BY MEDIA LOUNGE WWW.MEDIALOUNGE.CO.UK PART 01 Search Engine Optimisation As one of the most popular eCommerce platforms in the world, Magento certainly packs a powerful punch in terms of functionality and customisation. Harnessing this power however can be tricky, especially when it comes to getting the most from your site in terms of SEO 01performance. Stores built on Magento can take advantage of some fantastic built-in features that can be individually tuned with just a few clicks, all helping to bring extra visitors and improve the rankings of your site on Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). It’s important to remember the value of search engine optimisation when considering any marketing strategy, especially when you’re in the business of selling products solely through an online store - the bigger your audience, the more sales you’re likely to generate. The brilliant thing about SEO is that all the visitors your site receives through this channel are free, which means you don’t need to risk any of that precious advertising budget to see results. We’re going to highlight a handful of these SEO features that you can use to improve your site’s rankings and drive more organic traffic to your store. These simple Magento practices can be implemented by anyone - there’s no requirement for much in the way of technical knowledge, but you will need to dedicate some time to getting things set up correctly. Let’s go! BY CHRIS BY Optimising Meta Titles & Descriptions Hidden within the pages of your website lies the key to success - meta data. If you want your eCommerce store to rank well on Google and bring in plenty of organic traffic, you need to ensure your site’s meta data has been optimised to target the appropriate keywords. Optimising meta titles and descriptions starts with understanding what searchers are typing into Google and other search engines to find your business. These search terms are known as ‘keywords’ and you should take the time to research which terms are popular within your niche. Once you’ve chosen the appropriate keywords, it’s time to optimise your meta data. OPTIMISING META TITLES One of the most important elements when it comes to SEO is the meta title. In most cases, this is the main title of your page and can be customised to include the keywords you want to target. The perfect meta title should accurately reflect the content of the specific page it relates to, include one or two of your target keywords and be no longer than 60 characters in length - that’s 60 characters, not 60 words! By default, Magento will automatically populate the meta title of a page if it has been left empty. Whilst this can be helpful if you stock thousands of products, it’s unlikely to be optimised or include any of your target keywords. We would suggest you take the time to optimise the meta titles of your category and subcategory pages as a minimum, as this will increase the likelihood of these ranking on SERPs and ultimately generate more traffic. Magento will generate these automatically, but you can certainly do better. In the case of product pages, the default product name/ title will be used and this will be sufficient. OPTIMISING META DESCRIPTIONS To create the perfect meta description, you’ll need to accurately describe the content of your page Up until the last few years, Google and other in a way that is appealing to searchers - this could search engines used meta descriptions to gain an mean including relevant keywords or adding in understanding of individual pages and rank them your specific business USPs. A perfectly crafted accordingly. Recently however, Google in particular meta description that tells a customer they could is much improved and can now understand the enjoy free next-day delivery if they buy from your entire content of a page thanks to its ability to crawl store is a lot more enticing than a default Magento- sites more efficiently. generated line of text. What that means for you is that meta descriptions If you take the time to optimise both your meta no longer have a direct impact on search engine titles and meta descriptions, chances are you’ll see rankings. That said, they still play an important improved rankings on SERPs and this should in role in demonstrating to searchers that your page turn bring in high quality, targeted traffic - all for holds the best answer to their query and therefore free of course! increasing clicks through to your store. In most cases, it’s these words that potential customers will scan when scrolling through Google search results and an optimised meta description could make all the difference. TOP TIP Aim to keep all your meta descriptions under 160 characters as this is the current limit that Google displays within search results - if you exceed this limit, it’s likely that your description will be cut off mid-sentence! Create & Generate an XML Sitemap When it comes to working smarter and not This type of sitemap is purely for SEO benefit and harder, few things come easier than generating an search engine use. If you want users to be able to XML sitemap for your eCommerce store. SEO is access a list of all your pages to help them navigate often considered a long hard slog, but this is the around your store, you’ll need to consider adding dictionary definition of a ‘quick win’. a HTML sitemap. To do this Magento requires a plugin, so head over to the Magento Marketplace Even though adding an XML sitemap could be and search for ‘HTML sitemap’. considered as a more technical SEO feature, thankfully you don’t really need a lot of knowledge to get one set up - and the benefits can be huge. WHAT IS AN XML SITEMAP? TOP TIP First things first, you need to understand what an XML sitemap is. Set your sitemap to generate In its most simplest form, any type of sitemap is automatically overnight each a list of URLs within a website, hence the name. day to keep it continually up The XML part translates as ‘Extensible Markup Language’ which is one of several ways of displaying to date, the early hours of the information on websites, but you don’t need to worry too much about that. morning work best! WHAT IS ITS PURPOSE? When search engines crawl your site, they are attempting to organise and index all the information they come across. By adding an XML sitemap, you are making life much easier for these crawlers as you’re presenting your website in their language and therefore increasing the likelihood of them understanding and indexing your store more effectively. A well-structured, up-to-date XML sitemap will present Google and other search engines with all the information they need to crawl and rank your site. The sitemap can provide information on when a page was last updated, how frequently that page is updated and even the relative importance of that page within your entire site - clever stuff. Magento and Magento 2 both offer the ability for you to generate an XML sitemap with just a few clicks. Simply log into your admin panel, locate the Catalog menu option, click through to the Google Sitemap page and follow the step-by-step instructions. Add Header Tags to All Main Pages Another crucial element to any page is the header Every page needs one and only one H1 tag - there tags but they are often overlooked, especially is no reason to use more than one as this will only within the eCommerce industry. Their SEO value is dilute the weight of your main H1 tag. There are somewhat undervalued so getting them some SEO industry experts that feel comfortable right on your site can make a big difference to using more than one, but our experience tells us rankings and the amount of organic traffic reaching that we get the best results with a one high quality your store. There’s more to it than just adding a H1. If you feel you need to add more headers, utilise single heading at the top of your page too. the H2 and H3 tags - this is why they exist! WHAT IS A HEADER TAG? WHAT SHOULD AN H1 INCLUDE? Header tags are thankfully very straightforward to The perfect H1 tag should accurately describe the understand and also implement on your site. They content of your page, utilise one or more of your simply refer to the fact that everything contained target keywords for that page and be somewhere within that tag should be read by Google and other between 20 and 70 characters in length. If the H1 search engines as a heading. ticks all these boxes, you’re going to put yourself in the best possible position to see that page compete There are six different header tags that can be used at the top of SERPs. within the HTML language - H1, H2, H3 and so on down to H6. These tags are all assigned various Every page needs one and only one H1 tag - there levels of importance from an SEO perspective, with is no reason to use more than one as this will only H1 being the most and H6 being the least. You also dilute the weight of your main H1 tag. There are generally see H1 tags being displayed on the page in some SEO industry experts that feel comfortable a larger font as they are commonly used at the start using more than one, but our experience tells us of pages as the main heading.