Holding the power to decide the destiny of your eCommerce sales, SEO becomes the core of your eCommerce website. With the SEO driving in 14.6% of the conversion rates, the industry-standard status that it enjoys in generating leads can never be underplayed. As Forbes recognizes improving the search engine ranking as one of the most powerful marketing plans of action, the visibility of your eCommerce website depends on how optimized your search engine strategies are.
But why is that so?
- SEO increases your reach, letting customers find you.
- With your eCommerce website ranking high, chances of profitability will soar.
- With the right eCommerce platform, it becomes an investment that has long-lasting benefits.
Your choice of the eCommerce platform also becomes the major deciding factor in improving the visibility. While all eCommerce platforms strive to ensure that your eCommerce website ranks well, what makes Magento stand out from the rest? With the in-built Magento SEO features to enhance your search engine ranking, Magento sets the bar high in developing an SEO-friendly online storefront. Let’s see how-
Five SEO Improvement Tactics in Magento 2
1. XML Sitemap
Magento 2 comes with great improvements with respect to the XML sitemap. The new version enables you to individually customize website pages, products, categories, and CMS depending on their priority. The sitemap can be sent to search engines through a very simple process. With Magento 2, you can easily add images, sitemap index, and also focus on parameters. Once you enable the sitemap, a file named sitemap.xml will be developed by Magento, which will be saved in your specified location. Unlike the HTML sitemap that focuses more on the users, the XML sitemap is imperative as it is readily accessible to web crawlers. Make sure to optimize the sitemap by delivering information on the latest updates, frequency of updates, and relevance of web pages. A proper sitemap ensures that the crawlers do not overlook any of your webpages. Moreover, Magento also provides a tool to generate the XML sitemap. By default, Magento 2 has various updated XML sitemap features to boost ranking.By leveraging the sitemap, search engines will get a precise idea about your website’s structure. This will, in turn, enable search engines to identify your web pages that must have been missed while indexing. 
2. Product Fields Auto-Generation Template
You cannot undermine the effect of meta title and meta description as it is the primary link between your eCommerce website and search engines. In this regard, one of the major additions in Magento 2 is the introduction of the Product Fields Auto-Generation Template. This feature facilitates you to develop metadata templates for product pages.The feature is a significant addition because optimal metadata throws light on the relevance of your product pages to the search engines. Product Fields Auto-Generation Template comes in handy especially when you have to manage an eCommerce website with a large amount of content as it lets you add templates for product metadata at a global level. This functionality also helps you to add custom meta value in bulk without much effort. With Product Fields Auto-Generation Template, you can create samples for keywords, meta titles, and descriptions for each product in your online storefront.
3. Rich Snippet
The inclusion of Rich Snippet in Magento 2 is a noteworthy addition. A brief description will be automatically included in every product page. This structured data facilitates search engines to understand the information provided in your web pages. Moreover, it helps the search engines to display additional information in organic searches like price, stock availability, logo, ratings, and many more. With Rich Snippet as a default feature in Magento 2, you need not have to work on it additionally. It presents structured markup data in Google search results. With Rich Snippet, customers will know what they will find in your eCommerce website, thus improving the on-page behavioral data like CTR and bounce rates. Hence, despite Rich Snippet not being a direct SEO tool, it can indirectly improve your website ranking. Additionally, Rich Snippets make your page more indexable, while providing more precise and clear metadata. Relevant targeted traffic will be directed to your eCommerce website ensuring higher user engagements. With this increased dwell time, search engines analyze the relevance of your online storefront and it will move your eCommerce website a position up.
4. Canonical Meta Tag
If you have numerous URLs that direct to one particular content, then chances are high for some search engines to penalize your website. But with canonical meta tags enabled by Magento 2, you will be able to inform the search engines to index a specific page in case multiple URLs direct to the same or identical content. Hence, a canonical meta tag can save your eCommerce website from duplicate contents that could have backfired your SEO ranking.By giving links to your preferred URL, search engines can track them down and provide a higher rank. You can use canonical meta tags for category filters, multi-store, product pages, etc. while having an upper hand in informing about link equity. In its absence, your eCommerce website will be perceived as not providing any unique content and this can be reflected in SERPs as well. By using canonical meta tags, you avoid the risk of web crawlers missing out unique content that should appear in search results. Through canonical tags, search engines will provide ranking value, identifying the page as the source URL. Canonical meta tags ensure to generate traffic to your desired web page by showing a standard resource. 
