Tips for search engine optimization with Magento

Your Magento webshop is finally finished. The launch is behind you and you're in the starting blocks to start making sales. And then ... deafening silence. How do you generate traffic and draw attention to your webshop? Advertising with Google Adwords is not a bad idea, but cheaper and perhaps more effective is working on your organic search result. How will search engine optimization ensure that my Magento shop will be found well? Get a head start on your competition and start the upward trend on the way to higher rankings!

1. Use unique product descriptions

Your Magento shop is full of products and chances are that the same products are also offered on other webshops. Often the supplier provides a product description. 9 out of 10 shop owners will add this to the product. Because this description is the same on almost all pages, it becomes impossible to score well in search results. Therefore, make sure that these texts are unique. Rewrite them and make them original. Make sure that the most important keyword is reflected in the title of the page (what do you want to rank for?). Then you can also include the keyword in the H1 of the page. By doing so, you will tell Google directly what the content of the page is about.

2. Use ratings & rich snippets in search results

Making use of rich snippets and ratings in search results ensures better ranking in search results. Because the rating stands out in the search results, the CTR of the page will also increase. This is because it is totally different from the other results. See below for example:

3. Use unique meta descriptions

It is also important to have a unique meta description. A good description will make the visitor more likely to click on your search result than someone else's. Make sure you write it as attractively as possible to convince the visitor to visit your page.

4. Use search engine friendly URLs

A search engine friendly URL is one of the most important SEO aspects of a web page. Based on a URL, search engines determine the topic of a page and directory structures. A good search engine friendly URL is SEO friendly when it:

• Contains a logical structure;

• Is short and concise;

• Contains keywords, as far as possible at the front of the line;

It's important to check this out. Are there any pages/URLs you want to change? Don't go and do this directly yourself, but let us know. It would be a shame if you lose the accrued value of the URL by modifying it right away.

5. Optimize your images

Once people are searching for a product, they often look at the images as well. Search engine optimization can also be applied to images. Google cannot read images and instead displays alternative text. This means for SEO that we can put more information here. In this way, the image is thus optimized for findability in Google images.

6. Start a blog

It is incredibly important to publish new content regularly. It has a positive influence on the findability in search results. The range will be greater, which increases the chance that your turnover will increase. By publishing interesting content, visitors are more likely to return to your shop. You will distinguish yourself and be seen as an expert in your industry.

7. Are you using the robots.txt file correctly?

The robots.txt file by itself contributes nothing to search engine results. However, the file is useful to have because it also allows us to exclude pages from search engine indexing, even entire directories. What happens in Magento by default is that all pages combined with filters are included in search results. This seems fine because all pages are included in search results, but this is not the case. For example, the page: www.uwdomein.nl/productgroep/product can be found in Google but, for example, www.uwdomein.nl/productgroep/product?land_van_herkomst=36 can also be found. This is a shame because all the value also now goes to all the filter pages. So these are pages that are not relevant to show in Google. You can turn this off in the backend of Magento. You can do this by going to System -> Configuration -> Catalog -> Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and then set 'Use category path for product URLs' to 'no'. This will prevent duplicate content.

8. Make use of a sitemap

A sitemap.xml is often not directly accessible to a visitor and is not displayed on the website. However, search engines do look for such a file. For them it is a kind of table of contents of the website, so they can see which pages exist. A must-have for search engine optimization.

9. Ensure a fast loading time

The loading time of a website is an important issue for Google. The longer it takes for Google to go through your site the more likely it is that the entire website will not be indexed. It is important for both Google and your visitors that the page loads quickly. A slow loading time not only causes Google to drop out but also your visitor. Use this tool to see how your website is doing: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/