How to boost the search engine ranking of your Magento Store?

Are you worried about the ranking of your Magento Store?
Want to optimize it for search engine rankings?
Well, then here are some tips for doing so.

Magento is a remarkable e-commerce platform which is growing very fast. Magento has in-built SEO features, but to boost the ranking of your store, you need to aware of its CMS functionalities. Having knowledge of it will help you change the configuration settings.

Some of functionalities that Magento provides

»  Optimize Title and Meta tags
»  Speed up Magento Website
»  Remove duplicate content
»  Remove canonical issue
»  Create Xml site map
»  Create and edit robots.txt and .htaccess files

With these one can set a page as no follow or do follow, plus make redirection and set SEF URL’s.

Here are tips for Magento SEO Optimization

First of all you need to take of the title and meta tag optimization home page. You can do it from –
System > Configuration > Design > Html Head
Leave Title Prefix and Title Suffix fields otherwise will be visible in other pages too.

Next important thing is – Title and Meta tag Optimization of category and product pages. This one can be done from - System > Configuration > Catalog > Manage Categories

URL Optimization is very crucial when it come to Magento SEO optimization. You can set the URL’s as per the name of the product or category. It can be done from here:
System > Configuration > Catalog > Search Engine Optimization
Next, enable “Use categories path for product URL’s” or set it to yes.

Xml Sitemap generation can be done from System > Configuration > Catalog > Google Sitemap > Add Sitemap with this you can create the site map manually.

Speed Up Magento is similar to the Joomla CMS. Magento also have the option to enable caching. It can be done from here:
System > Cache Management
Afterwards, enable caching features.

URL Canonicalization and 301 Redirection

Usually the search engines treat websites with www, non www and index as different web pages hence search engines may index all the pages which may cause duplicate content issue. So it is important to redirect all to the most desire one. Writing following piece of code in the .htaccess file we can resolve this issue.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain-name.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain-name.com/$1 [L,R=301]

This will redirect non www to www. Similarly we can redirect it from www to non www. Using .htaccess file we can also redirect broken links or old pages to new one as
Redirect 301 /old-page http://www.domain-name.com/new-page

Lastly,by using robots.txt file we can allow and disallow search engines which directory or pages are made for them and which are not, i.e what that can index or what not. Add your site map in robots.txt file as
Sitemap: http://domain-name.com/sitemap.xml
Other than above make use of header tags (h1,h2), bold your keywords, make keywords as a anchor text, and add alt text to the images.

Using SEO Plug-ins

Besides the above mentioned tips, you can also use SEO plug-ins and extensions available for Magento store. These can be of great help to you in managing all your SEO activities without making changes in the internal files, thus gives you ease to optimize your site without putting your hands in the complex coding.

Some of the popular and widely used Magento E-commerce SEO Extensions. The ones mentioned here are free of cost.

»  xtcForwarder 301 – redirect old xt commerce urls
This extension redirects old xt:commerce urls to new magento urls.
»  SEF links metalanguages
It allows to do SEO links to products & categories.
»  Remember CMS Meta Robots
It adds meta robots tags to Magento pages.
»  Canonical URLs for Magento
With this plug-in one can add canonical links to Magento pages.
»  Foo man Speedster
One can speed up Magento store by combining, compressing and caching JS & CSS.
»  Category access control
This plug-in helps to control access to products and categories using user groups.
»  Yoast Meta Robots
This helps in adding meta robots tags to Magento pages.
»  Advanced Sitemap
This one lists all products from Magento store.
»  Flag bit Google Webmaster Tools
It adds the Google webmaster tools verification code to your page.
»  Magento Social Bookmarking Services
With the help of this Extension, you can share your products, categories, CMS pages to major social bookmarking websites.

Need any consultation regarding Magento SEO Implementation?

Then please feel free to consult us at Biztech Consultancy. We are a leading Magento Development Company specializing in customizing the Magento E-commerce platform. Our magento developers are experienced enough to handle all tasks relating to Magento.

We provide services like – magento seo development, magento seo plug-in development, magento cms development, magento web development, magento maintenance, magento store set up, magento shopping cart development, magento wordpress integration and lot more.

To get free consultation and project proposal regarding any Web Development Requirements, contact us at sales@biztechconsultancy.com. You can also keep in touch with us through your mobile at our Biztech Mobile Site