5. URL Rewrite Tool
Magento 2 incorporates the URL Rewrite tool with which you can change the URL of a CMS, product, or category page. By using this tool, any link that directs the customers to the previous URL will now be redirected to the new address. Through this tool, you can change highly complicated URLs to decipherable ones that can be better understood by the search engines and site visitors. You can now optimize the URL by making it short and rich with keywords. With the URL Rewrite tool, you can make the new URL more adaptable to the search engines especially when you are new to eCommerce. Additionally, Magento settings give you the privilege to use top-level product URLs instead of including any subcategory hierarchy in the URL. In this way, you can avoid any potential duplication issues. Using the URL Rewrite tool, you can edit URLs and lessen the chance for indexation bloat. It also transforms user experience as customers can easily search for the products. Studies show that SEO- friendly URLs can project a sense of relevance for your eCommerce website.
Checklist to Enhance SEO for Your Magento Store
Along with the functionalities of Magento 2, you also need to take care of other factors that would help you boost the search engine ranking. So, do grab a look at the following checklist-
SSL Certificate
Procuring a Secure Software Layer (SSL) Certificate is necessary as Google uses it as a yardstick to measure the trustworthiness of your eCommerce website. Without this security measure, website ranking can be affected as Google started providing a ranking boost to secured websites from the year 2014. 
So, if your competitor incorporates an SSL Certificate despite other factors being on par with that of your eCommerce website, it is highly likely that you will rank lower. SSL Certificate will not only make the site secure, but the browser will also display padlock as a trust indicator in the address bar.
Set Up Google Analytics
You can easily track the outcome of your Magento SEO strategy by adding the tracking code of Google Analytics into your eCommerce website. Through the tracking code, you can regularly keep an eye on your website performance. You will get an idea of marketing insights like top-performing pages and mobile traffic. Setting up Google Search Console can also aid you in understanding online traffic while improving your presence in the organic searches. In this way, you can easily redeem the errors that can affect the search engine rankings. Apart from Google Analytics, there are also Magento website developers who can help you develop an SEO-friendly Magento online storefront. 
Product Image Labels
Optimizing product images is very crucial to improve visibility and relevance. Never forget to add alt-tags that would describe your images. Since search engines are unequipped to read images, it is the alt texts that bridge this communication gap. But there are certain things that you have to consider-
- Make sure that you don’t use keywords excessively in alt-texts.
- While adding filenames for images, ensure that they are informative and easy to decipher.
- Keep them short and precise.
- In the case of a specific product, never forget to include the product name and the product ID.
Backlinking
Backlinking is one of the three most important ranking factors of Google, the other two being the content and search query relevancy. As the web crawlers follow the links, they will understand the connection between web pages, blogs, and other content displayed on your eCommerce website. There are several reasons why backlinking is important.
- Generating high-standard backlinks also vouches for the quality of your content.
- They help web crawlers to identify new web pages. If your eCommerce website generates relevant backlinks, then chances are high for your web page to rank higher.
- By generating backlinks, your website credibility is enhanced letting search engines direct traffic to your online storefront.
After choosing the perfect eCommerce platform, the next step is to find the right Magento website developer to build an online storefront just the way you want it.
Why DCKAP?
With over 15 years of experience, DCKAP is equipped with the right expertise to optimize your eCommerce website. Being the Magento solution partner, we have in-house developers who would work with you to make your dream online store a reality. Our determination to toil for the successful completion of projects has gained us happy and content clients. With the perfect solutions, we, at DCKAP, offer to provide you with a fully optimized SEO-friendly online storefront that will guarantee you immense growth and reputation in the world of eCommerce.
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