Magento is an e-commerce platform, it is completely an open source CMS (Content Management System). Magento is one of the most search engine friendly e-commerce platforms, but optimizing a website based on Magento e-commerce platform requires good knowledge of the CMS functionalities so that proper changes can be made in the configuration settings and other internal settings in the CMS.
Magento Offers Multiple Functionalities To
1. Optimize Title and Meta tags
2. Remove duplicate content
3. Remove canonical issue
4. Create Xml site map
5. Speed up Magento Website
Adding to this Magento has options to create and edit robots.txt and .htaccess files. Thus one can set a page as nofollow or dofollow, plus make redirection and set SEF URL’s.
Magento SEO Optimization Tips & Checklist
1. Title and Meta tag Optimization Home Page
It can be done from here:
System > Configuration > Design > Html Head
Leave Title Prefix and Title Suffix fields otherwise will be visible in other pages too.
2. Title and Meta tag Optimization of category and product pages
It can be done from here:
System > Configuration > Catalog > Manage Categories
3. URL Optimization
You can set the URL’s as per the name of the product or category.
It can be done from here:
System > Configuration > Catalog > Search Engine Optimization
Now enable “Use categories path for product URL’s” or set it to yes.
4. Xml Sitemap generation
It can be done from here:
System > Configuration > Catalog > Google Sitemap > Add Sitemap
This permits you to create the site map manually.
5. Speed Up Magento
Similar to Joomla CMS, Magento also have the option to enable caching.
It can be done from here:
System > Cache Management
Now enable caching features.
6. URL Canonicalization and 301 Redirection
Search engines treats websites with www, non www and index as different web pages hence search engines may index all the pages which may cause duplicate content issue. So it is necessary to redirect all to the most desire one. Writing following piece of code in the .htaccess file we can resolve this issue.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain-name.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain-name.com/$1 [L,R=301]
This will redirect non www to www. Similarly we can redirect it from www to non www.
Using .htaccess file we can also redirect broken links or old pages to new one as
Redirect 301 /old-page http://www.domain-name.com/new-page
7. Robots.txt file
Using robots.txt file we can allow and disallow search engines which directory or pages are made for them and which are not, i.e what that can index or what not. Add your site map in robots.txt file as
Sitemap: http://domain-name.com/sitemap.xml
Other than above make use of header tags (h1,h2), bold your keywords, make keywords as a anchor text, and add alt text to the images. Hope these points will help you to optimize your Magento website and get high ranks in all major search engines.
There are many SEO plug-ins and extensions are available for Magento store that can help you to manage all the SEO activities without making changes in the internal files, thus gives you ease to optimize your site without putting your hands in the complex coding.
TOP 10 Free Magento E-Commerce SEO Plugins / Extensions
- Yoast MetaRobots
Adds meta robots tags to Magento pages. - Remerce CMS Meta Robots
Adds meta robots tags to Magento pages. - Canonical URLs for Magento
This extension adds the canonical links to Magento pages. - Advanced Sitemap
List all products from Magento store. - Flagbit Google Webmaster Tools
Adds the Google webmaster tools verification code to your page. - Magento Social Bookmarking Services
Share your products, categories, CMS pages to major social bookmarking websites. - xtcForwarder 301 – redirect old xt commerce urls
This extension redirects old xt:commerce urls to new magento urls. - SEF links multilanguages
This extension allows to do SEO links to products & categories. - Fooman Speedster
Speed up Magento store by combining, compressing and caching JS & CSS. - Category access control
This extension helps to control access to products and categories using user groups
Contact us to rank your Magento website high in search engines.