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How does Magento 2 support SEO?

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How does Magento 2 support SEO?

What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) about?

First, you should know what influences your Magento 2 site score in SERP (search engine result page). There are 3 basic areas having an impact on the visibility of your Magento 2 store in the search results and supporting search engine optimization.

  • Technology – the structure of a website, the way it is constructed, making it clear to crawling robots. The right technical background helps search engines to find and understand your site as quickly and efficiently as possible. Magento 2 SEO guide will be useful here.
  • Adequacy – content relevance, communicative and useful content (texts, pictures, and videos) to visitors. You should make people interested in your website and the provided products and/or services.
  • Authority – trustworthiness of a site, its popularity among users (the number of likes, shares, and comments). The more authoritative sites link to yours the better chances you have for high positions in SERP (Search Engine Result Page). You can also use specific tools like Moz Open Site Explorer to check authority metrics.

All these factors determine how visible your Magento 2  store will be when someone is searching for related keywords or phrases on Google search engine – it’s an overall score called “SEO Score”.

Each Magento store has its own SEO (Search Engine Optimization) score so only one element from all three areas affects this value at once. This way you can get the right prioritization of what needs most attention firstly: technology, adequacy, or authority.

Magento SEO technical issues

In the article, we will focus on technical SEO tips, giving basic advice and explaining crucial areas to give merchants an idea of actions that need to be implemented in order to improve the store performance.

If you read this – you probably run a Magento store – and at the very beginning, we have good news for you.

Magento 2 is one of the very few eCommerce platforms having a wide range of technical SEO tools out-of-the-box.

Magento 2 system configuration

The SEO & search section of Magento gives you a chance to check domain and page titles, meta descriptions, and keywords – the key areas for optimization in SERP.

You can also use it as a place where to add new ones later on when needed. The “System | Configuration” menu is your friend if you want to change anything from here: magento/adminhtml/system_configuration.

Magento 2 SEO friendliness

Magento 2 is known as a SEO-friendly e-commerce platform that is appreciated by many merchants and users especially when competition online growth and new Google requirements are introduced on daily basis.

It’s not easy to be up to date with SEO when operating e-commerce but there is no other way to keep the store up to date with the still changing search engine reality.

Magento SEO guide

The Magento 2 marketing menu gives you access to many tools, among them also those supporting SEO – Magento Search Engine Optimization in the section “SEO & search“.

On the official Adobe site, you will find Magento 2 SEO Guide.  You will learn how your store can be more search-friendly by looking into what customers are searching for and why.

There are also techniques you can use to get more visitors to your site so that they have better chances of finding exactly what they want!

More information, you can find in Catalog Search Engine Optimization  – Magento 2 Seo guide –  Catalog where you will find stores configuration catalog.

Magento 2 SEO (search engine optimization) extensions

In addition, there are some useful extensions available on Magento Marketplace that will help you get even better results SEO-wise by adding meta tags support (e.g.: Google Tag Manager), breadcrumbs, etc. They extend default functionality without any need for coding skills required! So do not hesitate to go and explore the Magento marketplace. At Panda Group we recommend the extensions offered by Amasty, Mageworx, Wyomind, and Weltpixel.

Magento 2 Search Engine Optimization in marketing menu

The Magento 2 marketing menu gives you access to many tools, among them also those supporting SEO Search Engine Optimization. In the sections Store Configuration and SEO & search, you can find all important features allowing easy optimization of your store in terms of visibility in Google searcher.

When you go to Stores Configuration you may settle many features that will improve Magento’s SEO and store performance. Magento 2 admin panel allows doing easy configurations.  You have an option to:

  • fill the meta keywords, metadata like meta title, meta description, canonical link meta tag,
  • use a product fields auto-generation,
  • create a permanent redirect for URLs, URL key, URL rewrite,
  • use rich snippets,
  • avoid duplicate content,
  • enable submission to Robots.txt file,
  • create XML sitemaps.

Admin marketing menu at Magento 2 admin panel

Source: https://docs.magento.com/user-guide/marketing/marketing-menu.html

Customizable XML sitemaps

An XML sitemap is a file containing a list of pages on your website which will be submitted to the major search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, or Yandex for inclusion into their index (by submitting sitemaps).

XML sitemap generation takes it one step further by generating XML sitemap files that are compatible with every major search engine including format details for this specific file type being used by each individual web crawler. This ensures that not only your web pages will be included in a search engine index, but that the relevant data will also be extracted from each page and provided in a way that is most useful.

XML Sitemap for Product Pages

This feature allows you to automatically create XML sitemaps with product information that are compatible with Google Base (Google Merchant Center). In this case, products can be submitted to Google or Bing Shopping directly from Magento 2 – no manual work required!

It is recommended to split a sitemap into more sitemaps depending on how big is the file and how many products you have in the store. You may generate as many sitemaps as many product categories you have in the store.

