Search engine optimization, a powerful tool by your side using which you can reach your target audience and gain website traffic, conversions, and sales. SEO is the base for operation of any web based business which helps website owners to improve their website’s ranking on different search engines, and reach out the maximum number of audiences in a quick time.

If you have a Magento store, there are quite a number of things you can do to improve your website’s ranking on this eCommerce platform. In this post, I am going to discuss some tips that you should follow for a boosted SEO on Magento based eCommerce stores.

1. Content development-

Content marketing has become a fundamental requirement for SEO. Search engines always see fresh and unique content as a positive signal. Moreover, they strictly discourage copied contents and punish the websites with such content by dropping them down in the ranking.

So, for any kind of website you run, always present unique content on it. Have a well-planned content marketing strategy, and follow it strictly. By content, we don’t only mean the website blogs but everything on your website where there is some content- Blog, Case study, Articles, News, Category description, Product description everything.

2. Utilize Magento’s support for SEO friendly URLs-

Search engines always prefer simple and friendly URLs over the complex ones. By default when you upload a product on Magento, it automatically generates and URL for the product page which is quite complex and tough to read by the search engines. Here, you need to make these URLs SEO friendly so as to get a preference by the search engines.

You can change the default URL to an SEO friendly URL by going to system ->Configuration> Web, and then expand the Search Engine Optimization tab. Now, set the Use Web Server Rewrites option to Yes

3. Add XML sitemap-

Sitemaps help the search engines to crawl your website and all its pages easily. Magento uses an automatic sitemap generator to generate the XML sitemap for your website. You can enable this option from Catalog > Google Sitemap. Here you need to enable the default XML Sitemap by adding a New Sitemap.

4. Use proper Meta Description-

Metadata is a valuable component in search engine optimization which allows search engines to easily interpret the contents on your website. A properly written meta description can help your store acquire better visibility among the search engines by telling search engines what exactly the content is about.

Write unique meta description with no copied content. Keep the character limit in mind and include your important keywords at the beginning to the description. Keep the description limited to shorter than 160 characters.

5. Optimize the site speed-

Site load speed is a very crucial factor when it comes to both SEO and conversion rate optimization (CRO). In terms of CRO,

“ If your website takes more than 3 seconds to load 40 % of your customers will close the window and abandon your site. Every one-second delay in loading speed can cause 7 % decrease in the conversions” – information source.

In SEO too, slow loading websites impart negative signals to the search engines. They penalize the slow websites with a low ranking in the SERPs.

Therefore, it’s the most crucial factor that you should necessarily take care of. You can improve your site speed with following tips:

• Compress the files and images before uploading on the site – Clean your database by removing unnecessary one regularly.
• Enable full page caching on the site
• Use content delivery network (CDN) to distribute your content and ensure high availability and performance.
• Host your site on a dedicated server if possible. Otherwise only choose a reliable server.

6. Use 301 Redirections carefully-

301 redirection is a permanent redirection, which can be used to provide the users and search engines with alternate pages in place of old and outdated pages. In straight words, 301 redirection is a process of guiding users and search engines to another URL when they visit a specific URL.

• You can use the 301 redirections in following situations:
• While migrating your old website to a new one on different platform.
• The old URL or page is no more usable for you- it’s outdated or you no more offer the product shown on that page.
• You want to change the URL to make it simple- SEO friendly
•  You have stopped your Adword campaign.

7. Modify Robots.txt File-

By default, Magento adds a robots.txt file to your site. The default configuration of this file bars the search engines from indexing the site.

By default, Robot file setting is “NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW”, due to which your site cannot appear in search results. To solve this problem, you need to go to System => Configuration => Design => Default Robots, and then change it to “INDEX, FOLLOW”.

8. Use social sharing extensions-

Social media is a huge asset to improve your visibility in the Search engines. When people like something on your site, they share it with their acquaintances, and the process continues. In this way, something from your website becomes visible to a large population imparting a positive signal to the search engines. This positive signal ultimately helps in boosting your SEO.

You can use the Facebook share and win discount extension to promote social sharing on Facebook. Through a definite chance to win a discount coupon it encourages your visitors to share more and more.

9. Analyze your SEO-

Whatever you do to improve the SEO of your website, it’s very important to keep a track of it. You can do so by regularly analyzing the effectiveness of your SEO campaigns using tools like Google Analytics and  Google Analytic Enhanced Ecommerce.  These tools allow you to stay updated with a detailed report about your SEO campaigns and their effectiveness.

Finally, 

Using the above tips would definitely help you achieve a boosted SEO on your Magento store. I hope this guide helps you to get a clear idea of what you need to do. These are fundamentals and you can do them by yourself only.  Moreover, SEO is a huge ocean where experience is a crucial factor, it’s better to have an SEO expert by your side, because there is a lot more in SEO only the experienced experts can get you.

You can read more about “5 skills every eCommerce SEO expert should have”