SEO for Magento requires a holistic approach that involves configuring URLs, sitemaps, and meta tags, implementing SSL protocol and boosting website loading speed. Remember that to make these activities easier you can always ask for help!
