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Ultimate Magento SEO
Guide
Comprehensive advice on optimising
Magento ecommerce websites Author: Artur Jach
Published April 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
publisher.
Copyright © Artur Jach 2011
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Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3 Magento SEO Guide - Part 1 ......................................................................................................................... 3 URL Management ........................................................................................................................................ 3
URLs Rewrite Management Feature .................................................................................................... 3 URL keys / URL identifiers ................................................................................................................... 4 Force trailing slash to canonical URLs ................................................................................................. 4 Default Pages ......................................................................................................................................... 5 Canonical Link Element ........................................................................................................................ 5
Magento SEO Guide - Part 2 ........................................................................................................................ 5 Page Titles & Meta Descriptions .................................................................................................................. 5
Page Titles & Meta Descriptions for Content Pages ............................................................................. 6 Page Titles & Meta Descriptions for Category/Listing Pages .............................................................. 6 Page Titles & Meta Descriptions for Product Pages ............................................................................. 7
Magento SEO Guide - Part 3 ........................................................................................................................ 9 Webmaster Tools & Features ....................................................................................................................... 9
Google XML Sitemap ............................................................................................................................ 9 HTML Sitemap ...................................................................................................................................... 9 Default Robots Meta Tag In Magento .................................................................................................. 9 Add Miscellaneous Header Meta Tags ............................................................................................... 10 RSS Feeds ............................................................................................................................................ 10 Google API - Google Analytics ............................................................................................................ 10
Magento SEO Guide - Part 4 ...................................................................................................................... 10 Website Launch Checklist .......................................................................................................................... 10
Website Visibility in Search Engines - Meta Robots Tag ................................................................... 10 Website Visibility in Search Engines - Robots.txt file ......................................................................... 11 Page Title Optimisation ....................................................................................................................... 11 Default Meta Tags Optimisation .......................................................................................................... 11 Create Google Sitemap (sitemap.xml) ................................................................................................ 12 Set Up Magento Canonical Link Element Extension ......................................................................... 12 Add Google Webmaster Tools Verification Tag to Magento .............................................................. 12 Add Google Analytics Tracking Code Directly to Magento ................................................................ 12 Set up Magento Google Base feed ....................................................................................................... 13
Magento SEO Guide - Part 5 ...................................................................................................................... 13 How To Set Up Magento Google Base Feed ............................................................................................... 13
Step 1: Magento Google Base Feed Account Configuration ............................................................... 13 Step 2: Adding Required ‘condition’ Attribute To Magento .............................................................. 13 Step 3: Magento Google Base Feed Attribute Mapping Configuration .............................................. 16 Step 4: Publishing Magento Google Base Feed .................................................................................. 17
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Magento SEO Guide - Introduction In this guide I will highlight the best Magento SEO tools and extensions, how to use them effectively
and what to watch out for when optimising Magento ecommerce websites for search engines. I will
focus on optimising Magento URLs, meta data, pages titles, image alt tags, link titles, HTML code itself,
redirects and other topics relating to Magento SEO and webmasters’ tasks, e.g. sitemaps.
Magento SEO Guide - Part 1
URL Management
Magento SEO - URLs Rewrite Management Feature
Search engine friendly URLs became a very important ranking factor for all ecommerce websites. The
URL Rewrite Management is one of my favourite Magento SEO tools. It allows you to change (re-write)
dynamically generated URL like http://www.kabiri.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/7828/category/568
to the search engine friendly URL like this one
http://www.harveynichols.com/womens/categories/designer-dresses.html. By using this brilliant
Magento SEO tool you can easily create URLs which include all most important and relevant keywords.
Note: Remember to disallow indexing of original URLs by search engine spiders in the robots.txt
exclusion file. This ensures that there’s only one version of Magento URL indexed by search engines.
