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 theres 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 pages URL independently from Magentos 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 dont 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. Its 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 dont like that as it looks like youre spamming their index. Also, the PageRank values can be assigned to the duplicate version of the URL, the one you dont 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 didnt 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. Its 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 dont 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 users 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 dont 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, its 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 dont 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. 7|Page

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 webmasters and SEO experts 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 whos 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, its 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 its 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 10 | P a g e

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 DONT block the access to the site. Note that the default value of robots is allowing all traffic, unless you block it with Disallow. Its also worth mentioning that you shouldnt try to resolve duplicate content issues using only robots.txt file its 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 its 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 whos 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 feeds 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.

Theres 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 youll 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 dont need to do it. If you encounter the timeout error then you need increase Magentos 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

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