SEO for Magento StoresBy Paul Rogers

About me• Working in SEO / digital / ecommerce for over 9 years (in-house,

agency + consulting)• Working with Magento for the last 5 years• Worked with 50-100 merchants from all over the world• Specialise in Magento SEO• Founded Audited.org (work in progress…)

Companies I’ve worked with

Presentation Overview

1.0 Getting the basics right2.0 Magento configuration & technical SEO3.0 SEO in Magento 2.0

The fundamentals of Magento / ecommerce SEO

Page templates• Lots of reviews• Reviews based on customer-focused

metrics as well as just written content

• Useful / relevant reviews get more visibility

• Strong product content• Product videos and lots of images• Q&A content from Facebook

Create a UGC strategy• Product reviews are important for injecting unique content into

product pages• Ask open questions - get more descriptive answers• Try to build relevancy and usefulness into your algorithm• Split test your email content, timing and incentives to improve CR%• Integrate with ESP and use sales data to report on CR% and

deliverability metrics• Good use of space means more review content• Give someone ownership

Optimise your site architecture• Build quality product list pages in place of filtered pages• Make sure you’re able to target all of the queries relevant to your

site / products

• Complete a keyword discovery• Add in rankings & landing page data• Complete a gap analysis to identify pages required• Create new pages (make sure you add content, otherwise you’re

just creating lots of thin pages)

Duplicate product content• Have a second feed (or long description field in your existing feed)

for resellers and affiliates (if viable)• Don’t let affiliates and resellers use your review content• Avoid using supplier copy• Try and avoid using blanket bits of copy on page templates

Use your robots.txt file strategically• Don’t just block things using the robots.txt for the sake of it• Think about what you want SEs to crawl your site and access pages• Avoid the ‘standard’ robots.txt that everyone uses• Blocking dynamic pages with robots.txt can impact products that are

hidden behind merchandised products• Use the robots.txt if you’re using multi-select filters with a big

catalog• Don’t block your CSS and JS files• Use the robots.txt strategically for crawl budget

Utilise structured data• Easy opportunity to generate more clicks from existing visibility• I usually recommend price, rating and search as a minimum for

ecommerce sites

Magento config & technical

Get your canonical tag right!• Not on CMS pages and homepage by default• Canonical tag will only work if pages are very similar• Canonical to configurable product if you have multiple variants• Keep an eye on canonical URLs pointing to /catalog/...• Make sure you’re not self-referencing things like tracking URLs

Keep an eye on URL rewrites• Can cause frequent URL

changes, especially on products (mainly appending numbers)

• Can cause issues with redirect loops and crawlability

• CSV uploads can over-ride URL key

• Older /catalog/ URLs can get indexed because of rewrite issues

Be vigilant with low quality pages• Layered navigation pages• Search pages• Pagination• Session IDs• Sort / order pages• General site filters• Duplicate /review/ pages

Https / http duplication• Both versions of pages often get indexed• This can be a very annoying duplicate content issue• Two easy ways to resolve this:

– Canonicalise https pages to http equivalent (depending on size of site)– Apply a redirect with exclusions for pages that need to be secure

Layered navigation w/ Magento• These pages shouldn’t be indexed• Don’t listen to people who say they’re valuable for long-tail• Replace filters that have search volume / and are needed for

keyword targeting with static pages• Don’t be fooled by search friendly URLs• If you’re using a third party module, be aware of the differences

(e.g. manadev, Bubble Layer, Amasty etc)

Split out XML sitemaps• More necessary for larger websites (50k URL limit)• Gives you more visibility over issues (for different types of pages)• I usually suggest at least product and category page sitemaps• Definitely do it if you have multiple storefronts• You could split out by categories• Create an index sitemap if you do this

International SEO (with Magento)• Use the hreflang tag (in templates or using a module)• Create separate Webmaster Tools accounts• Localise content where possible• Avoid using IP redirects• Ensure canonical and hreflang URLs don’t conflict

Other considerations• Invest in performance!

– Google say it impacts rankings– More important (in my mind) for crawl efficiency

• Mobile• Be smart with internal linking• Put more monitoring processes in place

SEO in Magento 2.0

Not much has changed**

** As of a few weeks ago...

Ajax sorting & ordering on PLPs

OG & Structured data OOTB

More flexibility with XML sitemaps

Improved handling of review content

Performance improvements

Thanks for listening!mail@paulnrogers.com

@paulnrogers

https://paulnrogers.comhttps://audited.org (WIP)