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Magento SEO - URL keys / URL identifiers
Magento allows you to specify the URL key (also known as the URL identifier) on every static, content
and product category page, see below:
This means that you can choose the keyword you want and add it to the particular page’s URL
independently from Magento’s page name.
Another great thing is that all Magento URLs included in this path will automatically have their URL
structure updated at the same time, For example, you don’t have to worry about URLs within the
/dresses/ path when you change the category URL key to /designer-dresses/ - Magento will
automatically update it to include the /designer-designer/.
Note: Once you decided to change the URL key, you will need to find websites and pages which link to
previous versions of those URLs (you can use Google Webmaster Tools to identify them) and redirect
those old URLs to ne w URLs.
Magento SEO - Force trailing slash to canonical URLs
This Magento SEO feature can be found in System > Configuration > Web > Search Engine
Optimisation. It does exactly what it says it will do – it adds a slash at the end of every unique URL on
the Magento site.
It’s important from SEO perspective because it tackles a common duplicate content problem when the
same page content is presented on two different URLs. Google and other search engines don’t like that
as it looks like you’re spamming their index. Also, the PageRank values can be assigned to the duplicate
version of the URL, the one you don’t necessarily want to promote.
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Magento SEO - Default Pages
The ‘Default Pages’ Magento SEO feature enables you to re-route all 404 Not Found pages to the
content page of your choice, i.e. your homepage. Be careful with this feature though as both Google and
your customers sometimes prefer to see a custom-made, attractive 404 page rather than be redirected
to the page they didn’t want to see.
Magento SEO - Canonical Link Element
Canonical link element is a special HTML element which should be added to the <head> section of the
page. It tells search engines which URL, out of all duplicated URLs, to consider as the default/targeted
version of the page.
It is particularly useful when removing duplicate content issues relating to listings page pagination,
when every page, e.g. ‘?p=1’, ‘?p=2’, etc., have the same title, meta description and content. It’s also
useful when you have the same product (therefore the same content) in several categories, each with a
different URL.
Magento has a built-in functionality for enabling canonical link element for product and category pages.
Just go to System > Configuration > Catalogue > Search Engine Optimisation and select ‘Yes’ next to
‘Use Canonical Link Meta Tag For Categories’ and ‘Use Canonical Link Meta Tag For Products’.
Magento SEO Guide - Part 2
Page Titles & Meta Descriptions
In this section we will focus on Magento page titles and meta description tags which are both very
important factors in optimising Magento ecommerce websites. Magento includes numbers of SEO tools
and features allowing you to have full control over editing or generating optimised page titles and
descriptions, below are some of them.
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Magento SEO - Page Titles & Meta Descriptions for Content Pages
Optimising Magento content page titles is made very easy. You don’t need any development skills and
you can edit the title by going to: Magento > CMS > Manage Pages > chose the page > General
Information > Page Title. You can edit the meta description in a similar way, just go to ‘Meta Data’
instead of ‘General Information’.
Note: Google will only look at first 67-68 characters of the page title and approximately first 255
characters in meta description. Anything beyond that will still be displayed in user’s browser but will
be truncated in search engine results and discarded from search engine indexes.
Magento SEO - Page Titles & Meta Descriptions for Category/Listing Pages
You can easily edit category page titles in Magento by going to: Magento > Catalogue > Manage
Categories > your category.
Note: Remember to try to make each Magento page title and description unique so you don’t have too
many duplicate content issues.
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Magento SEO - Page Titles & Meta Descriptions for Product Pages
Magento displays the product name as a default page title. Although this is better than nothing, it’s not
always good enough.
One easy way to approach optimising Magento product pages’ titles is to put all optimised titles and
descriptions in the product import file (in html_title and html_description column/attribute). This will
automatically overwrite all default page titles.
Although this solution might work for Magento ecommerce sites which don’t update the stock very
often, but it might not be the best solution for websites which have tens of thousands of products which
change every day.
