Magento is a highly-customizable, world dominant and most demanding open-source eCommerce platform based on PHP & it’s frameworks running on MySQL database, providing easier fine-grain customization. It is a feature-rich and powerful platform with flexible content management. Being SEO friendly is an added advantage to implement it in Magento website development.
Now what exactly is SEO and how does it help?
In the world of digital marketing and ecommerce website development, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the most basic process to garner more and more traffic by generating top rank in search results of search engines.
Therefore Magento, already being the best Ecommerce platform, if optimised for SEO, then the resulting website will be the best performing in terms of uniqueness, revenue generation, flexibility and user-friendliness which is the main aim for any magento web development company.
To achieve this win-win situation, what are the tricks or tips to follow?
Below is a list of some of the tips to improve your Magento website development and traffic.
1. Start by optimizing the URL structure.
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It is basically the address of any web based resource. URL consists of various parts and optimizing them according to Magento recommendation will help users to find the resources which you provide in the fastest possible way, also turning higher ranked search results of search engines.
2. Try to optimize metadata.
Metadata can be simply described as any valid and important information regarding any website’s content which will enable search engines to display relevant information in their search results. Metadata parts of any Magento based website consists of Title, Description, keyword-rich tags for categories & product settings and lastly structured data for rich snippets. Therefore by adding appropriate metadata for every part will not only improve site navigation but also deliver more visibility to the pages in the search results.
3. Work on the canonical meta tags.
If any Magento website has similar content on multiple pages, then search engines like Google marks the most complete page as canonical which ultimately reduces the crawling load of the website. Duplicate content can be generated due to various factors like support multiple devices, same post under multiple sections, dynamic ULRs for search parameters, same content for www/non-www http/https and protocol port variants, etc. Therefore it is the best choice to reduce crawling load on similar content pages and to enhance crawling on new pages.
4. Always optimize your product page contents.
A Magento based product page contains images, descriptions, product strategy for SEO, category paths, etc. You can add alt-texts for the images, resize accordingly. Optimizing your Magento site allows for easier navigation and faster indexing. Similarly add keyword-rich descriptions, reduce bounce rates if the product is out of stock, etc.
5. Always try to avoid duplicate content.
It is never a good practice to have duplicate contents on multiple pages of any Magento based website since it reduces ranking on the search results. However if any similar product if added to multiple categories, then there are certain practices to follow to reduce crawling and remove duplicate content like by adding canonical tags, robot.txt, category and product URLs properly.
6. Design XML sitemaps.
Magento sitemaps are best to index all it’s products effectively and efficiently, which ultimately reduces overlooking and increases site visibility. You should never forget to update the sitemaps on a frequent basis.
7. Try to improve page ranking.
Regularly update SEO aspects like your Homepage based on the brand by adding concise title tags. Magento SEO prefers researching keywords according to target audience and adding them into your site. You can research them from Google analytics and Google Search Console too, fix any SEO errors if found.
Establishing a hierarchy of the page contents by adding proper heading tags helps in faster page indexing on search engines. Always try to put emphasis on contextual links and consistent inbound & outbound links, as it will be trustworthy enough.
8. Internal links should be optimized.
Optimizing internal linking helps search engines to easily crawl your Magento based pages resulting in better site navigation for the user too. Internal links can be anything ranging from site hierarchy to sitemaps to links of articles and content.
9. Try to optimize site speed.
Having a fast Magento based eCommerce website reduces bounce rates as well as increase ranking factor for mobile searches. Start by choosing a reliable hosting provider. Apply varnish caching, minify CSS & JS files, optimize images accordingly, implement a Content Delivery Network, clean Magento logs & databases as required to boost performance and reduce site latency, identify and remove site bottlenecks by auditing and lastly by optimizing website codes.
10. Prefer Magento SEO extensions over any third party extensions.
Magento, being a feature-rich platform, have some of the best SEO related tools which helps to reduce the SEO related tasks, thus improving productivity and website visibility. The Magento SEO toolkit extension combines few SEO features like optimizing metadata, cross-linking, image optimization, sitemaps, etc. However third-party extensions have a negative performance issue on the long run and should be avoided.
Conclusion
Let’s hope this list helps you to improve your Magento based eCommerce website ranking by implementing the above best SEO practices and increase web traffic. Always choose the best magento web development company for increased business and revenue generation.