SEO Guide to Optimize Magento Website to Improve Performance

Search Engine Optimization is a powerful web marketing technique which determines the visibility of websites in different search engines. It is the foundation of all web-based businesses. Website owners, admins, marketing professionals need to optimize their site with the latest tricks of SEO so that they can improve its ranking (on different search engines), reach out to the maximum number of people in an easy way & grow their business rapidly.

If you operate a Magento store, there are a number of tricks using which you can drive immense traffic to your website and expand your E-commerce business.

Must Read: 20 Best Responsive Magento Themes for eCommerce websites

Have a look at some SEO tips that you must use to optimize Magento website:

1. Content Marketing

The availability of SEO optimized content in sufficient numbers is essential to perform various SEO activities.

Google and other search engines always look for fresh and valuable content to deliver the most relevant results to user’s search terms. They detect and punish those who use copied content for website optimization.

This is where, you need to have a well-planned content marketing strategy. It is a process of content development and distribution. It ensures the delivery of valuable content on the right time.You can use the available content to optimize your site very well and find a remarkable placement in search engine results.

2. Make Your Website URL Search Engine Friendly

When you add new product or category on your site, Magento automatically creates the default URL which is vague and complicated. Even search engine don’t prefer such URL.

Therefore, you need to make the URL search engine friendly in order to improve the ranking of your site, help people visit your web pages without any apprehension and navigate them easily on your site. You can easily change the default URL by navigating to the system ->Configuration> Web

3. Add An XML Sitemap To Your Website

A properly created sitemap can help search engines to crawl your site and add its pages to in their search results. Magento has an XML sitemap generator. You need to go to the System > Catalog > Google Sitemap, and enable the default XML Sitemap.

4. Use appropriate Meta description

Metadata is a key component of SEO. It allows search engines the understand the content of web pages easily and quickly. A good meta description can help your site rank well in the SERPs of search engines.

Therefore, you should use unique metadata while optimizing your website and its pages. Add your important keywords in the meta description. It is displayed in search results and encourage users to click your website.

5. Increase Your Site Speed

Website loading speed is a crucial factor which plays a major role in the success or failure of your store. Search engines and visitors love fast loading websites and tend to avoid the sites which take more time to load.

A slow website may be penalized with a low ranking in the SERPs of search engines, which means you get fewer or negligible business opportunities. Therefore, you should make your site fast to help users to access it easily in the shortest possible time.

You can do the following to speed up your site:

• Compress your files and images
• Erase unnecessary website database regularly,
• Implement full page caching on your site,
• Utilize a CDN to distribute your content easily.
• Host your site on a reliable server.

6. 301 Redirections

In simple terms, redirection is a process of guiding users and search engines to another URL when they visit a specific URL. 301 is a permanent redirection, which is extensively used by digital marketing experts to provide an alternative page (to visitors and search engines) in place of an outdated page. It helps them to improve the ranking of a website or its pages and offer a pleasant experience to visitors.

You may use 301 redirections in following cases:

• While migrating your old website to a new platform.
• You have stopped offering specific products.
• Changing, simplifying and expanding the URL.
• You have halted your Google Adword campaigns.
• You need to replace the URL of a page following some reasons, etc.

7. Use Magento SEO Extensions

Magento offers a number of SEO extensions that you can utilize in your SEO practice and expedite its outcome. You may find the following SEO extensions useful for your needs:

A) SEO Suite Ultimate – To implement the right SEO practices to promote your site.

B) Internal SEO Linking – To boost the internal linking of your site.

C) Easy Social Media Links – To build a solid presence (of your site) on all prominent social media sites and generate business from them.

8. Use Rich Snippets and Microformats

You can use rich snippets and Microformats tags on your website to increase its visibility on search engines. You can use Magento extensions to add these two on your website. However, you must avoid its excess use as that will be the violation of Google’s rule (markup should be hidden). That can affect your site’s ranking severely.

9. Analyze your SEO campaigns

It is very important for you to analyze the effectiveness of your SEO campaigns and be aware of what is working and what is not working. For this purpose, you can use Google Analytics and other services. Such tools allow you to get a detailed report about your SEO campaigns and visitors activities on your site.

It helps you to initiate the appropriate SEO campaigns to promote your site and meet your business objectives.

Final Words

If you use the above-mentioned SEO tips to optimize Magento website, you will be able to get your website placed up with SERP of all search engines.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this post. Please share it with your friends and leave your comments below If you’ve any other suggestion or extension that can help to optimize Magento website.

 

About the author:
Linda Wester is a professional developer and has been associated with leading Magento theme development company over 4 years. She is also a prolific blogger and something of a geek who shares her experience with others. To check out her more publications, you can likewise tail her on twitter.