1. Titles, Keywords and Meta descriptions for Each Product
There are three “hidden” tags on each page of your website that are both crucial to SEO and easy to edit in each product in Magento: Title, Meta Keyword and Meta Description.
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The <title> tag appears at the top of the window. The search engine Google shows the first 70 characters in search results. Therefore, you need to make sure the first 70 characters make sense, provide orientation to someone who sees the page listed in a search engine, and have keywords that actually appear on the page itself. The Title tag is important to both search engine rankings AND people; therefore, being able to edit them easily is a big advantage. In Magento, you can edit this right in the product listing.
The tag called “meta keyword” was used for years by Google and other search engines. Behind the scenes, this tag had a list of keywords that appeared on the page in an attempt to boost the page’s rankings for those words. Unfortunately, this feature was abused to the point that Google migyt be ignoring it. However, it is rumored that other search engines give credence to the meta keyword tag. If you decide to pursue this, you can edit it in Magnto on the product page.
Have you noticed that when you look at search results, a short paragraph appears below the title of the page? It’s only two lines long in Google; however, it can make-or-break whether someone actually clicks through. If you do not put anything in the meta description tag on your page, the search engine will do its best to grab some text from your website and stuff it there. However, it’s foolhardy to count on the search engine doing a good job of this. Sometimes it just throws your menu in there, or some other junk on your page. It is best to take control by providing a meta description for EVERY product on your site. In Magento, it’s a snap.
2. Customizable Titles, Keywords and Meta Descriptions for Each Category
If you go to the trouble of creating titles, keywords and meta descriptions for every product in your Magento ecommerce site (and you should), you should also do this for every category. Do not underestimate how often category pages might come up in search engine results. You never know. Therefore, spend the time to polish each category page and insert the hidden tags. Spending an extra ten minutes per category page could make a difference. When the products in a category change, update these tags as well as other category information. Make sure they are all keyword rich and match what is actually there. The search engines penalize you for keyword stuffing, and reward honesty.
Basically, URL rewrites means that your site has static, unchanging page addresses that search engines can index, and people can link to. This is easily set up right in Magento without any add-ons or hassle. Learn more about URL rewrites.
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4. An auto-generated sitemap
The sitemap that is automatically generated by Magento is build for both people and search engines. When you visit the sitemap, you see a complete list of products, categories and/or pages on the site. Each item links directly to is associated page. Every page is listed, and nothing is skipped. Therefore, when someone knows exactly what they are looking for, they can often find it on the sitemap.
Search engines like this too, and they gobble it up like Pac Man.
What if you had to maintain this sitemap yourself? You would waste a lot of time! Every time you added, changed or removed a product or category, you would have to update the sitemap. Magento just handles this for you, without making you install an add-on. It is always accurate and up-to-date.
Google likes it when you submit an XML sitemap to them. A Google site map ensures that Google finds all pages on your site, including any that are not easy for them to discover using their crawling process. With Magento, you do not have to understand the XML schema. Just use Magento’s built-in Google sitemap feature and make sure it gets submitted to Google.
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Best,
Gentian, CSO and co-founder of Shero Commerce, guides the company and client digital strategies. He's an expert in technical SEO, Inbound Marketing, and eCommerce strategy.