Magento site map grid

Source: https://docs.magento.com/user-guide/marketing/sitemap-xml.html

Sitemaps regeneration

There is a rule to regenerate a sitemap or sitemaps as often as new content is added. If you add content once a day, week or month remember to regenerate the sitemap also that often.

Crawl Control Settings

This feature allows the exclusion of specific pages from being crawled by search engine web crawlers. The extension is very helpful in cases where a page should not be indexed or when it contains content that can’t be properly parsed by crawlers but is still listed under them at the discovery stage – just don’t let these pages appear in SERPs! 

Setting Robots.txt for SEO

Robots.txt is a file that is underestimated and its role is quite important when talking about crawling and indexing pages. This file makes the robots crawling and indexing the page, which sometimes may not be positive for the store.

You may not want to index all pages for example because of shallow content which will not be appreciated by the browser. Thanks to the Robot.txt file you may prevent the robots from indexing the page.   Magento 2 allows modifying the Robots.txt from the admin panel. Which makes it easier to manage the crawling budget and optimize the site for SEO.

SEO friendly URLs in Magento 2 e-commerce

SEO-friendly URLs are easy to read, brief, consistent, and lowercase. Shortly speaking your URLs need to be descriptive and easy for visitors as well as search engines.

Your URL should also be brief so it isn’t too long or cumbersome. It’s also important that you keep everything lowercase since uppercase characters can sometimes interfere with the indexing process of search engine crawlers.

URL Rewriting Options

This feature allows you to redirect the original URL to a new one or reroute search engine crawlers. You can be redirected automatically when crawling an URL that does not exist, is blocked by robots.txt file, has moved permanently, etc.

There are also cases where it’s necessary to go through multiple URLs before reaching your target page – this makes sense if your site structure doesn’t allow for pagination in its normal form (e.g., directory listing).

It may happen that specific pages need permanent redirection while others should change destination only after some time elapses (expiration period). With Magento 2 SEO extension installed on the store, these features become available and easy to configure! URL  rerouting, redirecting and expiration can be set up from the Magento 2 admin panel.

Magento URL rewriter

Source: https://docs.magento.com/user-guide/marketing/url-rewrite-create.html

Magento 2 SEO content features

Magento 2 Search Engine Optimization feature helps you make sure that there are no issues hindering crawling or indexing by big players in this industry such as Google, Bing, etc. while providing effective tools for managing content included in indexes (relevance control) and keeping track of competitor activities. There are many other features and options to choose from and let’s take a closer look at them.

Magento 2 e-commerce platform is a CMS (Content Management System). All products you offer are presented with content (text, video, picture). Make sure you manage the content in a way supporting SEO to make your store profitable.

Metadata in Magento 2 store

Page titles and meta descriptions together with URL are the site elements visible in SERP (search engine result page) and have a huge impact on CTR.  They look as follows:

meta data, meta title, meta description

Magento 2 offers two options for adding this meta data (meta title and meta description) manual and automatic.

In the manual option, you have blanks to refill with 70 characters for meta title and up to 255 characters for meta description. You should do it carefully use all necessary keywords as they are very important for the site appearance in the search results.

In the keywords field there is no limit but remember to put precise keywords so the crawling robots know exactly what the page is about.

Magento search engine optimization meta data, meta title, meta description, meta keywords and URL key chart

Source: https://docs.magento.com/user-guide/marketing/url-rewrite.html

magento meta data generation meta title, meta description, meta keywords, URL key example

Source: https://docs.magento.com/user-guide/marketing/meta-data.html

When the site is complex and you add a lot of products you may prefer to use an automatic option. With Magento 2, you can set a template for metadata of products at a global level. This will be useful if your site has thousands of items to manage!

Product fields auto-generation is a great way to optimize your product descriptions. However, the default number of metadata characters remains, and it’s advised that long product descriptions should be carefully revised for optimization purposes.

Magento 2 correct headings

The structure of the heading helps reading the page to the users and robot. The well-used heading gives a legible structure supporting crawling as well as user experience. 

Remember to use only one H1 heading per page. The H1 heading should be reserved for your company’s title and a short description of what the product or service is. It must contain only keywords that clarify its purpose in order to entice potential buyers. 

When building up the hierarchy with the logical structure on page names as illustrated below, always make sure there’s an easy way back from descending levels by adding additional headings at each level beneath it so readers can find their destination quickly without having too much trouble navigating throughout this site’s material which will ultimately lead them toward buying something you’re offering!

Correct CMS Headings Magento eCommerce

Magento 2 Rich Snippets for product page

Magento 2’s default Rich Snippets setting is a big step up from the original version. This feature automatically includes small product descriptions, but it also has its downsides.

meta data in SERP - url, meta title, meta description

Source: https://docs.magento.com/user-guide/marketing/meta-data.html

Structured data markup provides detailed information for search engine results listings and other applications. By default, this comes from the schema.org standard applied to your store’s product template so more detail is available when a user searches within an application or website that supports Google-based features such as rich snippets in search listings.