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The best, quickest and the most feasible way of optimising Magento product page titles is to automate
them so page title are generated using product and category names in conjunction with static strings.
The biggest advantage of buying external SEO extension or developing a custom Magento page
title/description generation module is being able to specify the pattern you want to use for all Magento
page titles / description across the whole site. For example, you can create a rule which says: for all
product pages generate the title using this pattern: “%PRODUCT%, %SUB_CATEGORY%
%CATEGORY%, Designer Clothes %STORE_NAME%”, e.g. “RONALD Cotton Lycra Top, Women
Clothing, Designer Clothes Dia Boutique”.
Pod1 Magento Ecommerce Design developed a custom module like that for all our Magento SEO
clients.
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Magento SEO Guide - Part 3
Webmaster Tools & Features
In this section we will expand on some of the less-known Magento SEO features which are in fact
essential in every webmaster’s and SEO expert’s day-to-day job.
Magento SEO - Google XML Sitemap
Magento has a great Google XML sitemap generation tool (System > Configuration > Google Sitemap)
which allows you to customise pretty much anything there is to customise, including different
frequency and priority value for different types of pages. For example, you may want to assign to
category pages frequency ‘daily’ and priority of ‘0.8’, but you may want to set those two to ‘weekly’ and
‘0.5’ on all content pages.
The tool also lets you configure generation settings, including how often the sitemap.xml should be
updated, at what time during the day and who’s the main point of contact if something goes wrong.
Once configured, all you need to do is go to Catalogue > Google Sitemap and generate new sitemap.xml
file.
Note: The path where you save the sitemap to must be writable – with appropriate server
permissions
Magento SEO - HTML Sitemap
There is a very handy Magento extension module which allows you to create a sitemap page listing links
to all existing/active Magento pages - Advanced Sitemap
Magento SEO - Default Robots Meta Tag In Magento
You can quickly change the default robots meta tag for all pages in System > Configuration > Design >
HTML Head. Four options cover all possibilities: noindex,nofollow ; noindex,follow ; index, nofollow ;
index,follow.
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Magento SEO - Add Miscellaneous Header Meta Tags
This feature (System > Configuration > Design > HTML Head) can have many useful applications but
what we found it particularly useful for was adding Google Webmaster Tools verification tag without
having to involve developers in such small and easy task.
Magento SEO - RSS Feeds
The default Magento configuration allows you to generate several RSS feeds, including ‘New Products’,
‘Special Products’, ‘Top Level Categories’. Just go to System > Configuration > RSS Feeds and enable
those you need. Then go to www.yourwebsite.com/rss and click ‘Get Feed’.
Magento SEO - Google API - Google Analytics
The default Google Analytics plugin in Magento provides the basic tracking code. All you need to do is
go to System > Configuration > Google API > Google Analytics and enter UA number of you site (as
shown in your Google Analytics account settings). This will automatically generate the standard
tracking code and add your UA. If you want to start tracking ecommerce data you may need this
extension Fooman_GoogleAnalyticsPlus.
Magento SEO Guide - Part 4
Website Launch Checklist
The launch of a new Magento website is always an exciting experience. After all the effort so many
people had put into the strategy, IA, UX, design, development and marketing, it’s finally time to show it
to the world and open floodgates for visitors. This is all great, but as everyone else is celebrating the
launch, for SEO it’s just the beginning. There are number of checks and activities which need to be
carried out straight after the launch. Below is a list of all known Magento SEO tips that are required for
launch as well as some optional ones.
Magento SEO - Website Visibility in Search Engines - Meta Robots Tag
This really is SEO textbook chapter 1.1. Make sure your website is actually accessible to search engine
‘spiders’. In Magento, you can easily do that by going to Configuration > Design > HTML Head and
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changing the value of Default Robots to ‘INDEX, FOLLOW’. You can test it by inspecting the source
code and checking if the meta robots tag shows ‘INDEX, FOLLOW’.
