Do you know that the significant increase of virtual marketplace is no way a myth now, it is today’s reality for every e-Business. Also, a huge number of new business owners are now focusing on their online marketplace to move their product sales and revenue to a super level.
Most of us can observe the popularity of eCommerce websites in this web world where most of the online businesses survive with their online entity. Magento 2 is one of the most popular and fast-growing open source E-commerce platforms to choose as your online store for your business simply because of its highly innovative and customized features.
Simple Reasons to Prefer Magento 2 Over Other Ecommerce Platforms:
- Thousands of developers and merchants over the globe support Magento2 independently
- Highly search-engine friendly platform like WordPress
- Mobile friendly configuration offered
- Top rated by eCommerce platform users globally for online selling
- Highly active forum support to get tips and tricks to run open source
- Open source platform and FREE to download
- All merchants can have full control over the highly flexible design, content and functionality of the online shop
- Various extensions are available and packed with the platform itself which you can incorporate according to your own business needs.
Why is SEO Necessary for the Magento 2 Platform?
Those who are used to the Magento platform for their online business purpose are already aware of the fact that Magento 2 is a highly search-engine friendly platform, which means your online store can rank easily in SERP (search engine results page) with minimum optimization efforts with maximum benefits from sales and revenue point of views.
But the question always will arise in your mind that “how should I execute the SEO procedure for my Magento 2 store, so that my online store is seen within top 5 in the 1st page of search engine ranking?” This is the common question and below shared are some killer tips which will help your store to achieve the dream results:
SEO Tips For Your Magento 2 Store:
1. Duplicate Content Issues For Many Pages:
Most of the Magento 2 store owners face this use during the developing phase of their store. This can harm the SEO of your entire website with a negative score by search engines. The reason for the occurring of the duplicate content is product filtering and storing, pagination, variation in the same products, the same product in various categories etc.
To get rid of this issue, you must use canonical tag by going to: Stores > Configuration > Catalog > on right side scroll down to Search Engine Optimization and set Yes for Canonical link Meta Tags for Categories and Products. Below is the screenshot:
2. Search-Engine Friendly URLs in Magento 2:
According to the SEO rule, every URL of your Magento 2 website should have unique, static and optimized. You can use patterns like:
- Abc.com/category
- Abc.com/category/sub-category
- Abc.com/category/sub-category/product-name
Using stop words and unsafe characters are strictly prohibited.
You can enable SEO friendly URL in your Magento 2 store by following the below steps:
- Log into your admin area, then navigate into Stores > Configuration > General > Web
- Here you need to click on Search Engine Optimization tab and then select Use Web Server Rewrites to Yes
- Then click on the Save Config button
Alternatively, you can set the Global Search Engine Optimization configuration this way described below:
- 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
You must check if your Magento 2 is installed in the root directory or not. If yes, then you don’t need to any changes to the .htaccess file, otherwise in case of the installation in the sub-directory, the .htaccess file must be changed.
3. Robots. Txt File Modification:
This file is one of the most important files which guides search engine with instruction to crawl certain pages and not to crawl some others. You can find it here: https://www. Abc. com/robots.txt
In Magento 2 store, you can modify the Robots.txt file as below:
Stores > General > Design > Edit custom instruction of robots.txt File if necessary.
4. Speed up your Magento 2 Ecommerce Site:
For your store, it’s highly recommended to make it faster to load, so that users don’t leave in frustration and user retention rate increased significantly. Fast loading websites help to rank you better in search engines within a short span of time.
Below are the Guidelines you can Follow:
Enable all caching features (System > Cache Management) and Flush Magento 2 cache
Enable Flat Categories and Products (Stores > Catalog > Catalog > Scroll down to Use Flat Catalog Category and Use Flat Catalog Product > Set Yes > Save Config)
Merge your JavaScript and CSS files; this will reduce the load time and increase the page speed. Stores > Configuration > Advanced > Developer > on the right side.
JavaScript Settings:
Merge JavaScript Files: Yes
Enable JavaScript Bundling: Yes
Minify JavaScript Files: Yes
CSS Settings:
Merge CSS Files: Yes
Minify CSS Files: Yes
Follow the Screenshot below:
5. Product Images Optimization:
When you are using Magento 2 eCommerce, it’s a must that you are using images to showcase your products. It’s very important to rank those product images in SERP, so that people can find the variety with an easy search. You must have:
- All the images must use ALT tag that describes the images properly.
- Use proper description for the product in ALT tag
- Use meaningful filename (preferably with the product name)
- Use short, to-the-point, precise ALT tag
You can optimize the images in Magento 2 by following the below instructions:
First, you need to login to the admin panel.
Then, go to 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.
6. Adding Meta Title & Description for a Product/Category and Content Pages in Magento 2
Meta title and description are the most important attributes in Magento 2 web store which, if written in a properly described pattern, can give you amazing results in no time.
Below is the instruction of using it:
Navigate to the Admin Panel > Products > Catalog > Click on Edit product and scroll down to Search Engine Optimization and fill the Meta title and Meta Description. The screenshot is given below:
7. Setup a proper XML sitemap in Magento 2
The XML sitemap is an XML file which contains all the URLs for the entire website at a single place and guides the search engines to crawl and index the URLs in a better way. We all know that Magento 2 is well equipped with better XML sitemap functionality.
To enable this feature, you need to login to the admin panel > navigate to the Store > Settings > Configuration > Catalog > XML Sitemap.
Now, you can easily connect your Magento store with the back-end ERP/CRM system to automate the business process!
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