What is the next step after setting up a Magento store?
Optimize it to improve rankings in the SERPs, of course. Magento is one of the most popular platforms on the market and it’s easy to see why. For one thing, it is feature rich and gives you the flexibility to customize your ecommerce store in an SEO friendly way.
That said, it takes some effort to grow your e-commerce store’s web presence in Magento. Whether you are an entrepreneur or a large retailer looking to improve your store’s SERP ranking, you need to understand are optimizations that work for you.
We have already seen some tools to measure Magento speed and some modules that can help . So let’s take a look at seven optimizations for your Magento store, which are necessary to get great SERP rankings.
1. Optimize your Magento store with an SEO optimized URL structure
The main keyword tells search engines what the page and content are about. This is why the URL of the pages should contain the main keyword (if possible). This helps search engines rank your page in SERPs and offers more product information to users.
As a best practice, Magento recommends implementing the following URL structure for the category / subcategory and product pages in your store.
- The URL structure for the category page:
example.com/categoryname/ - The URL structure for the subcategory page:Â example.com/categoryname/subcategoryname
- The URL structure for the product page:
example.com/category-subcategory/product-name/
However, if your store has a large inventory of products, you can implement a simple URL structure like example.com/product-name /
You can further optimize the URL structure by going to the Stores> Configuration> Catalog> Search Engine Optimization setting .
2. Optimize the Magento site with unique content
This might seem like the simplest solution, but don’t make the mistake of using duplicate content for the same products!
Also, never copy content from the manufacturer’s website and paste it onto your website. You will not benefit from it; in fact, it will likely hurt the SERP rankings of your product pages. Search engines can even penalize and stop indexing your website if they find duplicate content. So always write new and unique content for your product pages.
If writing isn’t your forte, you can outsource content production services. Just make sure the content is compelling enough to entice users to visit your page and make a purchase.
Duplicate content issues can also arise due to inadequate filters, pagination, product variations, or the same product assigned across multiple categories. To eliminate this problem, go to Stores> Setup> Catalog> Search Engine Optimization . Enable canonical meta tags for category and product pages as shown in the image below.
3. Optimize your Magento store with meta tags
Meta tags not only significantly affect SERP ranking, but also affect search engine CTR on store pages.
That’s why you need to strive to write and optimize the page with relevant meta titles and descriptions. You can easily learn how to create effective meta tags. Suffice it to say that some web analysis and SEO tools recommend having 50 to 60 characters for meta titles and 100 to 160 characters for meta descriptions.
Best practices include including top keywords in both types of meta tags. If possible, include a secondary keyword in the meta description to further optimize it. But you don’t need to force it – the secondary keyword should be used organically as excess keywords would negatively impact SERP rankings.
4. Optimize the loading speed of your Magento store pages
According to some studies, 40% of visitors will leave a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Additionally, 79% of dissatisfied customers will not return to a site with poor page load speed .
So how do you improve the page loading speed of your Magento store? For starters, you can compress media files such as images, videos and GIFs. You should also implement lazy loading, enable the cache management system, merge and minify JS and CSS files, and if possible switch to a better hosting provider .
More info on this topic, you can find them in our article that talks about this.
For a better caching mechanism, the implementation of the Varnish Magento cache system is recommended.
To merge and minify JS and CSS files, go to Stores> Configuration> Advanced> Developer. Here you will be able to merge and minify CSS and JS files. More info on this topic, you can find them in our article that talks about this.
5. Optimize Magento website with schema and rich snippet
Schema and rich snippet are a form of structured data in code that can be attached to product pages to show additional information in the SERPs. These allow you to view details like product price, reviews, ratings, availability, and images on search results pages to attract potential customers.
In the following image, you will notice how the highlighted part contains information relevant to customers such as the valuation and price of the products.
Rich results like these, which improve the customer shopping experience, will greatly increase the chances of users clicking to reach your store pages. This indicates to search engines that your page has more value than the competition. So ultimately, rich snippets improve page rankings.
6. Optimize pages for long tail keywords
As you may have noticed during your searches, search engines are becoming more and more specific about the results they show in the SERPs.
Long tail keywords offer more information to trick search engines into showing more relevant content. The length of these keywords is no less than three words and is often more than five. They also include short keywords that you want to target.
You can use long tail keywords to optimize your product, category or CMS pages. Suppose a customer wants to buy a pair of blue sports shoes from a specific brand. In this case, visitors know what they are looking for. Their search query would look like this: “branded sports shoes in blue”.
Look for long tail keywords that customers might use to find the products you are selling. Include those keywords in places like product descriptions to optimize them for those keywords. This tells search engines that your pages have relevant results for queries that contain those long tail keywords.
Customers are more likely to purchase an item if it meets their needs.
7. Optimize your Magento site further with the blog page
A blog-only page is another great trick for attracting more traffic, expanding your website’s reach, and attracting new customers. You can also target keywords you haven’t had the opportunity to use on your product pages to drive more traffic.
A blog page exposes your business to more customers and increases sales. According to the research, e-commerce websites with blogging pages have 434% more pages indexed than sites without blogging pages, which means that search engines reward these websites with recognition.
Conclusion
This article highlights seven great Magento store optimization tricks to improve the SERP ranking of your store pages. Implement them now to see improvements in your rankings.
That said, Magento store optimization isn’t a day’s work. It is an ongoing process that requires constant effort on your part.
So make sure to check your Magento store regularly for performance related errors. Also analyze your competitors and keep an eye on search engine algorithms. Your SEO game can only reach the next level when you exercise constant vigilance in your Magento store.
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