Canonical tags in Magento 2 store

In Magento 2, canonical tags function as a method to prevent indexing of filtered categories and products to avoid duplicate content.

Duplicate content can harm the site search engine position and lower the authority of the site which may be damaging for your business effectiveness.

If you have several pages with similar content you mark with a canonical the most important page. This way you show the indexing robots which page should be indexed and shown in search results.

Magento 2 canonicals when to use?

It is highly suggested for shop admins to turn on canonical tags, but if the product and category pages are already different, canonical tags should not be used.

Be careful canonical can be dangerous if turned on for pages that do not need them. For example, when the product and category pages are already different, canonical tags should not be used.

Alt tags for images – SEO optimization

It doesn’t matter how good your site looks if it’s not optimized. Robots on search engines don’t care about the aesthetics of a website—they only look for keywords and data structure within its code.

Only the users may appreciate your designing approach when it combines aesthetics with utility giving an excellent User Experience (UX). Before they do that, first make the site visible for search engines with appropriate images optimization.

Alt tags for product images

Alt text for product images will help the searcher recognize what is on the picture and show the right content to the clients whenever they browse the internet to search for the product you have in the store.

Magento 2 lets you enter alt text on the product edit page. Remember to add alt text to all pictures to make them visible for the searchers first and as a consequence to the customers.

Magento 2 page load time –  speed optimization

Page speed is a crucial performance factor influencing the visitor’s experience as well as searchers’ algorithms. Around 50% of site visitors will abandon web pages when loading longer than 3 seconds, so it’s important to keep this in mind for your online project!

Google also tends to make page load time part of its algorithm determining what appears at the top or bottom on-page positions in search results – which means you need thoughtful optimization if want higher rankings by them too!

You can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to measure your website’s loading speed and find out if there is anything to improve.

AWS Cloud hosting supporting Magento 2 performance?

The first step in Magento 2 page speed improvement is hosting. A stable and trustful server influence the site performance significantly.

All companies need to be able to grow with their business. If you’re not sure where your company needs infrastructure, cloud hosting can help by providing flexibility and scaling so that downtime in busy seasons is minimalized while also ensuring its persistence through high traffic periods like holidays.

At Panda Group we recommend AWS (Amazon Web Solution) Cloud hosting which is flexible enough to scale the business in time as well as persistent to absorb high traffic.

It may seem like an easy decision but sometimes it isn’t as there are many factors one has put into account when choosing what type of solution will work best for them such as how big does our current site gets before any changes become necessary?

What about scalability – do they require quick access times from anywhere on Earth ides these there are more factors related to the company’s business that influences what Magento 2 hosting is most suitable. It can be a matter of safety, stability, or speed – all depending on your requirements!

Magento 2 code and content check for speed optimization

Besides using images, videos, and other media in the best way to decrease page loading time there are several things you can do. First of all, review your theme template files – don’t use too many CSS/JS scripts! Also, look into Magento’s default settings that affect performance (like EAVigns).

Magento 2 developers are able to improve Magento’s structure to clear it from extensive codes and functions that slow it down.

At Panda Group we recommend Magento 2 frontend using Hyva Theme. One of the reasons is simplicity better-searching performance, especially when considering Core Web Vitals metrics.

SEO Reports

In this menu, you will find a list of SEO reports showing data about indexed pages as well as those which are not included in any search engine index at all.

There is also information available regarding crawl errors so it’s easy to spot problems on your site that prevent crawling or cause incorrect parsing of content by crawlers.

You can easily fix these issues with Magento 2 SEO functionalities since most common problems occur due to improper configuration! With a little bit more effort you can see how many URLs have been submitted for inclusion into indexes, what were their status changes over time, etc. Very helpful insights when trying to optimize visibility on search engines you will find also in Google Analytics and Google Search Console. These are free Google tools available for your Magento CMS to scale your data analysis. 

The SEO & search menu also provides a list of pages that have been submitted to major search engines. It’s important not only to monitor your site structure and indexation status but you should always keep an eye on what is going on with your competitors as well – having all the data about indexed/not-indexed, crawled/not-crawled URLs can be very helpful when trying to understand their strategies! Again Google Analytics and Search Console will help you in this area.

SEO tips and recommendations conclusion

In this post, we have covered some basic issues on technical SEO. Showing how to optimize your Magento 2  store for search engines. Using the Magento 2 SEO menu you can check whether everything is ok on a technical level: page loading speed, meta titles, meta descriptions, alt tags as well as learn more about crawled/not-crawled pages and indexed/not-indexed ones!

After accomplishing a technical SEO you may go further to the next points like:

  • Adequacy – content creation.
  • Authority – link building.

Technical SEO helps to build a stable frame and catalog search engine optimization of the Magento 2 CMS enabling the improvement of the organic search results while content and authority are to improve the webpage on a daily basis, consistently, and build trustworthiness in search engine. 

That’s pretty much everything you need to know about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in Magento 2!

For more details feel free to Contact us or visit our blog.

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