There’s no meaning of having your website on web if you are not doing SEO to be on top. It’s great if you are doing SEO to make your site visible on search engines, but are your deeds going in vain? If so then may be this guide will help you out for identifying your mistakes. Check out few points which acts as hurdle in path of being on top.
- Don’t Use Default Descriptions: In case if you go to System => Configuration => Design => HTML Head => Default description and go into it, Magento will put this as default description to all the pages without custom description for particular pages. Note that each of your pages is considered different along with Meta tags.
- Same URLs For Translated Pages: Having different URL for every language is a wrong hierarchy, it would affect SEO badly. In case you have 5 languages on your store and your product page is abc.com/product.html for particular language then it should stay the same for all the 5 languages. This thing is not only for the product page, but for every page of your Magento store.
- Ignoring rel= “Alternate” hreflang=“x”: Wondering what are this terms? Well rel = “alternate” is used to connect pages with same content but in varied languages. Make sure you are not using canonicals to relate the translated pages. Along with that you may even utilize another tool that is “x-default hreflang” for any international page. Remember to link translated pages with each other. This thing is normally done with the help of country flags or links with language names as ‘switch to English’.
- Changing URLs/ Deleting Pages Without 301 Redirect: 404 is not loved by everyone. So take care if you are changing the URL of any particular page or deleting that page, it will lead to 404 pages on your websites. Yes having 404 pages is not at all a deadly sin for search engines, but still they want you to fix them. And along with that it may even scare your users. System -Configuration -Catalog -Create Permanent Redirect for old URLs will help you.
- Don’t Ignore Rich Snippets: Magento has no way for creating rich snippets. If considering rich snippets are best way to gain great exposure and attention without being on top. When Google results are analyzed, the one with rich snippets have higher CTR and more number of clicks. Creating rich data is quite easy and should be made once, while gaining more clicks, traffic, and sales will last as long as Google exists.
- Magento Loading Speed: Website’s loading speed is one of the vital aspect considered in SEO. The loading speed affects the bounce rate and may be the customer may not return to this site again. So it’s quite important to consider the speed and work on those factors.
- Magento Duplicate Issues: Duplicate content is considered the evil by Google and Magento can bring the same issue and spoil your website existence. Following are few listed reasons for having duplicate content in Magento:
o Different variations of same product
o Pagination
o Product sorting
o Same product in different categories -several URLs for the same product
o Several home page URLs, including www, ‘home’, and ‘index.php’ variations.
Once you are done with uploading the products and their description, please check all above mentioned things and avoid the issue of duplicate content.
Author Bio: Ryan is a Magento Web Developer, Ecommerce Business Analyst and also a Technical Blogger. He is working with a leading Web Development Company since the last few years. He regularly shares articles about Magento for building your Ecommerce Store.