Search engine optimization, long for SEO, is all the rage right now in ecommerce and online business community worldwide. It is the centre of the internet marketing strategies and all the businesses are trying to keep up with the constantly changing SEO landscape. Search engine optimization in simple terms is the process by which a website’s or a web page’s visibility in a search engine’s results is enhanced. Search engine optimization for Magento, BigCommerce, Shopify and every other platform-based website is very important.
This importance arises because the higher a website appears on list of search engine results, greater the amount of traffic it will receive. There are many experts out there ready to shell out advice on how to optimize a website for search engine visibility. It may be inconvenient and inefficient to go through the whole pool of information that floats the market. Presented here is a consolidated version of the information so that anyone can use it and progress towards the optimization. The recommendations to induce search engine optimization for Magento are as follows:
- Even though Magento is one of the most search engine friendly platforms, it will be of no use if it is not up- to- date. Therefore, the recommendation is to get the most recent version of the platform.
- It is important to note that the search engines lay comparatively more weight on pages that contain keyword in the earlier part of the title and page. In addition, people who are merely scanning through the pages are more likely to click on these pages. So use the keywords in the title if possible, and that too in the earlier part. If it is not possible to include the keyword in title, then recommendation is to use it in the first 100 words of the content.
- The speed with which a shop loads is also a very important factor in determining the number of pages the search engine will send to the shop/ website. Two of the most basic things that can be done to optimize the speed of Magento site is enabling of all caching features (in cache management) and ensuring a good host/ server configuration.
- Another important recommendation is to clean the code and keep the template (directories) clean all the time. One of the ways to do this is to store the excess CSS and JavaScript files in the code files/ template files to an external location.
- Category optimization and product optimization are two other components of search engine optimization for Magento that need regulation. It is important to keep the meta- data/ description clean and appropriate and keep the URL key short. The meta- description appears in the results of the search engines and can attract visitors.
- Getting rid of the duplicate content pool on the website also helps in search engine optimization. Preventing the indexing of all non content pages and not linking them; and using the canonical URL tag feature of Magento are a few ways in which duplication can be avoided.
Through this article, we have tried to cover all the aspects of search engine optimization for Magento. However, there are quite a few other ways for SEO that one can know of only by experience and practice.
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