Magento SEO - Website Visibility in Search Engines - Robots.txt file
Robots.txt file is a standard text file which should live in the root directory of the Magento site, e.g.
http://www.kabiri.co.uk/robots.txt. It includes simple commands which tell search engine robots what
to index and what to exclude from indexing. There are many tutorials on the web, e.g.
http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/robots.shtml.
You can disallow indexing by adding the URL you want to exclude or the whole path/directory
containing URLs you want to exclude to the robots.txt file, e.g.
http://www.kabiri.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/7828/category/568 is not indexed because Magento
robots.txt file has the ‘Disallow: /catalog/’ command which excludes all URLs from within the catalog/
path.
When you launch a new Magento website, good tip would be to make sure that the Disallow command
DON’T block the access to the site. Note that the default value of robots is allowing all traffic, unless you
block it with Disallow. It’s also worth mentioning that you shouldn’t try to resolve duplicate content
issues using only robots.txt file – it’s much better to make the content unique or use the canonical link
element (discussed above).
Magento SEO - Page Title Optimisation
Another Magento SEO tip is to make sure your Magento category pages and content pages are
optimised and include relevant search terms (discussed above).
Magento SEO - Default Meta Tags Optimisation
Go to Configuration > Design >HTML Head and fill in the Default Title and Default Description fields.
This will ensure that new pages will have a generic but at least well optimised title and description in
case you forget to enter the specific page title and description. It does create some meta data duplicate
content issues but it’s far more beneficial to have some keywords in the title.
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Magento SEO Tips - Create Google Sitemap (sitemap.xml)
Magento has a great Google XML sitemap generation tool (System > Configuration > Google Sitemap)
which allows you to customise pretty much anything there is to customise, including different
frequency and priority value for different types of pages. For example, you may want to assign to
category pages frequency ‘daily’ and priority of 0.8, but you may want to set those to ‘weekly’ and ‘0.5’
on all content pages.
The tool also lets you configure sitemap generation settings, including how often the sitemap.xml
should be updated, at what time during the day and who’s the main point of contact if something goes
wrong.
Once configured, all you need to do is go to Catalogue > Google Sitemap and generate a new
sitemap.xml file.
Note: The path where you save the sitemap to must be writable – with appropriate server
permissions
Magento SEO - Set Up Magento Canonical Link Element Extension
As discussed above this is a brilliant feature automating generation of the canonical link element.
Magento SEO - Add Google Webmaster Tools Verification Tag to Magento
Need to add Google Webmaster Tools verification meta tag to Magento website without having to
involve developers in such small and easy task? No problem. Go to System > Configuration > Design >
HTML Head and paste your Webmaster Tools verification code in Miscellaneous scripts section. Done!
Magento SEO - Add Google Analytics Tracking Code Directly to Magento
The default Google Analytics plugin in Magento provides the basic tracking code. All you need to do is
go to System > Configuration > Google API > Google Analytics and enter UA number of you site (as
shown in your Google Analytics account settings). This will automatically generate the standard
tracking code and add your UA. If you want to start tracking ecommerce data you may need this
extension Fooman_GoogleAnalyticsPlus.
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Magento SEO - Set up Magento Google Base feed
This is definitely one of the optional Magento SEO tips but you may as well set up the Magento Google
Base feed straight away as the feed’s history seems to be one of the ranking factors for Google Shopping
listings. See the detailed step by step guide on how to do it below.
Magento SEO Guide - Part 5
How To Set Up Magento Google Base Feed
Step 1: Magento Google Base Feed Account Configuration
Firstly, the Google Merchant Centre account has to be linked to the Magento store.
1. In Magento, go to System > Configuration > Google API > Google Base.
2. Enter details of the account you wish to use to publish your products feed on. Select the default
target country and select Yes in ‘Update Google Base Item when Product is updated’.
Step 2: Adding Required ‘condition’ Attribute To Magento
1. Go to Catalogue > Attributes > Manage Attributes and click Add New Attribute.
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2. Populate all fields with following
values:
3. Then click on Manage Label / Options in top left.
4. Type ‘condition’ in Admin and ‘Condition’ in all store views.
5. Then click Add Option, type ‘new’ in all fields and add position ‘1’ and select ‘Is Default’.
6. Click on Add Option again and type ‘used’ in all fields and add position ‘2’.
7. Confirm by clicking Save Attribute.
8. Go to Catalogue > Manage Attribute Sets and select the attribute set you want to add the new
‘condition’ attribute to.
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9. Find the ‘condition’ attribute in the Unassigned Attributes section, drag & drop it to ‘General’ in
the Groups section.
10. Confirm by clicking Save Attribute Set.
11. In order to populate the new ‘condition’ attribute, go to Catalogue > Manage Products, select
products you want to update, select Update attributes from the Actions drop down and confirm
by clicking SUBMIT.
12. On the next screen, find Condition, change it to new and confirm Save.
There’s also a video guide for setting this up available at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_M3knNCB20
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Step 3: Magento Google Base Feed Attribute Mapping Configuration
The list of required and recommended attributes for products can be found here:
• http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?answer=171380 (UK)
• http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?answer=160083 (US)
• http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?answer=171382 (GERMANY)
First we need to map Magento product attributes to required/optional Google Merchant Centre
attributes. To do that go to Catalogue > Google Base > Manage Attributes and click on Add Attribute
Mapping.
1. Select Target Country, Attribute Set and Item Type (usually Products) for your feed and click on
Add New Attribute.
2. Add as many Google Base attributes as you want and map them across to Magento product URLs
on the left, e.g. Magento ‘SKU’ to Google Base ‘id’.
3. PLEASE NOTE THAT MAGENTO MAY POPULATE SOME OF REQUIRED GOOGLE
BASE ATTRIBUTES WITH “DEAFAULT/BUILT-IN” MAPPING ATTRIBUTES,
meaning you may not need to map all required attributes as Magento will automatically assign
them a correct value, e.g. ‘description’ gets assigned values of product description, ‘image_url’
gets assigned a value of image URL automatically, etc. In fact, most of the time the only attribute
you have to manually map across is the ‘condition’.
4. Finish by pressing Save Mapping.
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Step 4: Publishing Magento Google Base Feed
This is where we finally send products to Google Base / Google Merchant Centre.
1. Go to Catalogue > Google Base > Manage Items and choose the Store View you want to publish
products from.
2. Click on View Available Products
3. Select all products you want to publish. Make sure that products you select are the ones with a
destination URLs and are not part of any grouped products and have all required attribute
values, e.g. price.
4. Select Add To Google Base from the Actions drop down menu
5. Confirm by clicking Submit
6. You may be asked to fill in the captcha authentication.
If everything goes well you’ll see the notification that your products were successfully added to Google
Base.
Magento Google Base Feed Errors & Troubleshootin
If you encounter the ‘Expected response code 200, got 400. Type: data. Field: item. Reason: Please
verify and claim your website's URL, until you do so you cannot upload any product listings’ error
you will need to log in to Google Base account directly and verify account ownership.
If you encounter the ‘Expected response code 200, got 400, Field Type: Duplicate Description’ error
then your attribute mapping is wrong. Try editing the mapping or deleting mapping which causes the
problem. It may be the case that you tried to map attributes which Magento maps automatically
therefore you don’t need to do it.
If you encounter the timeout error then you need increase Magento’s default upload timeout period.
This is slightly more complicated and you should consult your development team in order to resolve
that problem.
The official ‘Google Base Integration in Magento’ video can be found here:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/blog/comments/video-google-base-integration-in-magento/
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Author: Artur Jach
Contact: arthurjach@yahoo.co.uk
Published April 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
publisher.
Copyright © Artur Jach 2011